Rebirth and the Western Buddhist - Khamkoo

3 Observational Evidence for the
Fact of Rebirth
For us, brought up in a cultural milieu decidedly hostile
to the idea of rebirth, the statements attributed to the
Buddha are unlikely on their own to instil confidence.
Perhaps, we may think, he taught that way only because
rebirth was the accepted belief at the time, but really
meant it to be interpreted as some kind of metaphor.
One's misgivings may be considerably allayed by reading
Head and Cranston's anthology,l 9 which demonstrates
the universality of the idea of "reincarnation" and
its deep roots in Western as well as Eastern thought. But
still, opinions, however reputable and widely held, are
hardly enough.
Aware of this, Buddhist pandits of medieval India and
their Tibetan successors devoted some energy to providing
proofs of rebirth, liberation and other Buddhist
doctrines by logical reasoning. Here, however, we come
upon one of the major differences between their civilisation
and ours: the supposedly rational West has learned
to mistrust logical reasoning. The Greek Sophists used it
to establish nihilist and other theses, the medieval
school-men to establish the existence of God; and now
"sophism" and "scholasticism" are used mainly as terms
of abuse. The principal propagator of the Prajfiii-piiramitiisiitras
in our time, no lover of Science, remarks: "I have
never paid much attention to logical reasoning, but prefer
direct observation," 20 with which any scientist must
agree. Kant too has pointed out that "All cognition of
things merely from pure understanding or pure reason is