CFLarsen said:
True. Reincarnation is tied with the wheel of karma, so you are responsible for what you do here, and will be rewarded - or punished - in your next life.
This seems to be the view of a lot of Buddhists, but it isn't what the Buddha taught, at least from what I can tell.
(I sometimes call myself a Buddhist, but I'm not all that well versed in Buddhist doctine or scripture.)
In one often quoted passage, the Buddha was asked about reincarnation, and he discussed the "five aggregates of existence", which are basically something like "body, sensation, perception, memory, and awareness". The words don't translate well. I've seen several lists, and they are never the same in English. There are always one body, and four mental conditions. Anyway, the five aggregates, taken together, describe "you".
So, when asked about reincarnation, the Buddha said, "Will your body survive?" "No." "Will your memory survive?" "No". "Will your perceptions survive?" "No." etc.
The way I interpreted that passage was to say that reincarnation, as we usually think of it, doesn't really exist. The key to understanding "reincarnation" is to understand that "you" have many lifetimes, because "you" don't really exist separately from your world. When you die, the world doesn't stop. It continues, through many lifetimes. Your body is recycled. Your ideas continue through the teachings and examples you provided to others. You help create the world, and the world is changed because of what you did, so when "you" die, the effects of "you" keep on going. You never really die, because, well, "you" never really lived. "You" are a temporary collection of things that come together and spend some time together, until they stop being together.
One reason, although only one reason, that people associate reincarnation so much with Buddhism is the strong influence of Tibetan Buddhists in the United States, compared to other Buddhists. The other sects of Buddhism don't emphasize reincarnation nearly as much. At one of my first dharma talks I attended, for new Buddhists, a member of the crowd asked if he could come back as an animal in his next life. The monk, a Zen Buddhist, said "You can be an animal in this life." And then went on to encourage people to worry about their mind in this life, not their condition in the next.
My own opinion of reincarnation is that reincarnation as we know it doesn't exist. What does it mean to be "reincarnated" if you don't look like and can't remember your past lives? Efforts to recover past life memories usually work very well on talk shows and during tarot card readings, but otherwise are unproductive. On the other hand, I know that the way I live my life will influence the world in subtle ways forever. Every time I look at George Washington's face on a dollar bill, he influences me. Every time I vote in a national election, or attend a fireworks display, or go to a Buddhist temple in suburban Detroit, George Washington's influence is felt. So, he is, in some sense "reincarnated" in me, with or without a soul shortage.
