Samsara is to see fault in others.

Tilopa

The Tibetan Buddhists say that they know how to be reincarnated and mastered this in order to continue teaching and helping others. This is sort of the same idea as the Bodhisattva ideal in Zen and Chan Buddhism However this sort of self mastery can only be attain by a few.

Padmasambhava, also known as Guru Rinpoche, was an 8th-century Indian Buddhist master who taught how to do this, and wrote the Tibetan Book of the dead. A book about how to guide the spirit through the various destinations after death. (This is viewed differently in Theravada Buddhism  for a few reasons)

Tibetans also mastered many other types of super natural abilities though their various types of yoga, such as Tummo (kundalini fire and wind elements) and Trul Khor.  Trul khor is like Taoist nei gong, or qi gung to help open up the pathways and use the chakras to attain samadhi, dream yoga and more.

(Similarly, Theravada even has an unorthodox  school that uses the chakras the same way).

Milarepa was an expert in these practices and lived in a cave and on stinging nettles until his skin and hair turned green and attained full enlightenment (paccekka buddha) or at least anagami, (third stage) with them.

The Tibetans say that they are very advanced at helping the lay practitioners, or if you want to come back to this human realm and so on. So you really have to know what you want and many realms to be born in to.

VEDANTA

The Vedantains speak of three types of karma: prarabdha karma, sanchita karma, and Agami Karmas are current actions.

Prarabdha Karma is a portion of sanchita karma, which is a collection of past karmas. According to Sri Swami Sivananda, “Prarabdha is that portion of the past karma which is responsible for the present body. That portion of the sanchita karma which influences human life in the present incarnation is called prarabdha. It is ripe for reaping. It cannot be avoided or changed. It is only exhausted by being experienced. You pay your past debts. Prarabdha karma is that which has begun and is actually bearing fruit. It is selected out of the mass of the sanchita karma.”[5]

This is the karma that gives you a certain type of physical body appearance and functionality, ugly or beautiful, short or tall, gifted or not so gifted, as well as your type of mind set, volition, tendencies, and inclinations. Prarabdha karma may be difficult to change, however not impossible as in the case of the Buddha, who had strong prarabdha karma to be a king but used his will to renounce and overcome this. So you don’t have to sit back and be passive and take a fatalistic standpoint. Instead you can take the right actions to change your lot. This can be done only to a degree depending on other factors as well, including environmental, social, and economical.

An example of this in the Buddhist suttas  was Angulimala, a ruthless serial killer who had terrible karma but who was redeemed by his conversion to Buddhism. This illustrates the redemptive power of the Buddha's teaching. However, resentful people knew what he had done and could not forget that he was responsible for the deaths of their loved ones. They attacked him with sticks and stones as he walked for alms with a bleeding head. The Buddha instructed Angulimala to bear this karmic retribution and torment with equanimity. He told him that he was experiencing the fruits of the karma now, which would otherwise have condemned him to hell in the future. Even though he was an arahant, he still had to endure this prarabdha karma, as they say in Vedanta, of others’ actions against him.

The purpose of the prarabdha karma theory is usually to explain the results of an action. For example, when in spite of one’s best intentions and efforts, if the goals or the results one aimed for could not be achieved, it can be attributed to destiny or prarabdha karma. This can be useful in relieving the suffering resulting from not knowing the exact or hidden cause as to why things are not going your way or as planned. So anyone, such as Job in the Old Testament, who endured unfair loss, could put this down as prarabdha karma. Hence you can’t change what has already happened, but you can affect the blossoming of prardbha karma by your present actions and free will.

Basically, from the point of awareness, all karmas or samskaras are forms of subtle energy/consciousness, like tendencies, not a full personality, but rather particles or frames of these karmic imprints/memories like a frozen film still. This may explain why two identical twins having the same physical features, the same education, growing up in the exact same environment, even sharing the same friends, yet still have distinctly different personalities and vastly different interests and tendencies, aversions, and desires. How could this be and what is the cause of this? The reason being is that we are so much more than just biological DNA. One theory is that when a person dies, the physical body returns to the earth and is recycled. The ethereal subtle body, which creates karmic imprints, is also recycled, because energy cannot be destroyed; it just changes form, the way gas turns into a liquid or water into ice or the way air carries an aroma. Karmic impressions are much more subtle than gas, but similar in some ways because they are a form of fuel for the mind to burn. Their only escape is when the flame stops burning because there is no more fuel for it to burn.

