Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 19-minute talk from 1987, Alex Berzin explores how Buddhism explains individual talents and tendencies across lifetimes without relying on a permanent unchanging self. He begins with the example of how childhood habits carry into adulthood, then extends this logic to rebirth — showing how Mozart’s early musical genius can be understood as continuity of a strong past-life habit rather than inexplicable talent. Berzin then addresses what science and Buddhism share: sophisticated techniques for training both intellect and imagination, particularly through practices that work with subtle energies and direct rebirth itself. He illustrates the mechanism through vivid behavioral examples: how constant sexual preoccupation generates animal energy, territorial possessiveness generates dog mentality, and nervous jittery energy manifests as fly-like rebirth. He concludes by clarifying that rebirth is not reward-and-punishment but energy causality, distinguishes between general population growth and the rarity of precious human life free from obstacles, and emphasizes Buddhism’s focus on realizing human potential to benefit others.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 S and B.mp3
UUID: 5237281d-27f2-47a9-b91d-db62bbe8026b
Teacher: Alex Berzin
Collection: Science and Buddhism (Alex Berzin)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 19.0 minutes
Words: ~2,552
So where is the five year old Alex inside the forty year old Alex? Well, there isn’t. But there’s continuity, you know, without there being something solid that’s going through there, you know, because there’s certain habits, certain things that we can see, you know, tendencies and so on, from instances that have occurred during this lifespan. So likewise you can look into another lifetime, right, and see that there are certain tendencies, certain habits that have repeated. Now based on that, just as you can label, you know, on many moments of, you know, many instances of an experience, of similar experience, a habit, well you can label that carrying over into a future life as well.
You know, there’s a person who had great musical talent and, you know, is playing, composing music, and so on, one lifetime, and another lifetime you go to Mozart who, from a tiny little age, is also doing that. Well, you can infer that this is a continuity with a very strong habit of someone in a past life who likewise was doing that. So this is the way that in Buddhism you account for talents, you account for habits, you account for certain tendencies, and you have a lot of you know, fairly dramatic examples of that, you know, because in the Buddhist teachings there are methods for being able to control your rebirth process. Now this is something which, it’s fairly difficult to do, but it’s not that difficult. You don’t have to be a Buddha to be able to do this.
You know, there’s certain types of practices, you have to achieve a certain level of proficiency in it, and you can do it. Now, I mean it’s basically based on having a very strong motivation of wanting to be able to continue existing, not just grasping for me me me, you know, in that sense of self preservation, but, you know, your motivation for continuing is that I can be of benefit, the best benefit to everybody, and continue to grow and develop, overcome my limitations more, develop my potentials more to be able to help everybody. That is a strong motivation plus certain type of practices involved with working with the subtle energies of the body, working with the imagination, basically, the forces of imagination, which is something which is very much tapped into in Buddhism. Again, you know, what’s type of things that, you know, science and Buddhism can, you know, get down together with? Well, you know, in science, we talk an awful lot about training the intellectual side of the brain.
Buddhism has techniques for that as well, very sophisticated ones, but also has tremendous techniques for developing the imagination, which is a very strong force that we all have. A lot can be done with it. Anyway, in terms of working with that, you can direct your rebirth. Okay, so there are about maybe a thousand Tibetan lamas who have reached that point. This example that you raised of Lama Yeshe was just one of a thousand and they’re able to do this.
Now you can see some really, you know, very dramatic type of examples like this. I’ll give you an example of the, you know, the Dalai Lama had three main teachers, and one of them, the junior tutor, died in the early 1980s. Now when he was alive, he was very famous for how when he was a small child, when he was shown the alphabet, you know, the Tibetan equivalent of A, B, C, D, and taught to read it, then, because of his very, very strong instincts, because he was such a learned person, in his previous lives, all he had to do was be shown the alphabet once. This is A, this is B, this is C, this is D, like that, the Tibetan equivalents for that. And he knew it, he was able to read it, he was able to recite it.
You know, so this, you know, when you have a child prodigy like that, this is some explanation for it, you know, well, where does this prodigy come from? How do you account for it? You account for it in terms of the tremendous amount of familiarity with reading that, you know, was on a previous line of continuity from this child. Now it’s very interesting they found this child, the reincarnation of him, this is Trijang Rinpoche, by the way, his name, found his reincarnation and this small child was just recently taught the alphabet again. And the account of that is even more incredible because this child only had to be shown A, B, C, I think it was three or four letters that he had to be shown, and once he got the idea of that he didn’t even have to be told the rest of the alphabet, he knew it, he could read it.
So, you know, these are the type of examples that you can use aside from the logical discussion that I’ve presented so far that give us some conviction that there has to be something going on to account for it based on the basic idea that everything can be explained. Yes? What you were saying earlier, I thought your progress from one life form to another, probably from insect to animal Right. The question is that this gentleman had the impression that within a stream of continuity and also we should keep in mind that in Buddhism these streams of continuity are all individual we’re not talking about everybody being one, all flowing, you know, all the rivers flowing into the ocean, we’re all the same. It’s not talking about that because then again it uses logic, and it says, you know, if we’re all one, then you stay outside, I’ll go inside and eat, and if we’re one, then if I fill my stomach, it will fill your stomach.
So since that’s obviously ridiculous, then, you know, also to say that we’re all absolutely, totally one, that’s a bit simple a bit too simple way of looking at things. So anyway, the We’re talking about the how the continuity works. Your question specifically at the moment, Of evolution. So the question is in terms of is this a continuity which is going he had the impression that it was going up in terms of, you know, from insect to animal to human and so on, and is this something, you know, because then I said that but you could be reincarnated as a cockroach. Now reincarnated as a cockroach, I mean, we’re not talking about reward and punishment and this sort of thing, but that there can be continuity from our way of acting which would generate a different life form other than human.
