Buddhist Views on Birth and Rebirth

THE FIRST NOBLE TRUTH TAUGHT by Shakyamuni Buddha is that life is
suffering. The Buddha also imparted that the four primary forms of
suffering are birth, illness, old age, and death. Taken alone, these
pronouncements set the stage for a life-denying tradition in which birth is
viewed as a descent into the vale of misery. However, these negative
assessments are more than counterbalanced by the Buddha's central teaching
that human life offers a unique opportunity to discover the truth. The same
potential for spiritual awakening is not presented by birth as an animal,
as a supernatural being, or even as a privileged dweller in one of the
heavenly realms. The Buddha himself embodied the fruition of human
potential: the attainment of infinite knowledge, wisdom, and compassion.
Therefore, the belief that prevailed in Buddhism is that birth in human
form is a rare and precious event. In place of the lamentation that one
might expect, one finds that birth has been celebrated in numerous ways in
Buddhist art, myth, and philosophy.

The Buddhist celebration of birth first found expression in exaltations of
Queen Maya, the Buddha's mother. Some accounts suggest that Queen Maya was
on her way to her parents' home when she unexpectedly had to stop and give
birth in a forest. Other sources, however, reveal that the queen sought out
a sacred grove where all the women of her lineage gave birth under the
watchful care of the grove goddess. The goddess created a suitable
environment by hanging jewels and flower garlands from the trees and making
lotuses bloom in all the ponds. She summoned the females of all species to
bring offerings to the foot of the tree where Buddha would be born. Queen
Maya bathed in a lotus pond and then grasped the branch of a fig tree,
which served as her midwife for the auspicious birth.

The Buddha was born from Queen Maya's right side. Scholars have interpreted
this as a negative motif, a sign that the womb is too impure and defiling
for a Buddha to inhabit. However, Buddhist texts explain that a Buddha by
nature causes no suffering and that this was true from the very moment of
his conception. Queen Maya experienced no discomfort during her pregnancy,
and her son considerately emerged from her side so that the delivery would
be painless.

When the Buddha's mother died during the first year of his life, she merged
into the goddess of the sacred grove. It is Maya's image that is enshrined
in the temple at the site of the Buddha's birth in Lumbini, Nepal. Women
from surrounding villages have come here over the centuries not to worship
the Buddha, but to pray to the holy mother for protection in childbirth and
healthy children. They honor her image with seasonal flowers and with red
powder and vermilion paste signifying the life-blood with which mothers
animate their children. Drinking water that has been poured over the statue
is believed to cure infertility. An archaeological record reaching back
thousands of years preserves the worshippers' handmade offerings of
terracotta beads, bracelets, miniature horses, and human figurines. Despite
the fact that one of the world's greatest religious leaders was born here,
worship at the site glorifies the mother who gave birth, not the son who
was born.

THE Flower Ornament Sutra (first--second century C.E.), an early Mahayana
scripture, further exalts the Buddha's mother in passages voiced by the
goddess of the sacred grove, who witnessed the nativity. In a poetic stream
of visionary ecstasy, the goddess eulogizes the miracles that took place in
Queen Maya's body, beginning with an outpouring of brilliant healing light:

As Lady Maya leaned against the holy fig tree, all the world rulers, gods
and goddesses... and all the other beings... were bathed in the glorious
radiance of Maya's body .... All the lights in the billion-world universe
were eclipsed by Maya's light. The lights emanating from all her pores...
pervaded everywhere, extinguishing all suffering... illuminating the
universe.(n1)

Queen Maya's womb attained cosmic proportions. Universes streamed forth
from her body, while everything in this universe was in turn visible in her
womb. All the worlds, lands, and Buddhas were visible in each of her pores.

No stigma attaches here to the process of birth or to the womb. In
dualistic philosophies that separate mind and body, pure spirit and impure
matter, the female body and especially the womb are often negativized as
the gateway into the prison of matter. However, according to the
nondualistic Mahayana philosophy of emptiness, birth and indeed all
phenomenal arising is miraculous and illusory. Ail things are born out of
emptiness, shimmer momentarily in empty space, and then dissolve back into
the cosmic source. Emptiness is the fertile womb of reality, and the human
womb possesses the same wondrous power of manifestation.

