Her: Hey thanks for recommending “Before Sunrise”
Me: You liked it?
Her: Loved it was more like it. The way the movie was made, the conversations… quiet engaging
Me: Yeah, i really like the philosophical undertone and the subtle romance.
Her: Yep, some of the conversations were pretty flawed though…
Me: Flawed? Which one specifically?
Her: There was one where he made an assumption that there were finite souls in the world and if rebirth was true, how can we have more humans than what we started with.
Me: Oh yeah, its pretty shocking that he ignored the other animals on earth… Dont they have a soul?
Her: But then you are assuming that the number of souls in the world are finite?
Me: I dont think the count of souls are important… What is more important is “is there a soul?” and if yes, what about Rebirth… You know, lots of Eastern religions are very interested in the cycle of birth and death.
Her: Yeah, Buddhism and Hinduism are mostly based on that belief. Something that pretty absent in all western civilizations… Take Egyptians for example, they believed in life after death… very different than rebirth.
Me: Yeah, wonder if they had an opinion about life before life?
She stares at me with those pretty eyes…
Her: The ironic thing is that all religions assume humans as the highest wrt divinity of species..
Me: Hinduism does gives same respect to some animals as humans… But most of those are also represented by human abilities… like speech and thought. I cant speak like I am an authority over the subject but from what I know humans are often treated like the final step before attaining Nirvana.
Her: Yeah, I have often heard statements like ‘you are blessed to be born a human’…
Me: Exactly… A friend of mine was reading a book on the vedas and explained to me what it said about heaven and hell. He spoke about specific punishment for each of your sins. But then he adds saying “If you engage in mindless sex and gluttony you will be reborn as a pig, coz all the pig does in its lifetime is eat and have sex”… Ofcourse he wasnt sounding so apocalyptic…
Her: (recovering from the apocalyptic announcement)Thats the point they make it seem like all animals are humans that have been punished!
Me: I get what you are saying but I was thinking about it for a while and was wondering how a system like that could run. You know humans at top and rebirth determined by your actions. There is one simple system I could think of.
Her: Go on…
Me: Lets say Nirvana is the top of the ladder, humans are one step behind it. If you are human you are a step away from getting there. But like they say it the last step is sometime the hardest… Or was it the first step
She was clearly not impressed with my attempt at a joke
Me: If you reach that step you can do either, lead a pious life and reach the destination or do sins and get demoted. Each step below is possibly a different animal… Think of it like a pyramid if you want too…
Her: So the lower you fall the longer your journey will be to the top.
Me: Yes and since most animals cannot acquire sin they will guarantee you moving back up after say, a jail term as an animal for the sins you have committed as a human.
She was looking confused
Me: Think of it like a casino. Your goal is to walk out of the place… you can walk out only if you have a minimum amount money with you. You play different tables, each table represents a body… humans, pigs, insects, lions ect. When you play at the human table its a case where you can win big and walk out… or lose big and end up on one of the other tables. The other tables are easier to win on but they can only get you till the human table again for that elusive opportunity to walk out…
Her: Interesting but dont some stories in Hindu mythology about other animals attaining nirvana
Me: (grinning) Well maybe they won the lottery
She smiles… shaking her head.
Her: So which table are we going to end up in after this one…
Me: Oh, we are walking out dear…
She stares at me in a peculiar way
Me: The waiter is going to be upset if we keep switching tables…
I think she smiled for that one…