Generalizations abound. They abound too much. These generalizations use to have their origin in the scarce scientific studies that exist about children who supposedly remember past lives. I don’t know if the fault lies on the researchers themselves, who forget to explain things properly, or on the readers that are not familiar with the research work and don’t know the results of the study can’t be extrapolated to all the reincarnation cases in the world. The conclusions of a study are circumscribed to that study. In the best of cases, if we are speaking of all the studies published up until this moment, they are circumscribed to that group of studies. The conclusions reached are not definitive, nor immutable, nor applicable to all humanity since the beginning of times. Science evolves. Science can be wrong. Researchers can interpret the data poorly. Is this clear?
A part that has been very interesting for me is when at the beginning is described how it is determined in countries like Sri Lanka, Burma or Thailand that a child that wants to become a Buddhist monk has memories of a past life as a monk. It seems this provides them with a special advantage to reach relevant positions within the religious community. It is quite curious. It is frequent that people don’t have a doubt when they hear the Dalai Lama has past life memories, as they assume the Dalai Lama is someone super-spiritual and his good karma allows him to remember (not like the rest of mortals who remember past lives, we surely have made up everything), but when you read the description of the process, you realize the reliability of it leaves much to be desired. I think it is a random thing more than anything. That is, even my three-year-old cousin would pass the tests and would be declared Dalai Lama straight away... or even my cat, for those who believe in animal reincarnation. Seriously, I know adult cases much better researched and verified in the Western world. But I will let the readers to discover this on their own (unless someone explicitly asks me for an account in the comments).
Another comment worth stressing is that in the scriptures of the Theravada Buddhism, written in the first century B.C., there are already references to a special faculty through which it is possible to obtain past life memories, allowing the person to experience the truth of reincarnation by themselves (it also says karma, but here there would be a lot to discuss, so I leave it for another occasion). This faculty —the scriptures state— can be obtained through a special training of the mind. What a surprise! That is the same thing I say in all my blogs... But, of course, as I am not a Buddhist, no one takes me seriously, so be it.
But let us go to the most relevant part in the article. In Mahayana Buddhism some children selected to be lamas are considered monks reborn. In Theravada Buddhism, typical in Sri Lanka, this tradition doesn’t exist, but even so sometimes children who claim to remember having been monks in a previous life turn up. The three cases in the study are children from Sri Lanka who spoke of a past life as Buddhist monks from a very early age. The three displayed behavioral signs in addition to alleged memories. Between two and three years old, they already showed a great interest in Buddhism and a behavior that is considered ideal for a Buddhist monk. They wanted to live as monks and they even expressed their desire to join a Buddhist order, sometimes causing great distress in their parents. In two of the cases the parents were Buddhist, but in the third they were Christians, though these latter certainly didn’t seem to go to great lengths to abide by the precepts of their religion. Attempts to find the possible previous personality were made in each of them, but only one could be solved. The author also comments that of all the cases researched by him in Sri Lanka (60 up until the date of the article), only one third could be solved, so we can say that at least the selected sample is representative of all the cohort, not like other researchers do, that they select only the individuals of their interest to “prove” their hypothesis.
The case of Duminda Bandara Ratnayake.
Among the behavioral signs, he wanted to carry his clothes in the fashion of a monk, wanted to be called “Podi Sadhu” (little monk), went every morning and evening to a chapel close to his house, visited the temple regularly and plucked flowers to place them down in the typical Buddhist fashion. Cleanliness was very important to him, he didn’t want to play with other children, and wanted to become a monk and wear a monk’s robe, which his mother only seldom allowed him to do. Besides, he liked to recite stanzas in Pali, an ancient language of Sinhalese Buddhism, learnt and used by monks only.
Some time later, when Duminda was five years and four months old, when the death of the chief-monk in the Malvatta monastery was announced over the radio, Duminda spontaneously stated he had known him.
Researchers could make a list of the possible candidates to be the person Duminda was referring to. Of all of them, only one had all the features he had mentioned: Gunnepana Saranankara, deceased in 1929. Several monks of the monastery recalled he had owned a car of brownish or red color. A witness added the detail that the car had a folding roof. Gunnepana died of a heart attack, though it seems he didn’t die in the hospital, but in the monastery itself after a doctor was summoned. Gunnepana had a gramophone, so could be that Duminda, who had never seen one, didn’t recognize the difference between a radio and a gramophone.
A witness remembered that Gunnepana had been fond of music and during the time he was in the monastery as a chief-monk (from 1921 to 1929), there was more music played than never before or after. Not all monks preach, but Gunnepana did, reciting stanzas and holding a fan at the beginning of the sermon. A witness wasn’t sure if Gunnepana had owned an elephant, but he did recall one of his disciples had caught one and brought it to a village where Gunnepana was a frequent visitor. He had taken much interest in it. The elephant died shortly before he himself died. Besides, it is known that there had been several elephants in Asgiriya monastery, they were used on festive occasions.
Part 2.