Edit: Goddamnit will one of you please comprehend my question and give a relevant response.
I didn’t ask whether or not you think souls are real or what you think about Buddha
This is not a creative writing prompt nor a place for you to pontificate your religious ponderings! 🙄
I know your looking for a straight answer, but questions like this don’t really have satisfactory answers due to them not being scientific questions. The definition of “best life” will be fundimentally different for everyone and the actual best life for each person will be consequently unique. You might define your best life as having lots of money or cars, while I define mine as acquiring and sharing knowledge and skills. Neither life is superior, just yours might suck for me and mine might seem tedious to you.
That being said, given hypothetically infinite time, then everyone would logically get to live their defined best life at some point. However, because time has a definitive beginning (at least as we currently understand it) and is therefore not infinite, we would never be able to empirically know if we had reached peak life experience or if one of the infinite possibilities that never happened would have been better.
Seconding this. “Best life” is highly subjective. My dad, for example, was a very simple man (simple in a positive way, for the record). Sure, looking at cool cars were neat and all, but the happiest I ever saw him was when he was sitting on the balcony of the vacation home in the norwegian mountains, as a break from everyday life. His “best life possible” would probably be filled with days like that.
I, on the other hand, would probably want something more. Sure, it was nice and all, but I get bored too easily, to the point where I brought my PC up there in the 90’s so I could study Turbo Padcal, and bringing tech back then was pretty much considered sacrilege. I have yet to find out what is considered my “best life possible”. I just hope my kids will one day be able to see me as truly happy.
I thinks ultimately a massive waste of time to chase the dragon of a “best life”, it’s neigh unattainable and you’ll never know if you’ve reached it or not. Instead, focus on finding your own personal Norwegian balcony and fully enjoy those brief moments for what they truly are. Though I’ll be the first to admit that the last part can be really fucking hard sometimes.
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Ahh, I remember when I posted this.
Egg Theory
Love that short story
That would also imply everyone gets to live the very worst life imaginable too
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I’m atheist so my understanding may be slightly off, but from what I’ve gathered. Reincarnation is a bad thing. Reaching enlightenment is the end goal and breaks the process of Reincarnation. The goal is not a perfect life. It’s breaking the cycle.
In Buddhism, yes.
For Hindus, well, it’s complicated.
For other people who happen to believe in reincarnation?
That would be anybodys guess, I guess.I have also heard buddhist view of reincarnation as simply the act of identifying with yourself in each new moment. Since enlightenment involves disillusionment with self, this is how enlightenment stops the process of reincarnation.
I think it depends on what religion we’re talking about. OP didn’t specify one so, in general, if there was an actual process that put “you” into another body, assuming it’s human, then would it be random or “good?” Theoretically, life is what you make of it, so no “good” is really guaranteed if you mess it up. But starting out with more options than another person would give you an advantage.
I think if it was real, it would be random. Like, you die and you pop into whatever baby was next in line and that’s the gamble.
Of course, none of that is real. There is no god, no afterlife, nothing but atoms in an amazingly random configuration to produce “life,” as we know it.
I think this is correct. Had a friend ages ago who was Buddhist and I remember her saying something like the best thing to be reincarnated as was a butterfly because their lives are so short and that reincarnation was undesirable because enlightenment was the real goal. If you attained enlightenment you won the game, so to speak.
I don’t think there is a single best life. No one’s life is perfect, and there is certainly a lot of bad luck that a single person can experience. Everyone lives their own life. Sometimes it’s a wonderful adventure, sometimes on easy mode, sometimes life sucks and you have few if any choices to change it. Reincarnation is just pressing play, again.
How will you know if this life is better, it not as if you know right know, so how will you tell? Don’t overthink, live! PS: i do not believe
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Boiling it down to its bare essentials, I think the question is really whether or not it’s plausible to claim that getting potentially unlimited resets, but still tracking each entity from a finite pool, with the ideal goal of any one given entity changing on each reset in a non-deterministic way, there would eventually come a state, in which each and every single entity has, at some point, encountered their then active ideal goal.
