Brief disclaimer. I’m very new to Budhhism as a whole. I started listening to podcasts and reading sutras just over one month ago and I’ve been practing Zen since becoming interested. I guess I’m what would be called a “Buddhist observer”.

Since becoming interested in buddhism, it has really spoken to me. Every aspect of resonates with me. Well every aspect except one that seems very core to Buddhism: The concept of rebirth. I’ve struggled with this concept as someone who is very non-spiritual and skeptical of something that I cannot observe personally or read trustworthy un-biased accounts of.

This morning while sitting zazen, an interesting thought occured to me. I know we are supposed to let thoughts go when sitting zazen, but I just couldnt seem to let this one go so I followed it through. What if rebirth is not being reborn in the physical sense nor the spiritual, but rather we are reborn through our friends and family, and those that we have some sort of impact on in our lifetime. When we die we still live in the memories of those that care about us, although their perception of us is a different us than what we saw ourselves as.

This seemed profound to me, so I decided to follow it further. If we are reborn in the memories of others, then part of ourselves is carried through to the individuals that they have an impact on. This would be an endless cycle of rebirth. Then I thought of the story of The Buddha recalling memories from all of his previous lives and realized one could interpret this as having insight into the memories of people that had a profound impact on them, and their memories, and so on.

The last connection that I could make to what I’ve learned of buddhism so far is the last of the five rememberences. “My only true possession is my actions.”. The five rememberences is what really awed me about Buddhism to begin with and I realized that our actions are what people remember us by. Therefore our rebirths are a made purely from our actions.

I wonder if this could be taken further and what other links this idea could have to buddhism.

Im creating this post just because I want to see how others feel about this idea. I want to humble myself before those that have been practicing for many years so that I can learn. Thanks for reading!