Perfection of Wisdom philosophy elevates the concepts of birth and
motherhood above even that of Buddhahood itself. This philosophy introduces
a cosmic female who embodies the radiant wisdom that gives birth to
Buddhas. The goddess, known as Prajnaparamita, or Perfect Wisdom, shares
the name of the literature in which she appears and the knowledge that she
personifies. One of her rifles is Mother of Ail Buddhas, for she is the
maternal source of saving knowledge. As the mother, she endures, while her
offspring, the Buddhas, come into existence and pass away:

She is the Perfect Wisdom that never comes into being and therefore never
goes out of being .... She can never be defeated in any way, on any level
.... She is the Perfect Wisdom who gives birthless birth to all Buddhas.
And through these sublimely Awakened Ones, it is Mother Prajnaparamita
alone who turns the wheel of true teaching.(n2)

The Buddhas recede in importance as their birth-giver, Prajnaparamita,
emerges as the supreme teacher, the source of all religious truths. Seekers
of wisdom must sit at her feet and drink from the endless stream of
teachings that flow from her presence. Without her, the Buddhas would have
nothing to teach. She is the source and content of their teachings, the
eternal font of revelation; the Buddhas are her messengers.

Mother Wisdom is put forth as the highest object of worship, more worthy of
reverence than a Buddha or Buddharelics, for only those who prize wisdom
above all else may attain it. Buddhas and their relics are indeed holy;
however, the Buddhas are sacred because she brought them into being, while
the relics are venerable because they are saturated with her energy.
Therefore, Buddhas and bodhisattvas, too, revere her. Recognizing their
dependence upon her, they

devotedly contemplate the spontaneously revealing Goddess Prajnaparamita
with deep consecration and respect--revering, worshiping, and ecstatically
adoring her .... The omniscience... which alone constitutes Buddhahood
springs from Mother Prajnaparamita, and therefore all Buddhas and
bodhisattvas are intensely grateful and thankful to her and only to
her.(n3)

The entire edifice of Prajnaparamita philosophy is built upon the principle
that the birth-giver is greater than the one who is born. As long as there
is a mother of Buddhas, there will be more Buddhas, and she will continue
to exist long after they have passed away.

TANTRIC BUDDHISM, which arose in about the seventh century, added its own
distinctive valuation of birth. As a tradition that treasures the human
body as the abode of bliss and vehicle of enlightenment, it is natural that
Tantra proclaims that women, the givers of birth, are to be honored. The
Candamaharoshana Tantra has harsh words for those who disparage the source
of life, pleasure, and kindness:

Woman alone is the birth giver, the giver of true pleasure to the Three
Worlds, the kind one. Those chattering fools engaged in evil action, who
now disparage her out of hostility, will, by their action, remain
constantly tortured for three eons in the fathomless Raudra Hell, wailing
as their bodies burn in many fires.(n4)

The text pronounces that those who fail to honor women can not attain
liberation, but those who render to women their due homage will be rewarded
with supreme enlightenment. Toward this end, a man should seek a woman upon
whom he can focus his devotion. When he finds a spiritual consort, he
should approach sexual union with her as a sacred act. Envisioning her as a
living goddess, or female Buddha, he should bow at her feet, beg her to
grace him with a loving glance, and worship at the altar of her thighs. He
should lovingly kiss her stomach, thinking, "This is where I formerly
dwelt; from here I was born," and grant her any form of pleasure that she
desires.

Although the honor accorded to women in Tantric Buddhism goes beyond their
role as mothers, the high value placed upon the human body and upon birth
is the cornerstone of this--and any--female-affirming philosophy.

The theme of rebirth, like that of birth, was elaborated and assumed grand
proportions in the Buddhist imagination. Early Buddhism envisioned six
forms in which one could be reborn: that is, as a denizen of hell, animal,
human being, hungry ghost, demigod, or god. The six realms of rebirth
correspond to mental drives and psychological temperaments. For example, a
preponderance of hatred and aggression will lead to rebirth in hell among
violent beings. Greed and perpetual dissatisfaction lead to rebirth as a
hungry ghost, while excessive envy results in birth among the demigods. A
person's thoughts, motivations, and behavior plant the seeds of karma that
will ripen in future lives. Enlightenment offers the hope of escape from
the round of rebirth.

As Buddhism evolved, rebirth came to be seen a process that can be mastered
and engaged in consciously. In Mahayana Buddhism, a bodhisattva aspires to
become free from karmic impurities and to renounce the selfish desire for
personal existence. Once freed from this desire, however, the bodhisattva
does not simply dissolve into the blissful expanse of ultimate reality. The
paradox inherent in this process is that, having transcended the thirst for
personal selfhood, one attains the Buddhist equivalent of immortality. No
longer subject to the laws of karma and rebirth, bodhisattvas are free to
recreate themselves eternally, in innumerable times, places, and bodily
forms, to lead others to the same state of liberation. Such beings will
fearlessly descend to the hell-realms to bestow cooling water and the
nectar of compassion upon their tortured inhabitants, or visit places
frequented by alcoholics, derelicts, and compulsive pleasure-seekers of
every description, for it is necessary to appear among those who will most
benefit from even the slightest glimmer of wisdom.

