Can people become animals in their next life?

[anotherlastchance]

I see no point in participating in society if it's just going to use me as human capital. I refuse to be exploited and used. I would actually ideally want to be a housecat rather than a human

I rather be a dog just running, barking, roll in the mud, tear some shoes apart yeah that would be awesome

 

[Forever Sleep]

Does your Uncle eat chicken? In which case- is he worried that bit of karma will catch up with him? The reason chickens are bred and kept in terrible conditions and then slaughtered is so we can eat them. Just by living, we all inflict suffering on other living beings.

But no, I don't have much belief in reincarnation. I don't think it's impossible but, I just can't get my head around why. Why would we need to be here living these lives to learn lessons? To what possible end? Who decides what kind of life you should lead?

Let's say he's right. You come back as a chicken. How do chickens then progress up the reincarnation scale? Are there very virtuous chickens out there and, very naughty ones? Do they get demoted to earth worms? How do you be an exceptional earth worm? If it's a ladder, then presumably, we all started off as animals. Or, maybe we get a brief stint at being an animal if we sucked at being a human. No wonder so many people are turning vegetarian/vegan...

But anyhow, it seems ridiculous to me. You get punished in the next life for screwing up this one. So- in that next life, you already start off at a disadvantage presumably. Plus, you can't remember any of the mistakes you made in previous lives. In fact, you don't remember your previous lives at all. How is this progress? Imagine a child who is finding it difficult to learn how to write. They fail a test before they move into the next class. So- rather than help the child, the teacher further handicaps it by insisting it learn to write with its feet and toes. If you want a creature to learn and become better- which reincarnation is presumably about, why handicap it when it reincarnates and why let it forget everything it has already learnt? Maybe that is what happens but, it doesn't make any sense to me.

If you believe in reincarnation and presumably you think you've been given an unfair lot in life- what do you suppose you're being punished for? Do you see it as your fault? Whatever you did or didn't do in your previous life? Do you relate to whoever that person was? No- because you don't remember them. Your future self likely won't remember or blame you either.

 

[untothedepths]

If I had to be reincarnated as an animal not of my choice I hope it would be a pest for some elite's estate. I hope I make them spend a lot of money trying to get rid of me and my bros.

 

[Alex Fermentopathy]

Why would the number of people/animals continually increase? Who are the "fundamental" entities that keep reincarnating?

You started from the assumption that you can only be reincarnated in the future, because that's how our physical word works. But consciousness is a separate world, so it has it's own time scale. Essentially time in our world (which, with the presence of conscious beings, is a hybrid of the physical world and the spiritual world) is two-dimensional (say, time X and time Y). So from spiritual world time (time X) your reincarnation will be obviously in the future, while from physical world time (time Y) not necessaruly so. So a person you are look at in the present quite might be a reflection of your next reincarnation.

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

Statistically, you're more likely to reincarnate into a random type of bug that you may have accidentally squashed at some point in your life than anything else.

I think direct karmic retribution is also a flawed and cruel system. Let's say I crush a mouse so in my next life I end up being a crushed mouse. Well if that's the case, somebody in my next life has to be the one to crush me meaning THAT guy will also be forced to become a crushed mouse in the next life just because of my mistake. Hell who's to say I was the original mouse crusher? Maybe that mouse I crushed deserved it but that still doesn't excuse me and so the sequence continues into infinity.

That's only one interpretation of reincarnation and karma though. Maybe we'll simply reincarnate as plankton or krill or something.

 

[Ambivalent1]

Yes

 

[damyon]

You started from the assumption that you can only be reincarnated in the future, because that's how our physical word works. But consciousness is a separate world, so it has it's own time scale. Essentially time in our world (which, with the presence of conscious beings, is a hybrid of the physical world and the spiritual world) is two-dimensional (say, time X and time Y). So from spiritual world time (time X) your reincarnation will be obviously in the future, while from physical world time (time Y) not necessaruly so. So a person you are look at in the present quite might be a reflection of your next reincarnation.

That is an interesting idea. I think I recently watched a video about it.

But where exactly do I exist? The existence of a spiritual world still doesn't answer the question of "fundamental" entities, does it?

Moreover, we can always map a 2-dimensional space into 1-dimensional space (i.e., propose a one-to-one map from (X,Y) plane to Z plane, for example, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-order_curve)

 

[cosmic-freedom]

It's believed in hinduism and buddhism that in the cycle of reincarnation,anything is better than being a human.You should be a good person and do good deeds in your past life to be born as an animal in your current life.That sort of thing.