So if someone still hasn’t exhausted all of their vasanas or experienced all of them at the point of death, then they are in for a rude awakening. Their fall from grace will result in being re-birthed to start all over, again and again, until they finally get it right.

This is why the Buddha said that taking the right steps and the right form of action, meaning volition, intention, and practice can result in final liberation from the wheel of samsara. For example, if you don’t trust a teacher, (not trusting is a form of mind action, or citta karma), you are not going to listen to them. Listening or not is also an action. Closing your ears or turning away is an action. If you ‘choose’ to not to listen to them, then how are you going to hear the teachings that can result in wisdom, insight, or knowledge?

Upon closer look, you will see that all knowledge is actually the end result of taking all sorts of previous actions that end up in knowledge, such as going to kindergarten, then primary school, middle school, high school, college, post-graduate college, and so on. Each is a step that leads to higher knowledge. However many try and jump to the very last stage without undergoing the other steps. This can result in a serious wrong view, a misunderstanding, which can lead to all sorts of problems, as evidenced every day by Neo-Advaita teachers.

This may be a reason why many have a problem with attaining samadhi in meditation since some of these teachers continue to engage in sexual activity. Some explain it by saying that you can still have sex, even after you have attained moksha. They say it’s a ‘paradox’ that you can be free and still indulge in sex, or anything else for that matter, be it drugs, alcohol, gambling, or prostitution; that any ‘agami karma’ (the present action you take after self-realization) will not produce results in the form of merit or demerit.

Some Advaita teachers say that your samcita karma, or the accumulated karma from previous lives, is entirely wiped out, in the same way Christians say that all of your sins are forgiven if you believe in Christ dying on the cross for your sins.

They say only the prarabdha karma, the karma that has begun and is actually bearing fruit, meaning the effects of past actions that have given rise to the present body, do not get wiped out with self-realization but have to be exhausted only by being experienced. So when this body ceases, so does all the prarabdha karma with it, and other karmas as well. Thus, technically, once someone is ‘self-realized,’ they don’t have to worry any longer about any actions that they take from then on.

This is why traditional Vedantins say that a jnani, meaning a knower, sage, or a realized person, is also liberated from all the rules and regulations, from all codes of ethical, religious, and social conduct; the jnani is a law unto himself, and there is no knowing what he does and does not do. However, even though this may be reality on an absolute level, on a conventional level, this is not exactly how it is, as evidenced in the case of Sri Atmananda Krishna Menon.

After John Levy’s self-realization, [6]John bought Atmananda Krishna Menon a house. Krishna Menon didn’t want to pay taxes to the Indian government for this gift, so he went to court saying that he was a ‘liberated soul,’ and so was not a person and should not pay taxes. The judge ruled against him and he had to pay taxes like everyone else; meaning his conventional mind/body complex is still under the law of the land as well as the law of karma, realized soul or not.

This is also the fundamental difference with Theravada Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. Vedanta states that once one has the ‘knowledge,’ the prarabdha karma will unwind or fall away by being experienced or exhausted in this lifetime alone. Then at death one becomes completely free, or what is known as a videhamukta.

As soon as the prarabdha is fully exhausted, the jivanmukta attains the state of videhamukti, just as the ether in the pot becomes one with the universal ether when the pot is broken. In videhamukti, the world entirely vanishes from the vision of a sage.

A videhamukta is one for whom this world does not appear.  He delights in his own self-luminous nature. His bliss is beyond the reach of speech. He is atita, meaning gone or transcendent.

