[TerriLS]

philosophia

It's not easy to respond to your post, as you have covered a lot of ground and you are talking about two books you have read and which I have not.

It seems to me that your argument is not with Matthieu Ricard himself, but with the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism.

First of all, it’s important to understand that what’s called reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism has nothing to do with the transmigration of some “entity” like an autonomous "self". It’s not a process by which the same soul inhabits in succession the bodies of different beings.

As long as one thinks in terms of entities rather than function and continuity of experience, it’s impossible to understand the Buddhist concept of rebirth.

Over successive rebirths, what is maintained is not the identity of a “person,” but the conditioning of a stream of consciousness, it is said. If you couple the consciousness to the entity of a "being", you will come face to face with the illogical conclusions that your post is addressing.

It has been said many times in this forum that the Buddha did not teach the doctrine of reincarnation.

It is up to each of us to test the meaning of the Buddha's teachings ourselves. When you read someone else's conclusions, you are free to discard them if they do not resonate with you.

To go a little further, if the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism do not resonate with you, then the tradition is not for you.

There are other schools of Mahayana Buddhism, and there is Theravada Buddhism, too.