All of Me

The transmigration of souls is usually associated with reincarnation. In the film, All of Me (1984), at the moment of death, a person’s soul can be put “into” another person who is alive such that both people “co-exist” consciously and can control the same body. The comedy is at its best when Steve Martin, who plays Roger Cobb, into whose body the dying millionaire, Edwina Cutwater, is transferred, physically enacts an alternating struggle between Edwina’s feminine movements and Roger’s masculine movements. Martin’s physical talent is amazing. The tension within Roger’s (and Edwina’s) shared body is gradually resolved as the two “souls” become friends—attesting to the underlying goodness of Edwina in stark distinction to the sordid character of Terry Hoskins, who has falsely agreed to let Edwina share her body—two souls and one body—instead of Roger’s in exchange for $20 million. It is the goodness of Roger and the unfolding of Edwina’s goodness up against the absolute badness of Terry that underlies the film’s narrative. In the end, the good win out, and Terry’s soul is put into a horse when Edwina’s soul is transferred by a Hindu guru from Roger to Terry. With Terry’s body all to herself, Edwina is free to become romantically involved with Roger. The good souls win and the squalid one is put in a horse. The upshot is that justice does indeed apply to souls.

The full essay is at "All of Me."

The Master: A Religious Cult

In The Master (2012), Lancaster Dodd tells Freddie Quell, the man whom Lancaster wants to cure of alcoholism and mental illness, “I am a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher, but above all I am a man.” Given Lancaster’s presumption of infallibility concerning knowing that every human soul has been reincarnated even for trillions of years, the end of the line would more fittingly be, “I am a man above all (others).” With regard to being a physician, Lancaster comes up short because he underestimates the medical severity of Freddie’s alcoholism and his likely psychotic mental illness. Upon being released from jail, Lancaster should realize that Freddie’s rage and temper-tantrum in his jail cell evince mental illness of such severity that it is lunacy to suppose that the patient can be cured by walking back and forth in a room between a wall and a window and being sure to touch both, and by saying “Doris” over and over again in a dyad with Lancaster’s new son-in-law. In fact, Lancaster actually encourages Freddie’s alcoholism by asking that Freddie continue to make his “potion,” which contains paint-thinner filtered through bread. It is not Lancaster, but his wife, Peggy, who puts a stop to the “booze.” From her sanity, both that of Freddie and Lancaster can be questioned. That Lancaster is the Master of a religious cult, or “movement,” renders his mental state particularly problematic.

The full essay is at "The Master."

On Brahman Becoming Embodied as Krishna

In the Bhagavad-Gita, the personal deity Krishna explains to Arjuna to process by which Krishna becomes embodied. This raises the question, what is Krishna unembodied? Although one candidate is Brahma, the personal god of creation, I contend that the answer is Brahman, which is being, consciousness, and bliss. Brahman is unmanifest, so how is it that being itself, even if conscious, can have a will and a creative agency, or ability, to manifest as a personal deity? The notion of Brahman is completely foreign to the Abrahamic religions, wherein a personal deity is the creator and has perfect being. So it is worth thinking about how, and even whether, a personal deity like Krishna can manifest by the will and creative force (maya) of Brahman.

“Although [I am] unborn, the immutable Self, [and] although being the Lord of [all] beings—[yet] by governing My own nature (prakriti), I come-to-be through the creative-power (maya) of Myself.”[1] (Gita 4.6) Is “come-to-be” a good translation of smbhavamy? If so, the prime facie implication is that “the immutable Self,” which is “unborn” and “the Lord of [all] beings,” has no being (i.e., existence), for it comes-to-be when it is embodied, or born. Shakara describes brahman as unmanifest and immutable being, so there seems to be a contradiction, although Lord of [all] creatures (which can perhaps be finessed as “beings”) is used in the Upanishads for Brahma.

As described by Malinar, Krishna “makes the power of creation (prakrti 4.6) act according to his will and produce an outward form for him: ‘Although I am unborn and imperishable and the Lord of creatures indeed, I transform nature who is mine and take birth through (or as) an appearance of myself. The creative process described in this verse draws on two concepts: (1) prakrti, nature, the agent of creation according to Samkhya; and (2) maya, the exceptional power and capacity of gods and other beings to produce forms and disguises for themselves.”[2] Unlike the Feuersteins, Malinar uses “creatures” rather than “beings.” Also, prakriti is “the agent of creation” and maya pertains to “gods and other beings.” All this inclines me to conclude that Brahma rather than Brahman is the unembodied referent.