Right. Now it’s saying, you know, what is the general type of energy that we’re creating? You know, because this is the whole sort of principle that we’re involved with here, is that we generate a certain type of energy, and what you create, that’s what you experience. So, for instance, if in our life, you know, the dominant type of way that we act is one of being very what shall we say, I’ll use some examples of, let’s say we never exercise any self control, but just are constantly acting out the animal type of impulses that we have, you know, of just going out and having sex with anybody that we find in the street, and, you know, just having total preoccupation with this type of thing. Well, what type of energy is that creating?
That’s creating a type of energy which is, like that of an animal, you know, that, just mates with anybody that they meet in the street, and that’s the total type of preoccupation that, this type of being has. Or if somebody is very, possessive about their territory, you know, this is my job, my thing, anybody who comes in and tries to arrange the paper differently on your desk or to cook something in a different way that you want to do it in your kitchen, then you bark at them like a dog. Keep away, this is my territory, this is how I do it, you don’t tell me how to do it. If we’re talking about this type of mentality, if this becomes a preoccupation, we’re not just talking about this in a casual level, this has to be very strong, total, you know, this is the way the person is, they’re just crazy about that, that generates, again, a dog type of mentality because that’s what a dog is. A dog is the manifestation of that way of things arising and an engagement with it.
It arises as my territory and the engagement with it is bow out, keep away. Or if your energy is one of being very nervous and you can’t possibly sit still and, you know, jittery jump up and down, your mind can’t stay with one thing, you know, for more than a second, well, what type of energy is that? That’s the perfect energy of a fly. Alright? The fly is manifestation of, you know, unbelievable nervous energy.
Can’t stay still. So, it’s a matter of, you know, what type of energy are we going to use? You know, we’re human beings and we have the ability to be able to discriminate between what’s constructive, what’s destructive. We have, you know, various human qualities And if, you know, instead of focusing on these and using these, if, you know, we just act like an animal, as it were, well, that generates you’ve generated animal energy. That’s what you get.
Yes? We’ll make this the last question. The question is, could the fly or cockroach, could that, could you have a stream of continuity of that generating a human being afterwards? Yes. Yes.
Definitely. Now it might not be so much you see, gen you generate a certain amount of energy. You know, this is we’re talking about impulses, karma. It’s talking about the impulsive type of energies that are generated. Now in that lifetime as a fly, there might not be terribly much that you can do.
Mean, you know, there are some stories and stuff but anyway most your run of the mill fly is not going to do terribly much, constructive during its lifetime. But the thing is that whatever energy has been responsible for that impulse, that impulsive energy, that nervous energy which makes you into a fly, once that has dissipated itself, then, you know, prior energy, which was built up in terms of, you know, acting like a human being, that then will take precedence again and will generate a human being. Well, how come the world is increasing in population? Question is, well, how come then is the world increasing in population? And again we have to go back to remember the Buddhist description of many many universes, you know, going through its procedures of evolution and breakup and so on in different sequence, in different synchronicity.
And so based on that, this is not the only planet where there’s life, there’s humanoid type of life and so it’s saying that the various humans that are being reborn we shouldn’t think of that in the know, because you can say where are they coming from? Either they’re coming from, you know, the unbelievable number of insects are being reborn as humans, which is not the case, you know, from the way that the Buddhists describe it. What they’re saying rather is it’s more sort of coming back down, things tend to be a little bit degenerating at the moment, and so more evolved types of life forms in other universes, other type of realms are being reborn as humans. Now there may be more humans. The point is within that group of humans, there’s something in Buddhism which is called the precious human life, which is you know, there are many things that can be said about that, but basically, you know, someone who is not in a concentration camp, not in a famine, not in a place where spiritual development is forbidden, know, severely retarded or handicapped in a, you know, really gross debilitating type of way and who is very open to spiritual progress and to spiritual things and development and these sort of things.
Now somebody with that type of quality human life that’s getting rare. You can have lots and lots of people in the world, but, that doesn’t necessarily mean that, you know, all of them are having, you know, although the possibility is there, you know, a lot are not in very good situations. So, you know, the emphasis is that, you know, if we have precious human life, if we have opportunities to be able to develop ourselves, to be able to grow more, you know, this sort of thing, this is what, you know, we should really take advantage of because it’s not gonna last forever. You’re gonna die. You’ll be hit by a truck at any time.
So, you know, one of the whole, you know, what Buddhism is really talking about is this process of growth, development, how to evolve to the highest state possible. We all have various limitations, but we all have various potentials. And the whole Buddhist path is one of how can we overcome our limitations, how can we realize our potentials fully so that we can be in the best position to help others and not just rebirth for the hell of it. But how can we and let’s not just think in terms of far distant future lives, how can we in this lifetime evolve to the highest state possible and reach all our potentials, overcome all our limitations. And that’s what Buddhism is really very, very rich in techniques for how to do.
So, I want to thank you very much. It’s been a very enjoyable evening. And you know whatever energy has been built up here let’s hope that that energy goes towards everybody trying to see that you know there are common meeting grounds between science, between Buddhism, between all the different systems of thought and techniques for developing human potential which have evolved, which have come about in our world. If we have all these different systems separate and, you know, we put big black lines around them and we say, you know, there’s no communicate you know, common ground between them, then there’s no communication. But, you know, our different cultures in the world, have been able to develop, you know, each one its own particular specialty.
That’s something which makes the world a very rich place that, you know, each culture, each tradition has so much that it can offer. And if we can see what the common meeting ground is, you know, among the different traditions, like here we’re talking about science and Buddhism, then it will afford an opportunity for, you know, all of us being able to take fullest advantage of what we’ve developed on this planet so that we can all evolve to our highest states possible to the benefit of everyone. Thank you.