However, what may be the problem for some is the understanding of what a jivanmukta truly is. Swami Sivananda says: “The jivanmukta roams about happily in this world, as he is free from the three kinds of fevers. He is free from all sorts of attachment and vasanas. He is absolutely free from raga-dvesha  (passion) He is established in right conduct. He is full of virtuous qualities. He does not feel, ‘I am the actor, I am the enjoyer.’ He has a very large heart.”[7]

They say that if someone is this pure, on both an absolute and a relative conventional level (the jiva level), then this person owill have no rebirth. ( Buddhism says you also need to have a right view)

The problem we have these days, however, is that most out there are not anywhere near close to this, nor are they full of virtuous qualities or right conduct. Many still behave like animals but expect not to be re-birthed as one. It is the same as expecting a dog or a jackrabbit also to attain nirvana. This makes no logical sense at all. A dog may also believe it’s not the doer/enjoyer. A dog is even less egocentric, less judgmental, and more loving than a human in many instances, but this doesn’t help

THERAVADA BUDDHISM

 ‘Samsara’ means the wheel of existence and is often depicted in the Buddhist traditions as a monster-like figure known as ‘the lord of death’ or Yama. Yama holds a wheel of humans, animals, ghost and devas, all going around in circles. This is the eternal cycle of birth, suffering, death, and rebirth. Legend has it that the Buddha himself designed this picture to help others.

Step 2. This is followed by a relinkling consciousness, or a patisandhi citta, a rebirth consciousness that enters a new life form of some kind of another, in one realm or another depending on the type of consciousness that it is wholesome, unwholesome, or a mixture of both. To use a simile of a relay race where one person passes on the baton to the next, or how the Olympic torch is passed on from one runner to the next, its sort of like this. Each life/consciousness links to another in an endless cycle, a daisy chain, one life could be animal, the next human, or heaven or hell and is driven by greed, aversion and delusion.

Step 3. The immediate consciousness that arises after the relinking consciousness in the brand new life, is of the same type of bhavanga or sub-consciousness in the previous life(s) The bhavanga is like the subconscious that passes over in to a new life. So no one is born a clean slate, but comes into existence with subconscious baggage and habits, tendencies, proclivities, wholesome and unwholesome, created by ones karma or actions, the imprints of thoughts, speech and physical actions. Karma is what causes existence/birth.

There is also no type of entity or metaphysical judge in the sky that determines where one will end up next. Nature or the law of dhamma like gravity has its own built in way of sorting out where one type of consciousness will go, the wheat is separated from the chaff so to speak, naturally, effortlessly and automatically.

The only way of controlling this is being aware of this process while being alive, and practicing a certain way in order to cultivate ones  mind, make it more wholesome as to be ready for the time of death, to gain a good rebirth. That all we can do unless we become enlightened.

According to the Buddha, there are thirty-one cosmological/psychological planes of existence that one may be re-birthed into. They range from the highest bliss in the heavenly realms to the lowest of the hell realms. In reality, many will end up in all of the following realms:

A: The four immaterial realms: The inhabitants of the immaterial realms are possessed entirely of mind, having no physical body. These equate with and can be known through the immaterial jhanas.

B: The Fine-Material Realms: The sixteen planes correspond to the attainment of the four material jhanas. Some of these realms are only accessible to non-returners, beings who are reborn here where they attain arhat-ship.

C: The Sensuous Realms: These are the realm of devas who enjoy sensual pleasures created. There are six of these realms.

D: The Human Being Realm: You are here. Make the most of it. :-)

There are only four lower realms lower than the human realm. Twenty-six realms are higher than the human realm, but unfortunately because of the times that we live in, many will end up in the lower realms.

E: States of Deprivation Realm: The demons that live here are engaged in relentless battles with each other.

F: Hungry Ghosts Realm: This is where the ghosts and unhappy spirits wander, searching in vain for sensual fulfillment.

G: Animal Realm: This realm includes all the non-human forms of life, such as insects, fish, birds, worms, etc. This also explains why some people literally behave like animals and cannot control their impulses, desires instincts, reason being they were animals in previous lives.

H: Hell Realm: This is a realm of unimaginable suffering and anguish, but which should not be confused with the ‘eternal hell’ of other religions, since one's time spent here is temporary.

Many people view being human as somehow on a higher level than being an animal, but again sometimes we behave much worse than most animals do. Even so, these people still expect to be born into a heavenly deva realm of existence with a light body or wings of some kind, flying around the ether having all their needs met. The reality is that if you have a slippery, slimy, or filthy mind-stream, you can just imagine what your next birth will be, most likely where this type of mind-stream will be best suited. The same applies to those who are greedy or hoard wealth while others are poor around them. As a result of this behavior in the human realm will again be some type of greedy and hungry ghost like consciousness that corresponds with their type of consciousness in their next life.

There is  no judgment at all, its simply the way the laws of nature processes consciousness the way that birds of a feather flock together.