If we don’t track the entities and/or the pool is not finite, then I would say it’s simply impossible. But even then there are boundaries and variables that need further defining.
But if we assume the initial scenario I described, then sure, I think it is inevitable that a finite set of beings will eventually have all experienced their ideal goal, at some point, assuming the goals are, too, finite. And even then the one limiting boundary — time — would have to be infinite. If not, then we’d also have to define the entire thing further.
The best life? Probably not.
You mean a sort of Pathfinder/dnd?
If I’m not mistaken, if you behave badly in life you are sent to one of the evil/chaotic planes; otherwise to the good ones. If you die there you die tho, no more reincarnation. And if you go to one of the bad planes, you will “die” in a way as to survive cause unless you are very special you are doomed to be eaten (literally).
Dunno how the actual religions behave on the matter.
Personally, while I hope that reincarnation is a thing it is mostly to not be afraid to die… after all, even if it were a thing I wouldn’t remember a thing about this life no? If I did, I would know right now that actual reincarnation is a thing. Since I can’t possibly know that reincarnation is a thing, and I don’t know cause I don’t remember a previous life that means it either exists but I don’t remember a thing or it doesn’t exist and when I die light’s out it’s over. In any case, for the living me it leads to the same problem(s).
Going back to your original question: assuming that we indeed reincarnate, with or without memories, then yes given an infinite amount of lives we will experience both the worst and the best
What’s the best life possible?
Honestly, if you have a pretty good life, and you are wired for happiness, that’s about as good as it gets. Wealth, ability, fame, respect… Those all have an aspect of continuous struggle. And ultimately, it’ll be subjective
But someone with a happy childhood, low stress, satisfying relationships, and an enjoyable, stable daily life? Coupled with a brain wired to enjoy life? I’m not sure it gets much better than that, and there’s people like that everywhere.
So I’d say yeah, probably
Best as defined by whom?
What if the best life was someone so into Coprophilia that they get more happiness out of being surrounded by and even eating shit than anyone else in the universe has experienced happiness about anything? And then they got a job for 40 years cleaning porta potties and even when they could retire don’t in order to keep it up?
Is it just maximal dopamine and serotonin? Maybe then the best life is a drug addict with a gambling addiction but a lot of luck?
Or maybe happiness is more a matter of perspective than external circumstance once past the bottom layers of Maslow’s pyramid, and there’s many lives that could be a best life to the right mindset.
I’m not even sure it takes living multiple lives to end up living the best life, and potentially pushing the pursuit of living one’s best life off onto the next one is a damaging prospect in and of itself.
What if you spend every life waiting for the next attempt rather than maximizing the life you have?
We live to learn, to learn you must suffer. Buddah lived in a palace without knowing illness, old age and death and only when he discovered them went into a path of suffering and learning until he became enlightened. Plus ultimately if you have the right mindset any life can be the perfect life for your soul.
Everyone ? but it’s just me. A few reincarnations from now I might be you, or a lemur from Madagascar. It’s just me, bro ! you’re me ! I am you !
As AwakeSoul/Buddha tried explaining…
and as Hindu Ramana Maharshi also tried explaining…
WHEN one reaches such fundamental-awareness that there is NO self in it…
it is AWARENESS,
THEN, one only has to dissolve into that OceanOfAllAwakeSouls/OceanOfAWARENESS/OceanOfBuddhas/God.
No self, indestructible bliss, Eternal awareness, watching all unfolding endless-stream-of-Universes, as magical display…
No, not every Souls/CellsOfGod/Continuums get to experience amazingness incarnate.
Elisabeth Haich commented on that, in her book “Initiation”.
Some Souls/Continuums, or their natures/characters, chose aversion-therapy reincarnation-cycle, for whatever reason.
