First of all, why would we want to work for a more fortunate rebirth? Buddhism is not talking about aiming to be reborn in heaven as our ultimate goal and that everything there is going to be really nice and wonderful and we will have eternal happiness. That is not the reason for aiming of getting a more fortunate rebirth in Buddhism, and it is not the ultimate goal. But rather, we are working to develop ourselves to the point at which we overcome our problems and shortcomings – and not just those of this lifetime – and realize our fullest potentials, so that ultimately we can benefit everyone to the fullest degree possible. This is going to be a very long process.

Chances are that we are not going to finish this process in this lifetime. So, the spiritual path is something that we would naturally want to continue beyond this life. It is not that we are running a race and we just want to see how far we get before we drop dead; we want to reach the finish line. But, if we don’t think in terms of rebirth, then it is very easy to get quite discouraged as we become older and face our deaths, if we haven’t made terribly much progress. This is because, let’s be honest, most of us are not going to make tremendous progress in our lifetimes, because we are very busy with other things and very few of us can devote twenty-four hours every day for the rest of our life to Dharma practice. Also, when we look at how we make progress, it is never linear: it’s not that it is going to get better every day. Rather, it will always go up and down. This is natural; this is how life is, isn’t it? Some days it goes well; other days we’re in a bad mood and it doesn’t go well at all. That is going to happen all the way until we become free from samsara.

So like this, if we think in terms of rebirth, then it helps us to have a longer perspective and we don’t get so uptight that “I’m not really making fantastic progress now.” If we can continue having what Buddhism calls “precious human rebirths”, then eventually, with enough hard work, we will reach our ultimate goals of liberation and enlightenment. A precious human rebirth is one in which we have a respite from all situations in which we would have no freedom to practice the Dharma and one in which we have all the enriching factors that give us the fullest opportunity to practice. Therefore, the provisional goal we need to aim for first is ensuring that we continue to gain precious human rebirths in all our lifetimes until we become liberated beings.

[See: Traditional Stories about Life, Death, Karma and Refuge, Part 1]



Also, if we look at the teachings on “the four thoughts that turn the mind to the Dharma”, the first of these, appreciating the precious human life, emphasizes appreciating the difficulty and rarity of gaining such a birth. This not only implies that, in the future, we can take many other types of rebirth besides a precious human one and that we need to build up the causes for such a rebirth; it also implies the existence of past lives. After our immediately preceding life, we could have taken many other types of rebirth, for instance rebirth as a tiny bug. And so we need to appreciate what a wonderful opportunity we now have. It is significant, then, that rebirth is completely essential for this point about appreciating the precious human life, and that it is counted as the first thought that turns the mind to the Dharma.

[See: The Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind to the Dharma]



Furthermore, thinking of continuing to gain further precious human lives in the future is very important for tantra as well; otherwise, there’s the danger of self-deception while practicing tantra. The highest class of tantra, anuttarayoga tantra, teaches that it is possible to gain enlightenment in this lifetime. A lot of people are very attracted to that because they think, “Now I don’t even have to consider rebirth because that’s irrelevant in tantra: there’s enlightenment in one lifetime. Great!” This is a big mistake, because even following the most advanced practices of tantra, the chances are that we’re not going to reach enlightenment in this lifetime. It is very, very rare – possible, but incredibly rare.

So, as in sutra practice, if we have the understanding of rebirth, we don’t get discouraged. We think instead, “I’m going to try for enlightenment in this lifetime. But if I don’t reach it in this lifetime, that is not the end of the world, there is rebirth; I’ll keep on trying next time.” As the saying goes, and this actually comes from pre-Buddhist Indian Upanishadic thought: “There is no loss of a beginning once made.” Do you follow that? If we’ve made a beginning, if we’ve made a start of something, it’s not going to get lost, because we’ll be able to continue in future lives. This is general Indian thinking, not just Buddhist, and it’s quite relevant here.

Also, one of the main features of anuttarayoga tantra is purifying, in the sense of ridding ourselves, of samsaric death, bardo and rebirth. Bardo is the in-between state between death and rebirth. Anuttarayoga gives a very detailed analysis of how that process works and it entails practices that imitate death, bardo and rebirth. If we don’t actually believe that rebirth takes place, why would we want to practice purifying death, bardo and rebirth? What in the world are we doing? Without conviction in rebirth, the whole anuttarayoga tantra practice becomes a game. So, all of that is one point.