These bodhisattvas, too, fashion divine bodies of unspeakable beauty and
infinite glory to enchant the senses and awaken spiritual aspiration.
Bodhisattvas do not even necessarily take rebirth in human form. They may
choose to be reborn as crops to feed the hungry, rain to end drought,
medicine to cure the sick, roads and bridges to aid travelers, trees to
provide shade, and houses to provide shelter. They can manifest in many
forms and places at one time and travel into the past, present, and future.
Having mastered illusion, illusion becomes their plaything, reality their
playground, and conscious rebirth their entertaining and liberating
pastime.

TANTRIC BUDDHISM adds yet another dimension to the concept of rebirth. In
Tantra, death and rebirth are regarded as experiences that one may undergo
in one's present lifetime through yogic practices that simultaneously
purify the mind and body. The subtle psychic energies that carry a person's
thought and emotions are normally dispersed throughout the body. A
practitioner of Tantric yoga learns to draw these energies into the
central, spinal channel, where they no longer support dualistic thought.
Egoic selfhood, which is predicated upon dualistic thought, is thereby
deprived of its foundation and spontaneously dissolves. Further
concentrating the energies into a single point, or drop, at the heart, the
seat of consciousness, brings about a psychic death. The illusory self, the
false ego, dies, and the clear light of universal awareness dawns in its
wake.

This process of psychic death and rebirth is depicted in Tantric
iconography in various ways. One is the motif of a Buddha trampling upon a
corpse. The corpse does not represent external beings or forces that must
be defeated but rather the unenlightened self that is left behind on the
journey to liberation. The Buddha pins down its chest, the seat of the mind
and emotions, showing that egoic tendencies have been conquered. Above the
gray, prostrate corpse, the lifeless shell of the former self, the Buddha
dances in a magnificent, divine body. Tantric Buddhas are customarily
adorned with skull-crowns, necklaces of skulls, and ornaments made of human
bone, demonstrating that they have overcome the dualism of life and death
and know the secrets of the art of rebirth.

The Flame-Dancing Dakini epitomizes the Tantric understanding of spiritual
rebirth. Her golden body shines with the radiance of perfect wisdom and the
life-force in its purest essence. Flames burst from her body, for the fire
of spiritual transformation blazes within her. She wears none of the usual
adornments of deity, for only the barest naked awareness, stripped of all
conceptual overlay, can accomplish this transition. Her face is drawn into
an expression of supernatural intensity, for she experiences all the
passions as pure energy-waves that she may ride, enjoy, and use at will.
The flame-dancer emerges from a cloak of human skin with a bloody lining.
She leaps free of her former self, leaving it behind like an afterbirth;
she sheds it just as a snake sheds its skin, glowing with the ecstasy of
rebirth. She waves aloft a ball of string, a Tantric symbol of continuity,
expressing that death, or what the unenlightened regard as death, has
become child's play to her--an illusory threshold that she has crossed many
times.

This Tantric goddess occupies the vantage point from which life, death, and
rebirth are one grand process, a never-ending process of transformation.
She knows that, in the face of death, there is no cause for sorrow, for
there is no permanent loss or separation. Thus, she dances exultantly,
victoriously, rejoicing, filling the universe with her cosmic laughter.

NOTES

(n1.) Flower Ornament Scripture, translated by Thomas Cleary (Boston:
Shambhala, 1987), vol. 3, pp. 266-67.

(n2.) Mother of the Buddhas: Meditations on the Prajnaparamita Sutra,
translated by Lex Hixon (Wheaton, Ill.: Quest Books, 1993), pp. 95-96.

(n3.) Ibid, p. 123.

(n4.) The Candamaharosana Tantra, Chapters 1-8, translated by Christopher
George (New Haven, Conn.: American Oriental Society, 1974), p. 70.

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): The Goddess of the Grove

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): (above) The Dharana Yantra of the Goddess Tvarita;
(overleaf) Chakra-vyuha, a maze pattern used to focus concentration during
childbirth

ILLUSTRATION (BLACK & WHITE)