[enfoires]

Hi Jack,

The idea of "re-birth" is a much later invention that has been cobbled together with patchwork to get around the problems that the Buddha's teaching of Anatta poses for reincarnation beliefs. It is often falsely substituted for the word "birth" (jati) in translations of the Buddha's teachings, but jati is not the word for reincarnation. Functionally, the idea of "re-birth"is a workaround, a "reincarnation that is not reincarnation", a "reincarnation that does not involve an 'atta'." It's patchwork, it's sloppy,and the Buddha didn't teach it.

You refer to "belief" in your request: "...the reasons behind your 'belief'." This is not a matter of "belief", any more than the question "do you believe in God, Allah, and/or the Flying Spaghetti Monster?" -- the question tends to presume the existence of the subject: "if you don't believe in God, why don't you believe in him?.." My non-belief is not based upon a belief with respect to the speculative view/superstition of "re-birth"; it stems from seeing and knowing for myself that such superstitions and speculative views are irrelevant to the Buddha's own, unique, liberative teachings and practices. I do not presume that the liberative teachings of the Buddha have anything to do with pre-Buddha beliefs in reincarnation and their assumptions that liberation is annihilation. I note that the Buddha proclaimed that his teachings were designed to quench suffering through the elimination of ignorance, craving and clinging, and I do not subscribe to the point of view that equates "suffering" with "round of re-births".

Personally studying and practicing the teachings of the Buddha, I find such superstitions and their various convoluted explanations wanting and irrelevant. I find that the Buddha's liberative teachings have no "loose ends", and are -- just as he himself claimed -- universal, timeless, relevant to everyone, visible to anyone, free of patchwork, and to be experienced by the wise for themselves. The idea of "re-birth" is none of these.