The Noble Eightfold Blog

Some years ago, I heard people claim that the Buddha did not teach rebirth. By then I had already read a good portion of the Pāli Canon, and I knew this was not true. But I decided to do a little research and to quantify it.

One way to quantify the Buddha’s emphasis on rebirth is to look at the Majjhima Nikāya and list all the references to rebirth. There are 152 suttas in the Majjhima Nikāya. There are 89 suttas that reference rebirth or the Buddhist cosmology in some way.

An obvious place to start is to look for literal references to the words “reborn,” “rebirth,” and “reappearance.” The first two are obvious. The references to reappearance and its variants are typically as follows:

“When my concentrated mind was thus purified, bright, unblemished, rid of imperfection, malleable, wieldy, steady, and attained to imperturbability, I directed it to knowledge of the passing away and reappearance of beings. With the divine eye, which is purified and surpasses the human, I saw beings passing away and reappearing, inferior and superior, fair and ugly, fortunate and unfortunate. I understood how beings pass on according to their actions thus: ‘These worthy beings who were ill conducted in body, speech, and mind, revilers of noble ones, wrong in their views, giving effect to wrong view in their actions, on the dissolution of the body, after death, have reappeared in a state of deprivation, in a bad destination, in perdition, even in hell; but these worthy beings who were well conducted in body, speech, and mind, not revilers of noble ones, right in their views, giving effect to right view in their actions, on the dissolution of the body, after death, have reappeared in a good destination, even in the heavenly world.’ Thus with the divine eye, which is purified and surpasses the human, I saw beings passing away and reappearing, inferior and superior, fair and ugly, fortunate and unfortunate, and I understood how beings pass on according to their actions.” — [MN 4.29]

There are also synonyms for rebirth, as well as references to other realms, references to the stages of awakening, and references to aging and death. Here is an example of a passage that makes an indirect reference to rebirth:

“Bhikkhus, there are these two views: the view of being and the view of non-being. Any recluses or brahmins who rely on the view of being, adopt the view of being, accept the view of being, are opposed to the view of non-being. Any recluses or brahmins who rely on the view of non-being, adopt the view of non-being, accept the view of non-being, are opposed to the view of being.” — [MN 11.6]

(The view of being [bhavadiṭṭ] is eternalism, the belief in an eternal self; the view of non-being [vibhavadiṭṭhi] is annihilationism, the denial of any principle of continuity as a basis for rebirth and kammic retribution. The adoption of one view entailing opposition to the other ties in with the earlier statement that the goal is for one who does not favor.) Here is an example of a reference to other realms:

“Bhikkhus, I see no one in the world with its gods, its Māras, and its Brahmās, in this generation with its recluses and brahmins, with its princes and its people, who could satisfy the mind with a reply to these questions, except for the Tathāgata or his disciple or one who has learned it from them.” — [MN 13.6]

And here is an example of a reference to aging and death:

“When, friends, a noble disciple understands aging and death, the origin of aging and death, the cessation of aging and death, and the way leading to the cessation of aging and death, in that way he is one of right view… and has arrived at this true Dhamma.” — [MN 9.21]

Feel free to quibble with these choices, but it is difficult to explain any of these references as anything but the process whereby beings are born, live, die, and are reborn in this or another realm.

The final table follows. A "y" in the rebirth column means that it is an indirect reference to rebirth. An "x" means that the word rebirth is used in the sutta.