It’s a Bell curve, probably:
the normal is to have an average “pinnacle”, and an average “bottom-of-the-barrel”, and an average set-of-between-range incarnations/someones/lives.
Only the more-extreme would inhabit the more-extreme ends of the bell curve.
Same as all Nature…
_ /\ _
No. Even if reincarnation exists, time is finite in the universe. You wouldn’t have an unlimited amount of tries to guarantee the best outcome.
You assume reincarnation follows linear time. If reincarnation is true, I assume it works like in The Egg, and everyone experiences every life across all of time.
I have no reason to believe anything else. I only experience this one life.
Okay, but OP’s prompt specifically addressed people who believe in reincarnation.
That’s like responding to “People who like potatoes, what’s your favorite way to cook them?” with “None, I don’t like potatoes.” Isn’t really relevant to the topic.
I don’t believe in reincarnation but I don’t dismiss it either. There’s simply no proof. Though, with how much stuff we record and keep track of now, seems like if someone’s past life occurs in this time period it’d be possible to fact check.
I didn’t think there were really any different types either; at least from what I gather from your comment. For me, it only means past lives residing in your body. Nothing from the future. That’s the only way it’s ever been presented to me.
You suggested everyone experiences all of their lives at once. I only said I don’t see how that can be true if I don’t currently experience that. I am included in everyone.
And I’m not going to toss out apparent truths to try to fit beliefs in. That’s why I also stated I have no reason to believe time is anything but linear since that is how it appears to be now. We don’t have a full grasp on time but future events having physical affects on the present, or past, seems pretty problematic.
For me, it only means past lives residing in your body. Nothing from the future. That’s the only way it’s ever been presented to me.
Well then, here’s the different presentation I was referring to.
I wasn’t talking about everyone experiencing all their lives at once, I was talking about all lives being experiences of the same soul, fractured across time and space, each experiencing only the most immediate. Linear time is quite possibly just an illusion of human perception, the filtering of some higher dimensional entity through our limited form. Kinda like when you view a CT scan as a sequence of 2-dimensional images.
There are 8 billion peope alive right now, we’ve got 5 billion years until the sun dies. Compared to the length of a single human life, that might as well be an infinite number of tries.
I think you underestimate the amount of possibilities in life. Even 5 billion tries isn’t all that much.
Edit: The below is all wrong, I’m good at abstract maths and really shit at numbers, forgive me.
I think you missed me saying “compared to a single human life.” Sure, there’s no way literally everyone will get “the best possible life” or something, but a single person has very roughly 5×109×1010÷10^2 is 5×10^17 attempts assuming a 100 year life span.
And you only have to get it once, ultimately the probability depends on whatever the criteria here is, which frankly I don’t know, assuming it just means “is a billionaire” that’s around a 2×10^-7 chance each time, assuming 2000 ish billionaires in a 10^10 population.
I tried plugging this into a binomial calculator but it couldn’t process it, but regardless that’s going to be some really good chances.
How do you get 5x10^17 attempts with the lifespan of the sun being 5x10^10 years?
Regardless, they said everyone. They also said the best life possible. That postulates some absolute max for a person. Not some random criteria you can think of.
Sorry, I did shower maths and that’s always a bad idea. Ignore that whole thing. What I was thinking made sense in one particular way, but not in the way I had intended, so it’s completely meaningless.
On the criteria, the absolute maximum implies having a criteria and I just chose the assumption that essentially infinite money would give you the best chance of having “the best possible life.” I was just aiming for something order of magnitude so had to choose something arbitrarily.
If you can even define the best possible life in a meaningful way, then I’d say it’s absolutely 0% chance because to me, a single day of winter ruins it.
are you assuming randomness? there is nothing that keeps reincarnation from not being directed. honestly xstianity would make a bit more sense with reincarnation.
How could you possibly direct it?
how supreme beings or mechanisms always do stuff. by us claiming they can.
