[9wQlZkIj]

Imo, the concept of "rebirth" was merely skillful means and a conceptual tool that was employed in order to help people see the agitating/combusting nature of existence...becoming/ unbecoming...generation/degeneration - that is, the patterns, cycles, the physics of the phenomenal world - and to paint a vivid picture of cause and effect within this physic and ultimately empty environment. This conceptual tool has taken on a purely materialistic literal meaning in this materialistic literalistic time.

A surface reading of the teachings gave a much needed moral/social structure to average people, and a glimmer of reality...mostly it kept them from creating hells on Earth and in their own mind/body.

A deep reading of the teachings preserved a far reaching complex understanding of the phenomenal world (physics, astronomy, ecosystems management, social management, physical and mental health, protection of the genome, etc...) and our relationship with it for those that had the mental capacity and training to understand at this level.

The confusion about this conceptual tool in our own time exists because the deeper reading and understanding of the teachings has become lost - the teachings have become decontextualized and without the broad deep context, the surface has deteriorated into a narcissistic bandaid of self focused so-called "spiritual" masturbation techniques. The decontextualized, literalized surface reading doesn't ring true to a population that is fairly well educated but who haven't woken up fully from the unconscious mind-numbing cloud of religiosity that pervades all of modern thought (the lingering effects of institutionalized and deeply internalized Christian theology)...this state of limbo creates much confusion on the one hand, and entrenched belief on the other - both states of mind that the Dharma was originally intended to dissolve.