Hello,
I’m new to this forum, and sort of new to Catholicism. After having lived the last 12 or so years essentially as a Buddhist, I’ve been attracted or drawn to learning more about the Catholic Church, to the point of seriously considering conversion (I spent my first 20 years as a Baptist). What took me from Christianity to Buddhism in the first place was a reading of the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu text, in which the idea of reincarnation was invoked to explain how God is able to help mankind defeat evil in the world. As soon as I read that verse in the Gita, it was liked a light going off in my head. It made perfect sense – at least in terms of giving a plausible explanation for the apparent injustice in human society.
Hindu ideas of reincarnation are pretty diverse – some Hindus even reject the idea outright (though for some very different reasons!). Buddhist thought on this issue, though, seems more systematic, so my views have mostly been influenced by Buddhist musings.
I won’t discuss any weaknesses or strengths of the Buddhist idea of rebirth (which is different from the common Hindu or even “New Age” ideas of reincarnation), in relationship to Christian ideas of non-rebirth. In my opinion, both ideas have strengths and weaknesses; it’s good to know both systems, so that one doesn’t fall into an extremist position on either side. Studying Catholicism – whatever else it has done – has shown me that even if rebirth makes more sense to me logically, that Truth, or God, is really beyond logic, while including it as well.
I think what most attracted me to the idea of reincarnation/rebirth is its rejection of the idea of an “eternal hell”. I dare say that that is what attracts many Americans to the idea. From the Buddhist standpoint, this doesn’t mean that hell doesn’t exist – indeed, hells are numerous, but they are never “eternal”. The Buddha often spoke of the reality of hell, and the need for people to realize that their actions really do have consequences, consequences that would determine their experiences for eons and eons.
Catholic doctrine rejects reincarnation/rebirth, but there are ways to interpret Christian and Buddhist ways of understanding the afterlife that could show that those two are not merely incompatible. I won’t speculate on those ways here, but in my Buddhist-influenced study of Catholicism, I was heartened recently by a poster who gave me the image of the Holy Virgin Mary of Fatima, holding the flames of eternal hell in the palm of her hand.
SedesDomi
) and God is not a personal entity. But to the theist, be he Christian, Hebrew, or Muslim, such a conception of God is counter to God’s revelation of himself, and so karma, which flows from a pantheist concept of God, is rejected.
