Curious Similarity between Buddhism and Particle Physics

第3話 File3. Real Meaning of “Reincarnation”

Generally speaking Reincarnation is regarded as “Reborn” or “Circulation of Sole”. Everybody is succeeding his or her pre-world life and influenced by it. But it has religious or supernatural tone and not scientific. We should not believe in such occultism.

The meaning of Reincarnation for Buddhism is a little different from that of other religions. “DAIJYO” namely “Mahayana” is the basic spirit of Buddhism, which means “Big Ship” to save everything. Though it is similar to “Noah’s Ark” for Christianity, Mahayana would save not only humans but other all things, for example, beasts, insects, plants, including even nonorganic stones. How shall we interpret this meaning?

According to the Astrophysics our Universe is expected to be over more than 100 billion years later. Many astronomers expects several scenarios for ending, but it will come true without failure and not avoidable. Even the Noah’s Ark could not save anything, if the Earth is destroyed or the Universe is finished.

On the other hand Buddhism thinks even the Universe will reincarnate. According to the Ancient Indian Philosophy which might be the deep origin of Buddhism, when “Atman” is separated from “Brahman”, the Ego will be born and Reincarnation will start. “Atman” means Ego or Individual and Brahman means Universe. The Philosophy also says Atman and Brahman are essentially equivalent and could be united. And the Prophecy expects when Atman unites with Brahman a very big explosion will occur like Big Bann.

This explanation seems exactly same as “Pair Production and Pair Annihilation” of Quantum Theory. The Theory explains that matters and anti-matters unite and annihilate each other and change to enormous energy and possibly at any time in the distant future energy will change to matters and anti-matters again. Like a pendulum the Universe itself will reincarnate. Therefore we do not need to worry about the End.