The Problem of Reincarnation: A Poem
In my first life, I was a farmer.
My earliest memory was of my mother
Her voice, her cool hands, her laugh
When I was a boy,
I would play in the dirt by the river
Under the sky.
‘till I was a man, my mother would teach me
My purpose, my path, my duty
My lot in this life. Dharma.
Beside her
I would work with the earth, by the river
Under the sky.
When I was a young man
As my mother lay dying
She taught me about souls
About rebirth, and uncountable lives
And the ultimate promise of bliss.
And I asked her,
“Will you remember your last life, mama?
When you wake up
Will you remember me…”
In my next life, I was a merchant’s daughter.
My earliest memory was about my nurse, because
My family was very rich, and always very busy
Attending to duty
Attending to matters of soul.
When I was a young girl,
My nurse taught me the story of many lives
About how, if I was very bad
Then in my next life
I would surely be reborn
As one of those people,
The least of these, the suffering,
The dirty, the unloved.
When I was a young person
I learned that the continued suffering of these people
For entire lifetimes
Was justified, because of the things
Their souls had done, in a previous life
When I was a young person
I learned that some people
Deserved to be treated better than others
Because of things they couldn’t remember
Things that had been done
By a different body, a different personality
A different self.
And so, when I was a woman
I did my duty. I became a wife
And when I carried children into the world
Into a family of a rank superior to that of the commoners and servants
I knew that the souls of my children, in previous lives
Must somehow have earned this place in the world
And when I grew old and passed away
I came back to life in a body
In a family
In a caste
In a place in the universe
That I had earned.
The universe keeps score. Karma.
And so, I lived, and died, and was reborn so many times
Lives like single beads, added to necklace, one by one
And in each life, I had a self
A shape. A body
Personhood
Character
Me.
There were boundaries, shaped differently each time
Between what was myself and what was other
But that didn’t stop me from reaching out
Connecting to the things outside, because
I had mothers and fathers
Friends that I loved and lost
Gods that I worshiped
Lovers to hold
And in each finite, temporary life
I worried over things that didn’t matter
And my heart ached for the things
That I wanted but could never have
Hopes that I reached out for all my life
And never touched
And it hurt. So much.
But sometimes it was beautiful
And I wondered
If I was given the choice
To have unending, perfect happiness and bliss
At the cost of losing
This illusion of having
An individual self,
At the very end of everything…
I wondered if I would make that choice.
I wondered if it would be worth it
If that happiness
Would be an empty kind.
Still, I was told
Over and over again
That none of these things in my lives should matter
That their temporary nature
Only ever causes pain
And in the end, it’s better to let things go
Better not to get attached, not to feel desire at all
Because the soul that is free from desire and loathing
The soul that is free from earthly attachments
Can ascend the cycle of reincarnation
Can escape from suffering and pain
And become one with God, with Brahmin
With the spirit of the universe
It all starts to blur together,
Once it’s been a little while.
But in one life, I was a warrior
And in my clearest memory,
I was standing on a battlefield
Where kin were fighting against kin
In ugly conflict
And I – I was unable
To fulfil my duty, live up to my purpose.
My concern over causing bloodshed
My connection to my family
Was too strong.
I was wounded in the battle
Crumpled, dying
By the river, in the dirt
Beneath the sky.
In those last moments
Before that old familiar feeling
My chariot driver caught my eye
And gave me a long, long look
In that moment, I felt like I understood
But the next time I opened my eyes
All of my understanding was gone.
Because in my next life,
When I opened my eyes
I couldn’t see
When I screamed and screamed
I couldn’t hear my own screaming
I was filled with pain
From the tips of my toes
To the edges of everything
And I never knew who I was because
I didn’t live
For more than a couple of hours
And I couldn’t remember why.
And in my next life,
I was starving
Bent double with hunger most of the time
I had to steal in order to live
And nobody told me the story of many lives
I never knew
In the life after that, I was a woman
A servant, in a wealthy house
And the men in the house
Would take me outside
And in the dirt, beside the river
I did my duty
And never said a word
Until one day I snapped
And defended myself
And caused them harm
And in the life after that, I was punished.
Because of the life I was born into,
I killed many men to survive.
And the life after that,
And the life after that,
And the life after that
And the universe keeps score
And when does it stop…
Eventually, by chance, many lives down the road
This soul stopped falling
Something or somebody caught me
I started to earn my way back
Towards a chance at something better
In the space of uncountable lifetimes,
Maybe that’s what justice is
Maybe that’s the balance
Over time.
I don’t know.
I know that in this life, I like to play with words
I am not aware of my previous selves
But they were the path that brought me here
To this personalily, with this shape
This consciousness, equipped to feel
All the pleasure and pain
This illusion of a self
That will only exist in the universe
For this one single time.
There’s something sacred about the existence of me.
Of each of us, together, on this path.
Because of that sacredness
I have to wonder
If this incarnation deserves
To be saddled with the debts
That the soul has accumulated
Along the way
As other people
In other lives
Can we really, truly decide
That a person’s birth status
Into one class of society
Where they will be treated
Better or worse than somebody else
Is permeant, irredeemable
In the space of an entire life
How do we know
That this life, in this moment
(in the dirt, beside the river, under the sky…)
Isn’t all we have?
These ideas were borrowed from the Bhagavad Gita, and from a book called The Purpose of Life by Professor Carlo Filice.