The Best Kind of Reincarnation

Buddhists believe being reincarnated as a human being is highly desirable. This is not because human beings are are the highest level of creation; the opposite of the flea in a hippo's backside. In fact human beings occupy the fifth of 31 levels of existence, far below the gods who occupy levels which can only be accessed by the most brilliant of human meditators. Nor is it because there's some likelihood to it - in fact the opposite is the case, the fear of returning as an animal or a ghost or worse is at least partly because it seems quite probable.

The human level is desirable because it combines rational thought and the potential for achieving enlightenment with the suffering and mortality that will compel us to do it. It offers a combination of intelligence, insight and motivation that is not available to the gods whose lives are so long and free from pain that leaving the cycle of rebirth is virtually impossible.

I once argued with a friend that happiness was too readily considered all important and all desirable today. The justification for any activity or life plan is that <<it will make me happy>> Books are written on how to achieve it, those with it are winners, those without losers. It is a deeply individualistic, focused on the purchase of products and services that immediately grant us our desires.

She told me <<if you really think that, you've never been truly unhappy>>

Of course this is true. Happiness might be ephemeral, worshipped - even fetishised - to the point where other goals are almost completely disregarded, but its inverse is something we must all fight against. But it is a fight we are destined to lose; all human lives are marked by light and dark. An ethic built on pursuing happiness is doomed to failure and, given that, perhaps we should find what it is about unhappiness that drives us to make positive changes. The struggle to avoid unhappiness, to find what it is that makes life worth living, is the positive side effect of the hellishness of misery. This isn't much comfort to the miserable, none perhaps, but its a pleasant thought that were we offered a future life as a god we might do well not to choose it.