An Illustrated Outline of Buddhism: The Essentials of Buddhist Spirituality by William Stoddart, Joseph A. Fitzgerald Page B

them and said: “If it
    is a case of eating fish, cormorants would be born into the Pure
    Land, and if it is a case of not eating fish, monkeys would be so
    born. But I am sure that whether a man eats fish or not, if he
    only cal s upon the Sacred Name, he will be born into the Pure
    Land.”
    Hōnen

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    (21) The Question of Reincarnation
    In Buddhism, as in Hinduism, there are elaborate theories regarding
    cosmic cycles, “worlds”, “heavens”, and “hel s”. Linked with these is
    the doctrine of transmigration—or multiple births and rebirths—fre-
    quently referred to as “reincarnation”.
    In the modern West, the notion of “reincarnation” has been adopt-
    ed by many cultists, who, in the grossest manner imaginable, profess
    to believe in it literal y, envisaging a series of human rebirths in this
    world. It is true that a literal attitude towards transmigration is also to
    be found among the Hindu and Buddhist masses, and indeed such a
    belief derives from a literal interpretation of the respective scriptures.
    However, the most simple Asian peasant, even if he looks on transmi-
    gration literal y, has an infinitely more subtle intuition of the moral
    and spiritual implications of this doctrine than the grotesque cultists
    of the West. In Asia, a literalist attitude towards transmigration is not
    only harmless, but may even be beneficial. The gross “reincarnation-
    ism” of renegade Christian pseudo-esoterists, on the other hand, is im-
    mensely harmful for themselves and others.
    For a Buddhist, a literal belief in transmigration is like a Christian
    believing that hell is a fiery furnace down below. It may not be strictly
    true—and yet it is not false either, because the image is one which is
    adequate to the deeper (and more complex) truth in question and, be-
    ing so, has had a salutary moral and spiritual effect for countless gen-
    erations.
    The point is that elements plucked from one religious imagery
    (though in themselves “figures of truth”) are frequently not transplant-
    able to another; above al , they cannot be transplanted, without grave
    results, from a traditional world into the chaotic modern world, where
    there is minimal religious instruction, minimal religious sensibility,
    and a minimal will to understand.
    The Hindu and Buddhist doctrine of transmigration refers to the
    posthumous journeying of the unsanctified soul through an indefinite
    series of “peripheral” or “central” (but, quite emphatical y, non-terres-
    trial) states: René Guénon often emphasized that “no being of any kind
    can pass through the same state twice”. The term “peripheral” is used
    to indicate states which are analogous to animals or even plants in this
    world, and the term “central” is used to indicate states which are analo-
    gous to the human state.

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    An Illustrated Outline of Buddhism
    In some respects, transmigration may be regarded as the mytho-
    logical analogue of the theological doctrine of purgatory—with the
    important difference, however, that, according to the Catholic doc-
    trine, a soul in purgatory has definitively retained its “central” state
    and is assured of eventual paradise, whereas the final fate of a soul in
    transmigration may still be hel . At this point the Aryan and Semitic
    eschatologies do not entirely coincide.1
    A revealing discrepancy between the Hindu and Buddhist theory
    of a succession of births and deaths (for the unsanctified or unsaved
    soul) and the fantastical reincarnationism of Western cults is that the
    Hindu and the Buddhist strive at all costs to avoid “rebirth” (which
    would be “peripheral”, and in another world), whereas the pseudo-es-
    oterist imprudently (and il usorily) hankers after a further life or lives
    (which he imagines will be “central”, and in this world). The Hindu
    or Buddhist seeks to escape from the “round of existence”; the impi-
    ous heretic longs to remain within it. For the Hindu or