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From the Buddhist point of view, reincarnation is a slippery subject. Actually, the Buddha (a title, and whose actual name was Gotama Siddartha) would either not respond when asked about reincarnation, or his response would essentially say, "Speculations about reincarnation have nothing to do with ending suffering. They only keep you in attachment." This is exemplified in the Brahma Gala Sutra, for example, in which the Buddha lists and categorically rejects sixty-two popular beliefs of the day on metaphysics, religion, and reincarnation. The following excerpt from this important Sutra lists a few group beliefs about reincarnation. (This is the Buddha actually speaking to a group of students):

"...Of these, brethren, those recluses and Brahmans who are Eternalists, who in four ways maintain that the soul and the world are eternal;

Those who are Semi-Eternalists, who in four ways maintain that the soul and the world are partly eternal and partly not;

Those who hold the doctrine of a conscious existence after death, who maintain in sixteen ways that the soul after death is conscious;

Those who hold the doctrine of an unconscious existence after death, who maintain in sixteen ways that the soul after death is unconscious;

Those who maintain in eight ways that the soul after death is neither conscious or unconscious..."

[And now the Buddha gives his response to all such believers of various forms of metaphysics, religion, and reincarnation]:

"For whosoever, brethren, whether recluses or Brahmans, are thus reconstructors of the past or arrangers of the future, or who are both whose speculations are concerned with both, who put forward various propositions with regard to the past and the future, they, all of them, are entrapped in the net of these sixty-two modes. . . When a skillful fisherman or fisherlad should drag a tiny pool of water with a fine-meshed net he might fairly think: Whatever size of fish may be in this pond, every one will be in this net, flounder about as they may, they will be included in it and caught.' Just so is it with these speculators about the past and the future, in this net, flounder as they may, they are included and caught."

[When asked why he ventured no answer to any metaphysical or religious questions, The Buddha replied]:

"Not a single one of them is calculated to profit, it is not concerned with the Dharma, it does not redound even to the elements of right conduct, nor to detachment, nor to purification from lusts, nor to quietude, nor

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