REINCARNATION IN VEDANTA

According to the Hindu sage Adi Shankaracharya, the world - as we ordinarily understand it - is like a dream, fleeting and illusory. To be trapped in samsara (the rounds of birth and death) is the result of our ignorance of the true nature of our existence. It is ignorance (avidya) of one's true self (Atman) that leads to ego-consciousness, grounding one in desire and a perpetual chain of reincarnation. The idea is intricately linked to action (karma), a concept first recorded in the Upanishads. Every action has a reaction and the force determines one's next incarnation. One is reborn through desire: a person desires to be born because he or she wants to enjoy a body, which, it so happens, can never bring deep, lasting happiness or peace (ānanda). After many births every person becomes dissatisfied and begins to seek higher forms of happiness through spiritual experience. When, after spiritual practice (sādhanā), a person realizes--by intuitive insight as opposed to merely intellectual understanding--that the true self is the immortal soul (Atman) rather than the body, or the ego, all desires for the pleasures of the world, all wanting to have this, to do that, or to be that, vanish. Worldly pleasures and ambitions seem insipid compared to spiritual ānanda. When all desire has vanished the person will not be born again. When the cycle of rebirth thus comes to an end, a person is said to have attained liberation (moksha). All schools agree that moksha implies the cessation of worldly desires and freedom from the cycle of birth and death, though the ultimate end differs among them. Followers of the Advaita Vedanta school believe that they will spend eternity absorbed in the perfect peace that comes with the realization that all existence is One Brahman with which the soul is identical. Dvaita schools, which do not believe that Brahman and Atman are one but are two distinct entities, perform worship (bhakti) with the goal of spending eternity in a spiritual world or heaven (loka) in the blessed company of Vishnu, i.e. Brahman.