House Unseen

Dwija Borobia

The Problem with Reincarnation

by Dwija Borobia on March 13, 2012 · 14 comments

The awesome thing about God is that He created us and we do matter.

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Dwija Borobia lives with her husband and their four (soon-to-be-five!) kids in rural southwest Michigan in a fixer-upper they bought sight-unseen off the internet. Between homeschooling and corralling chickens, she enjoys her work as a freelance writer.  You can read more on her blog house unseen. life unscripted.

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Dwija Borobia lives with her husband and their five kids in rural southwest Michigan in a fixer-upper they bought sight-unseen off the internet. Between homeschooling and corralling chickens, she pretends her time on the internet doesn’t count because she uses the computer standing up. You can read more on her blog house unseen. life unscripted.

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  • http://lesliesholly.wordpress.com/ Leslie

    Love, love, love.  One of the (many) things I love about our faith is the incarnational emphasis–that we aren’t just souls or bodies but embodied souls.  This disdain for the physical seems to be present even in many Christian religions today.  And don’t you love it when your kids can see straight to the heart of issues that confuse adults?

  • Elise Hilton

    Another problem with reincarnation comes from Woody Allen:  “That means I’d have to sit through the Ice Capades again….”

  • http://twitter.com/HouseUnseen Dwija Borobia

    Exactly.  When my husband, who was then my boyfriend, first told me about me, as Dwija, not  just as soul, being important, I literally couldn’t understand it for a while.  And there my kids, 9 and 10 years old: instant recognition.  Pretty incredible.

  • http://twitter.com/HouseUnseen Dwija Borobia

    Ah, reincarnating as oneself might even be worse than doing the blade of grass thing.  Seriously.

  • http://www.martinfamilymoments.blogspot.com/ Colleen Martin

    I love reading things like this because it makes me realize how lucky I was to be raised by such wonderful Catholic parents.  I didn’t need to “learn” or “think” about any of these things.  They just *were*.  Of course we are created in the Image and Likeness of God, and He looked at His creations and said we were good.  To me, that’s like…duh!  It’s nice to see how other people come to understand the beauty of the faith when sometimes I take it for granted.

  • http://twitter.com/HouseUnseen Dwija Borobia

    I hope my kids feel the same way you do, Colleen.  Thank you!

  • http://www.clan-donaldson.com/ Cari@Clan-Donaldson

    The biggest problem I had with reincarnation during my travels, was the notion that it turned God into a dupe.  After all, if (as I understood it), people with more materially comfortable lives had gotten there as a result of playing by the rules in previous lives, what did that mean when they ended up obviously NOT playing by the rules in their cushy lives?  God couldn’t see that one coming?  And what about this version of God that obviously valued material comfort enough to provide it as a reward?  How did that jive with the material world being an illusion?  This meant that this god either gave crappy gifts that he knew were fake, or, as previously stated, he was a dupe.

    Thanks for writing this.  

  • http://www.clan-donaldson.com/ Cari@Clan-Donaldson

    The biggest problem I had with reincarnation during my travels, was the notion that it turned God into a dupe.  After all, if (as I understood it), people with more materially comfortable lives had gotten there as a result of playing by the rules in previous lives, what did that mean when they ended up obviously NOT playing by the rules in their cushy lives?  God couldn’t see that one coming?  And what about this version of God that obviously valued material comfort enough to provide it as a reward?  How did that jive with the material world being an illusion?  This meant that this god either gave crappy gifts that he knew were fake, or, as previously stated, he was a dupe.

    Thanks for writing this.  

  • http://twitter.com/HouseUnseen Dwija Borobia

    Or, He doesn’t actually care.  ”Here’s the game.  Play it.  If I see ya back someday, that’ll be cool.  If not….sucks for you!”

  • C W

    Dwija! You rock! But you are not a rock. Thank you for taking the time to explain this. I love your perspective and your insights into a culture I know absolutely nothing about. I’m letting my teenagers read this!

  • C W

    I didn’t mean to log in with my Google account. This is Charlotte (Waltzing Matilda) by the way.

  • Gail Finke

    Dweej that was beautiful and heartbreaking.

  • http://truedaughterofmary.blogspot.com/ Meganj@truedaughter

    This was interesting. As a cradle Catholic, I have never given the concept much thought. I just thought it was another nutty idea. I have looked at other belief systems, and for me, it always, always brings me back to the Catholic faith – it is where the Truth is…as I like to say to my non-Christian friends….if they are right, I have done no harm to myself or humanity as a Christian. If they are wrong, well, I’d not want to be them on judgement day!

  • http://people-as-guate.blogspot.com/ Steph

    This is an interesting topic, thanks for sharing!  I had never thought about this before but I think you hit the nail on the head with the idea that reincarnation is problematic, since it would tell us that we as individuals don’t matter.

    There is a really fascinating book out there called “My Stroke of Insight” in which a neuroscientist relates her experience of having a stroke localized in her left brain. At some point, she lost brain cells in enough parts of the left brain to the extent where she could no longer perceive the limits of her body (turns out there is a brain center in the left brain responsible for this) and was consumed by a sense of peace that almost prevented her from calling to receive help. (Some part of her left brain reminded her that she had an individual identity!) It took her months to recover the perception that her body was separate from her surroundings and even after her recovery, she can slip back into that “right-brain” state of mind. Her story is a fascinating testimony to the power of balancing the left and right brains. After her stroke she says she is way more relaxed, kinder, and mellow because the self-critical part of her left brain has been quieted down a bit.

    After reading her book, I wondered (as does she) if many of the traditions that believe in reincarnation/strive for nirvana are tapping in to those areas of the brain when they talk about being able to cut off the self-ego? 

    Her book is nothing if not  a testimony to the power of how we train our brains… on that note I don’t
    find it surprising that kids in the US would intuitively take issue with the idea of
    reincarnation. Our left brains are heavily trained from a very young
    age that each of us is special and important!

    Although human existence wouldn’t be possible without that synergy between left-brain ego and right brain super-ego, let alone some of human existence’s most beautiful attributes such as love and kindness…  Analyzing just on a purely physiological standpoint it would seem evident that our greatest capacity for those things is based on an intricate balance between right and left brains.

    that is a mystery to puzzle out and one that I think has always
    remained for those faiths espousing detachment as the path to salvation.
    But I think simultaneously keeping our smallness in mind is not a bad thing, either, though, especially when our left brain calls us to cruelty or pettiness.