NGC 4414, a typical spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices, is about 17,000 parsecs in diameter and approximately 20 million parsecs distant. Credit:Hubble Space TelescopeNASA/ESA.
Today's question was submitted by one of my blogosphere's friends with a "nick" called A True Malaysian. He has requested me to post it here.
Question: (unedited)
I am a believer of reincarnation, rebirth. Someone has posed me a question that if reincarnation, rebirth has any truth, why human population in the world keep increasing? By right, if every everyone of us is subject to this cycle of life, total population in this world supposed to be a constant. Of course, you may argue that other living beings like animal and insect can be reborn into a human and vice-versa, where the % of insect / animal reborn into human is greater than human reborn into insect / animal due to good karma that these living being accumulated from their past life. Still, I am still blur on this.
My comment:
"A True Malaysian",
Surprise, surprise!! You have visited my blog, now you are in my room!! Very good.You have partly answered the question yourself. Other life forms can be reborn as humans. There are another two areas. The first one is that you must realize that the universe is so huge, beyond human reckoning. There are life forms in other world systems as well. In the context of space travel, time and distance are non-events, meaning, they cease to exist.
The other sphere where lives exist are in a different dimension. The Buddha revealed that there are 31 planes of existence. Humans and animals are two of the 31 planes. There are heaven and hell planes in different dimensions which we can't see.
Having answered that, you may like to pose a counter question to your friend, "What then do you think would be the answer?"
Hope this helps.(You are welcome to ask as many questions as you like and as often as you want. I am here specifically for this purpose...answering questions on Buddhism.)
Take care.
3 comments:
Justin,
I thank you for publishing my question and I found clarity in your answer.
About your point on the existence of 31 planes, this means that all of us will be reborn in the same plane as our previous life or in lower or higher plane depending on our karma.
So, in this sense, let say we kill an animal for food, we may end up with killing someone that we know or dear to us that was born in that plane. Agree?
The number of beings are like the sands in the shore. One little grain of sand represents one life. Just imagine! How are we to know for sure?
Justin,
That is why I always believe if we human beings are kind to nature, nature will be kind to us and there will be lesser natural disasters.
If we do the opposite, we cannot blame natural disasters as the 'Acts of God'. There are causes and effects in this, I believe.
That is also why I found Buddhism suit me best. Buddhism is very scientific to me, and yet scientists are still unable to explain certain happenings.
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