The United Nations calculates that the world's human population has reached 7 billion. And at the Guardian, Ed Halliwell� asks a� question -- "Can population growth be reconciled with Buddhist reincarnation?"
Mr. Halliwell's answer isn't bad, but I can tell most of the commenters didn't bother to read it. The comments are mostly the standard knee-jerk responses you get from people who have made up their minds that reincarnation (as they, not Buddhism, understand it) is superstitious nonsense; e.g., "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Etc., etc.
Since rebirth in Buddhism really isn't about the continuation of an individual self, I'd say the answer to the question is "yes." And if you want to know how, stop looking for "extraordinary evidence" and educate yourself as to what Buddhism actually teaches about rebirth. To me, looking for a one-to-one ratio of reborn individuals is like assuming there can be only a fixed number of waves on the ocean.
Here's a poem by Uchiyama Roshi that we say at memorial services at my zen center:
Water isn't formed by being ladled into a bucket
Simply the water of the whole universe has been ladled into a bucket
The water does not disappear because it has been scattered over the ground
It is only that the water of the whole universe has been emptied into the whole universe
Life is not born because a person is born
The life of the whole universe has been ladled into the hardened "idea" called "I"
Life does not disappear because a person dies
Simply, the life of the whole universe has been poured out of this hardened "idea" of "I" back into the universe
How many "rebirths" are possible in the life of the whole universe? You tell me; I was never good at arithmetic.
Theravadins tend to be more literal about the rebirth thing, so I checked at Access to Insight to see if they had a different perspective. Here's what I found:
According to Buddhist cosmology, when a living being [1] passes away he or she is reborn into one of thirty-one distinct "planes" or "realms" of existence, of which the human realm is just one. An increase in the human population simply implies that creatures from other planes are being reborn into the human realm at a rate faster than humans are dying. Likewise, a decline in the human population would imply that humans, upon death, are taking rebirth in other planes (or exiting samsara altogether) at a rate faster than other creatures are taking rebirth as humans. These sorts of population shifts have been occurring for countless eons and in themselves hold little cosmic significance.
[1] Except an arahant, a fully-enlightened being. Arahants have escaped the round of rebirths once and for all and, upon death, are not reborn.
So there you have it -- it's not an issue in Theravada, either.
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