On Reincarnation
A slightly different kind of post
Winter quarter at Stanford was challenging and awesome, but mid-March was very melancholic. Amongst other things, this was fueled by the fact that many of my classmates at Stanford were graduating, and it finally felt like my time at Stanford was coming to an end. And in this melancholic mood, I watched the movie Past Lives by Director Celine Song.
And it started this emotional deep dive into thinking about reincarnation after a long time.
A brief review of “Past Lives” and relationships across lifetimes
Past Lives is a beautiful, simple movie. If you want to watch it, maybe stop reading this post, go check it out, and come back to this because there are spoilers in this post. Although, to be honest, knowing what happens doesn’t reduce the weight of the movie’s point.
It is a romance movie, but only by definition. It is not your usual boy-meets-girl happy ending kind of movie. Essentially, two childhood best friends living in Korea are separated when the girl’s parents move her to Canada. They reconnect online years later when in college, but since they are still in different parts of the world, they don’t make that commitment to each other. More years pass by, and the girl (now a writer) is happily married (to another writer), when the guy comes from Korea to see her in New York. After twenty years apart, they are finally reunited.
The movie introduces the Buddhist concept of In-yeon: that you have a relationship of some kind with another soul in thousands of lifetimes before they become your soulmate (I’m paraphrasing)1. The discussion of “past lives” was already interesting, because the girl talking about past lives was reminiscent of the life she left back in Korea. But it’s really during the guy’s visit in New York, when the three characters (guy, girl, girl’s husband) are at a bar, does it really all come together. They realize that they were just not meant to be together in this life, but maybe, in future lives, they could meet each other again, even if it is as a bird and the branch that it is sitting on.
Right before the guy gets into his cab to leave, he says “I’ll see you in the next life”. The movie ends with the girl slowly breaking into tears (and the audience along with her), as she makes her way back into her husband’s arms.
These two scenes stuck with me. For a long time. While I was sitting by myself in Yosemite (see my previous post), these scenes came flooding back and surprisingly made me feel more connected with the nature around me. I started thinking about how every relationship you have with someone, probably manifests itself in some other way in a past or future life. So maybe that branch next to me was a friend in a past life, and this was our heartfelt reunion. Maybe the squirrel that made eye contact with me for a solid two minutes is a reincarnation of my mother from three lives ago. Maybe the flower in the middle of the lake, is me.
This reminded me that I like to think of the soul as eternal. This life will end, and my next life will begin. But it is one continuous journey for my soul.
(This is a great time for me to mention “The Egg” by Andy Weir. An incredible short story converted into this beautiful, animated video by Kurzgesagt that discusses the same idea):
The Immortal Soul
I grew up learning about the concepts taught in the Bhagavad Gita. And one of the primary lessons in the Gita is that the soul is immortal.
As a man sheds his old clothes and wears new ones, a soul sheds its body at the time of death and enters a new one.
My read of this is that every living thing on this planet has an immortal all-powerful soul at their very center. It is not scientific and based on all real evidence I'm just a meat bag with some chemicals making me feel. But isn’t it empowering to think that deep in our hearts/minds/wherever, we have an immortal soul? Why then, should we restrict ourselves and our lives? Let the soul achieve what it wants to achieve, and then let it blissfully forget everything and move on to the next body, itself living an immortal journey. What am I? Just a vehicle, a medium for the soul to feel this physical world. There is a hungry soul within me, riding in my chest, watching as I go about my day. As I laugh, cry, get annoyed, get stressed, feel success, feel heartbreak, I feed the soul with new experiences. I think it just wants to see me make the most of life. And who am I to disappoint an immortal soul? I'll give it what it wants to see.
In Conclusion
I like to think that reincarnation is real, and I like to think that my life is just a chapter in the immortal soul’s eternal journey. Along this journey, it meets other souls, maybe multiple times if that bond is meant to be. This thinking is not scientific, but it makes me deeply appreciate nature, my family, my friends, and my precious time on Earth.
There is a related saying in Hindu culture revolving marriage: “Saath janam ke saathi”, which literally translates to “A friend/companion for seven lives”. It says that the bond of a married couple is so strong that it will endure over seven lifetimes.