Lil Cookie Pie
I'm just wondering about reincarnation a little..
Say if someone gets born into the animal kingdom, I know it's about staying there till your evil kamma exhausts, but what happens after that? When it exhausts does that mean death again, or?
Thanks in advance~!
The Buddhist literature is varied in its views of rebirth in the animal kingdom. I lean toward the view that the karma that leads to such rebirth tends to be of the negative type (though I wouldn't say "evil"), though the predominate characteristic that leads to the state is that of spiritual Ignorance (basic view held in a popular version of the Tibetan Book of the Dead). Otherwise, there is considerable karmic overlap with the human realm, with differences largely in degree than in kind.
My feeling is that rebirth as a human from that of "lower" animals largely relies on "chance" and/or the erasure of negative karma particular to the animal existences (human rebirth is regarded as "rare and precious" in the Buddhist scriptures). Basically, once reborn in lower animal form, one's mind-stream would likely remain in one animal form or another for hundreds to millions of lifetimes (as animals have little opportunity to accumulate appreciative positive karma like humans can)
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