Reincarnation: part two

In our second conversation about reincarnation, we start off discussing the how the current Dalai Lama’s position is predicated on the belief that he is the reincarnation of the previous Dalai Lama and how his reincarnation and the reincarnation of other Lamas creates a certain amount of consternation for the government of the People’s Republic of China. We don’t dwell there long but instead venture off to hell (and the other realms of rebirth) and use that as way to discuss Buddhist morality and ethics. We also try to answer a listener question about the twelve-fold chain of causation and do our best to explain it in terms of the cycle of rebirth before ending this episode, appropriately enough, on Japanese horror films. Some of the books and films discussed in this episode include: the Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen Hajime Nakamura’s book Gotama Buddha Nobuo Nakagawa’s 1960 classic, Jigoku Akira Kurosawa’s 1990 film Dreams