by Keith Evans

Keith Evans of NASA Ames Research Center posted this explanation of karma and rebirth in October 1990, responding to a question about when the soul enters the body and how reincarnation works. Writing as a practitioner of Nichiren Buddhism, he drew on the Lotus Sutra, the teachings of Nichiren Daishonin (1222–1282), and the concept of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

Nichiren Buddhism represents a distinct Japanese Buddhist school that regards the Lotus Sutra as the highest teaching of the historical Buddha, and chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo as the central practice. Evans's explanation — informal but genuine — represents the view of a committed practitioner explaining his tradition's cosmology to curious newcomers on the early internet.

The post is notable for its synthesis: Evans integrates the Lotus Sutra's revelation of the Buddha's eternal life with the mechanics of karma and rebirth, and closes with an astronomical analogy that grounds the teaching in a scientific culture's frame of reference.

Karma: Shakyamuni Buddha, in the last 8 years of his life, taught the Lotus Sutra. Many thought (and he himself said so, many times) that he had gained enlightenment at age 30 under the Bodhi tree in India. In the Lotus Sutra, he revealed the length of his life — that actually he had gained enlightenment many lifetimes ago in the distant past. He had always been in the world teaching the Law. He also proclaimed that the Lotus Sutra is the highest teaching "I have preached, am preaching and will preach," and that all the other sutras are provisional.

Basically, the reality of life is life and death. Once born, everything must die. We kill plants and animals to eat. Our fingernails are dead skin. Life is eternal, beginningless and endless. We've already had so many lifetimes that we couldn't count them. But all the causes — thoughts, words, and deeds — that we made in those past lives return to us as an effect based on cause and effect. Some of these causes may not become manifest until some future life. Why are some people born into rich circumstances, or poor? It is based on previous causes. In Nichiren Shoshu, this law is called Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, as a result of Nichiren Daishonin's study of the Buddha's teachings.

In this way we choose our parents in the next life, based on the causes that are made in the present (and past) lives. When one dies, he becomes one with the law of the universe (Nam-myoho-renge-kyo). There is no spiritual realm that one goes to as spiritual and material are one.

Shakyamuni Buddha said (right before teaching the Lotus Sutra) that "all wisdom and truths come from one law," and Nichiren confirmed this by writing the "Rissho Ankoku Ron" (Securing the Peace of the Land Through the Propagation of True Buddhism) — a thesis addressed to the Emperor of Japan (1261). He said that the basic cause of all suffering and misery is belief in incorrect religious doctrines and false ideologies.

The point is when one dies not believing in the true law, one will be reborn in avichi hell. The hell is the circumstances into which one is reborn. This will last for aeons. But if one dies believing in the true law, then one gains enlightenment and is reborn instantly in good circumstances. One's rebirth is started at conception.

It's hard not to think of karma as similar to a soul by the way we talk about it, but I believe that that is an incorrect interpretation. Karma is all the causes one has made in the past.

For instance: a star explodes (dies) and is scattered throughout the solar system. At first it was just hydrogen and helium. But it created other elements, especially in its dying gasp (supernova). Eventually, due to gravity, it comes back together and forms another star (or many). This star is metal-rich as it has more than just hydrogen and helium. You could say it was "reborn." But it always existed, so how could you say that it died? This was written in analogy to human life.

The question is whether your life is latent (dead) or manifest (alive). The point is that you can't change your life (and make it better) when you're dead. Only while you are alive can you do that. So when one dies, his past lives are reviewed — "My life flashed before my eyes!" — and then your next circumstances are determined right there, and you can't change them.

Colophon

Written by Keith Evans, NAS Program, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California. Posted to soc.religion.eastern on October 16, 1990. Evans was a practitioner of Nichiren Buddhism, the Japanese school founded on the primacy of the Lotus Sutra and the practice of chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

Preserved from the Usenet UTZOO archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: [email protected]

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