But a book I have loved since I first found it is a children's book. It is The Mountains of Tibet by Mordicai Gerstein. I like the calm, lovely, and reassuring way that rebirth is described and pictured.

I'm agnostic about the issue of rebirth and karma, really. They do seem like a more fair and reasonable system than heaven and hell though. I do have to admit some of the article seems mired in superstitious that I really think is detached from the Buddha's core message of suffering. For instance, the part about not touching the body for 3-8 hours just seems odd to me, but as far as things like that go it's harmless.

The way I think about it is in terms of energy. No energy is lost in the cycle of life in absolute terms - it simply changes form be it from dinosaur to an ape. The message is simple, life goes on, and on, and on it's suffering until we essentially all come to the realization that desire is the cause of our suffering and we stop the cycle. I suppose the heart of the superstition is whether you believe it is possible at all to obtain a state where you do not desire and therefore do not suffer. I think to some extent you have to have a basic belief in the idea that within life there is a certain soul even if it does not always know itself.

Am I making sense, anybody?

What I DO Know is that we all share the same fate (death) and that same fate is, to me, the best argument for compassion.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]I definitely have thoughts on the subject and have been thinking about it even more lately, since my 87-year-old mother has asked questions, but I'll have to come back later on.

only change, it is not farfetched to believe that the composition of our bodies will ultimately end up as the composition of another sentient being. I am not sure about the karmic applications attributed to rebirth. I do know that the more skillful I am in my present life, the less suffering I and others experience.

My understanding is that it will be many lifetimes (if this is indeed correct) before I will have to worry about not being rebirthed. So, I do not spend a lot of time concerning myself with this.

I do not remember any past lives, but I know the universe has been around for a very long time. I trust in the fact that I try to live a skillful life and use the precepts as they are a wonderful guideline in skillful living. I trust in the natural order of things whatever they may be.

If we are to look at all Buddhist teachings, or, for that matter, any spiritual teachings within the context of conceptualization, then we will certainly find the same results we incur in the experience of samsara itself. No matter how true or precise any verbal depiction of our predicament and its resolution might appear, we are best off remembering that the medium that relates the answers we seek is, itself, grounded in duality and illusion.

Therefore, we could then come to the understanding that, no matter how clearly and precisely the best teachings attempt to convey a clear understanding to us as we wander in the alluring poisons that we are addicted to, none of them are exact, nor do they even come near to conveying what is actual.

So, no matter how useful each stepping stone or ladder rung may seem as we travel back to our original nature, those aspects of the boat we travel in to the other shore are merely applicable and valid in context, and no more. The boat we travel in from this shore is said to be only useful until we reach the other shore.

One can believe what one wants at any point and give weights and measures to each of them in relation to circumstances. No matter how hard we might want to hold onto one idea or another, and no matter how useful the ideas might be, none of them are, or can be, the goal, or the true nature of our beings. So, use them as you do anything. Take one over the other. Believe this or disbelieve that along your way. By no means accept any one concept as anything more than a tool for removing what obscures your realization of what you actually are.

And, if you explore Dzogchen, you will find that there is yet an entirely different way to realize and understand the above in relation to Tantra, Mahayana and Hinayana. Yet, they all relate most perfectly to each other from the very beginning.

The rest is commentary.

i like the traditional Buddhist simile of the flame.

as one torch dies down, another is lit from the fire of the old.
the new torch is obviously not the same as the old torch.
the fire passes from one to the other;
the new flame not the same as the old;
but the old giving birth to the new.

and this process happening every instant,
not just at the point of death.
so dying & being reborn as a different entity,
every infinitesimal moment of time.

as for the different realms of existence -
while i have no idea if this has any basis in reality,
or is just a wishful construct of my own mind -
i imagine them as different dimensions.
like the world of a fish under water,
or of a microbe in a bloodstream,
or, for that matter, the existence of a right-wing fascist,
is so different from our own; and yet the same.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland

Can you point to a good resource for a hospice worker to understand Buddhism?

Here's a start: http://www.changesurfer.com/Bud/BudBioEth.html

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