The Buddha was born into a culture that believed in reincarnation, yet he himself never believed in it per se. As far as Theravada Buddhism is concerned, there is a very important distinction between rebirth and reincarnation. Buddha never spoke about reincarnation in the way it’s spoken of in the Hindu traditions of his time. Where it becomes nebulous is that for most people the mechanisms of karma in their lifetime (why and where the effect of their actions comes from) may be intellectually understood but never completely known or seen, because trying to trace every single cause and effect is virtually impossible. Why do bad things happen to good people, such as in the Book of Job, which portrays the story of all of Job’s losses and what God said to him about it being too unfathomable for the human mind to comprehend? Thus karma, in the same way, also remains much of a mystery, unless you have attained abhiññā, the super natural ‘direct knowledges,’ or you have had a profound insight into past lives.

It is said that Dipa Ma was able to attain these direct knowledge’s and more. Through jhana she was even able to travel back to the time of the Buddha and hear and see him speak.

Author Amy Schmidt writes of Dipa Ma: “Dipa Ma mastered all the siddhis and dropped them completely thereafter, just as Arahant Moggalana abjured all his siddhis just before his demise, with the blessings of the Buddha. She was trained in dematerialization of the body, bilocation, cooking food by making the fire element come out of her hands, converting the earth element into the water element and the air element into the earth element, mind-reading, visiting the celestial as well as the nether realms, time travel, and knowledge of past lives etc. Dipa Ma was quite detached and playful about performing the siddhis and would sometimes nonchalantly arrive for her interviews with Anagarika Munindra by walking through a wall or materializing out of thin air.”[1]

You have to be very careful with experiences or insights of this nature, even in meditation. It can be tricky trying to connect the dots where there aren’t any. The mind has a way of doing this, fabricating and reading too much into things that are not there.

For instance, many people believe that they were Cleopatra or Napoleon Bonaparte or an Indian prince or princess in a past life, but how many do you hear saying that they were a leper or a prostitute, a murderer or a beggar or a rabid dog?

Let’s say that you existed before in some form or another. The reality of this is that you were not even a human in all your past lives. The mathematical odds are that in many of them you were some kind of animal or insect or a virus or bacteria, since insects and animals outnumbered us in billions or even trillions to one. If you were human in many of these lifetimes, out of all the people that you could have been, the chances of you being a king, a princess, or someone famous, are even slimmer. The odds are that you were an ordinary run-of-the-mill person.

However if you really want to know beyond a shadow of a doubt there are ways of knowing and seeing all your past lives if you can attain jhana, but its not so easy and need to be mentally prepared for experiencing what you may not want to see or know.  If not ready, it can be very disturbing and cause more confusion. Some things you are better off not knowing (ugly things about your previous self) and  you may need someone to guide you through this.

Dr Ian Stevenson also spent his entire life researching many thousands of cases of past life experiences.

As far as looking at karma in terms of DNA or genetics encoded in the hard drives of our computers (in our physical and psychological makeup), if we trace this back, some say that every single one of us has the same roots of DNA dating back to the indigenous hunter-gatherer tribes of Africa.

Some anthropologists and Darwinists  claim that Homo sapiens derived from a more primitive species in Africa known as Homo rhodesiensis (Rhodesian man) dating back 600,000 to 1,600,000 years ago.[2] Our features were that of the ‘African Neanderthal’ with a large nose and thick protruding brow ridges. Homo rhodesiensis derived from Homo sapiens idaltu, and some theorize that these early humans derived from apes, apes from other creatures, and so on. In any case, that means we all have the exact same roots, as we do emotions, feelings, sensations, and even the same thoughts of fight or flight. Even apes needed to survive, so they would have various types of aversions and cravings. These apes supposedly evolved from their predecessor mammals millions of years before. The mammals and dinosaurs date back to the Jurassic period that resembled lizards, alligators, and reptilian creatures. Before that were millions of previous generations of birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects, fish, algae, and plant matter. Even prior to this were single-cell bacterial life forms that split and divided and tried to somehow survive. Ironically, survival is a futile game since what is born, at some point, will age, get sick, die, and be reborn again in samsara. (See Chapter 12 on God and the Agganna Sutta in regards to Buddhist cosmology and the origination story, which is quite different from Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.)