In Warrier’s translation of Shakara’s commentary, the verse as: “Though unborn and though the immutable Self and the Lord of all living beings, resorting to My power of becoming, through My Maya, I take birth.”[3] The use of the word, “becoming,” rather than coming-into-being obviates problematic implication of no unembodied existence. Furthermore, the problematic notion that the unembodied Krishna is Brahma, another personal deity, can be tossed out because the unembodied Krishna is “the master of all beings from Brahma down to a tuft of grass”.[4] Also, “My power of becoming is all-pervasive,” which also fits with the nature of the unmanifest Brahman becoming manifest.[5] It is not as though unmanifest Brahman does not exist; in fact, it is being (as well as consciousness and bliss, though Shankara denies the latter attribute). But how can being and even consciousness itself have a will and “cognitive power,” which “never wanes”?[6] These attributes are more fitting for a personal deity, such as Brahma and an embodied Krishna. I would expect Shankara to have done so, and regard them as maya rather than having the reality of being.

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1. Gita 4.6. Georg and Brenda Feuerstein, The Bhagavad-Gita: A New Translation (Boston: Shambhala, 2011), p. 137.
2. Angelika Malinar, The Bhagavadgita: Doctrines and Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 95.
3. Shankara, Srimad Bhagavad Gita Bhasya of Sri Samkaracarya. Trans. A. G. Warrier (Madras, IN: Sri Ramakrishna Math), pp. 137-38.
4. Ibid., p. 138.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.

The Dalai Lama’s Reincarnation: By Government Fiat?

Reincarnation is a difficult gig for Buddhists. Being reborn for yet another life is not a good thing; bad karma (i.e., residue from bad choices in life) keeps a soul on the wheel of samsara. Because life-after-life involves suffering, a Buddhist strives for Nirvana, or enlightenment, which releases a soul from the cycle of being reborn yet again. Reincarnation is a difficult gig for Buddhists also because unlike Hinduism, Buddhism denies the very existence of a soul (atman) as an entity. How, then, can something that does not exist go on to be re-clothed in another body for another life? Yet another problem for the devout Buddhist concerns government officials who claim that they can decide whether a certain soul reincarnates, and if so, into which body. In 2014, for example, the Chinese government made it known that it would pick the next reincarnated Dalai Lama—the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists.

In March 2015, Chinese officials declared that the Dalai Lama would indeed reincarnate in spite of the fact that he had announced that his soul might not reincarnate. Zhu Weiqun, a Communist Party official, told reporters that the Dalai Lama had no say over whether he would reincarnate.[1] Zhu said it would be for the Chinese government to decide. “Decision-making power over the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, and over the end or survival of this lineage, resides in the central government of China,” he said in his capacity as leader of the ethnic and religious affairs committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.[2] The decision-making power would of course be used to maintain control over the Tibetan region of China. In other words, Chinese government officials intended to install a puppet Dalai Lama after the current Dalai Lama passes; he in turn was considering not reincarnating so the government could not do so. The decision, he said, “is up to the Tibetan people.”[3] In short, the doctrine of reincarnation was at the center of a control battle between a government and a religious leader.

For a government to make such a decision and even claim the ability to find the reincarnated person after the then-current Dalai Lama’s death necessarily involves brazen presumption. Nevertheless, presumptuousness is also in the Dalai Lama’s assumption that whether he reincarnates is up to him or the Tibetan people. Implicit in the assumption is the belief that a person can know one’s own karma. Since the Buddha was aware when he was enlightened, however, the Dalai Lama could have stated that he had become enlightened and would not, therefore, reincarnate. Absent enlightenment, in other words, knowledge of what will happen after death is faulty at best. I must conclude that both Zhu and the Dalai Lama were taking religious liberties for the sake of achieving and maintaining control of an institution, the Dalai Lama. Buddhist enlightenment, in contrast, is a letting go of such a desire, as well as the suffering that undergirds it. From the perspective of a soul between bodies, what would it matter what is going on back here?  A soul in the process of transmigration would presumably be carried on by its own past karmic residue rather than internally-directed forward so as to maintain control among the living.

In short, this case demonstrates that both government and institutional religion can over-reach. From a governmental standpoint, encroaching onto the religious domain is fraught with competency issues as well as a rather blatant category mistake. From the perspective of a religious functionary such as the Dalai Lama, the challenge involves not getting suckered into a government’s obsession—that of control—at the expense of the religious aims, such as enlightenment (i.e., not suffering anymore). In fact, that the Buddha’s orientation to eliminating suffering had been dwarfed by a reincarnation-metaphysic is itself problematic, for that metaphysic can allow for considerable clutching, and thus suffering. For the Dalai Lama to let go, and thus be free of the suffering that prompts a desire to maintain control and even over-reach, he would have to transcend reincarnation and even his belief that he has a soul. Ultimately, he would need to transcend his own institutional religion; it would not even make sense for him to say that he would or would not reincarnate! 

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1. Chris Buckley, “Feud with Dalai Lama Spills into the Afterlife,” The New York Times, March 12, 2015.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.