Let's not berate cleaner, please -- I'm sure there are those of us whom are enjoying this thread and don't appreciate the clutter. Thanks.
>> Why must this assumption be made?
Because that is the nature of this system of belief. The belief is that all beings are eternal, without beginning or end, and experience themselves and the universe through the sensory organs and biological bits of physical entities. Overlayed on top of the eternal spirit (often called the Clear Light, or Brahman, or Soul), are our personalities, comprised of our experiences and conditioning. Our personalities are superficial and transitional, whereas our True Selves are eternal, growing and changing into endless time.
To better articulate what I'm saying, I'll reference a post I made a few days ago. I had said that the Greek word "persona" was originally used in theater as a word for the many masks actors must don to fit their many roles in a performance. The word directly translates as "that which the sound passes through." Our personalities can be spoken of much the same way, as the masks through which our spirit experiences it's surroundings. Just as an actor may in his career use many masks and many persona's, so do we take on many forms and personalities throughout the ongoing learning process of many lifetimes.
>> By linking karma to reincarnation are you saying that your personality in this life helps shape your "true self" in the next?
Not quite. The True Self undergoes no fundamental impact from the rather weightless experiences we all endure through life. For example, if I enter a Math class and come away from the building understanding geometry, I've learned something, but I have not been changed on any deeper level than the knowledge acquired.
What I meant to say by linking karma and reincarnation was that the karma we accumulate for ourselves helps shape the cirumstances of the next life, the degree of blessing or hardship we will encounter. For example, I was born into a loving family with warm food and shelter accessible to me at all times. If the doctrine of karma is consistent, I built such a life for myself in the past, either by leading a life of selflessness and care for others, or by enduring terrible suffering perpetrated by someone else. This is not to say I was ushered in to this comfortable life by some kind of divine being, rather that the events of my past lives made my own placement here most likely to occur. If negative karma is a square peg and positive karma is a round peg, then negative circumstances would be a square hole and postive circumstances would be a round hole. My True Self, then, slid into this life because that is where I was most likely to land.
You can think of it almost like that game "Plinko" on The Price is Right. If the disc is somehow able to discern between which pegs will land him in the $10,000 slot, and which will land him in the $0.00 slot, then the disc would make the appropriate choices and slide where it is most favourable. The degree of the disc's awareness of it's surroundings will determine it's ability to influence it's favourable outcome.
There is a trap to being born in favourable circumstance, however. Being born to a loving family and a warm home is much more condusive to ignorance of all of this than being born to a dying family where food and water are minimal. This is why India's youth, while often thirsty and constantly fighting disease, are generally happy people who commune with eachother. By comparison, America's youth, whom are relatively well fed with comfortable places to sleep, typically shut themselves in their bedrooms for a period of their lives and write angry poetry, wrought with self-created aguish. None of these descriptions are meant to be blanket statements. Of course there are huge grey areas.
This is where the gift of compassion comes in, however. Compassion is what stings in us at the sight of another's pain. It is born into all of us, and we have all experienced it to some degree. Compassion is a powerful motivator toward wisdom and insight, and serves to prompt the appropriate questions we must ask of ourselves and of life. If our comfort has caused us to succumb to ignorance, then it is compassion which jostle's us awake. Compassion is the most important ingredient toward lasting happiness, and true insight.
What is most unfortunate, I must add, is that some of us have become deadened to our feelings of compassion. This can be caused by a number of things. It can be the constant violent innundations of the television, the hardening of the heart from abusive experiences, or a fear-motivated withdrawal and self-detachment from feeling. Regardless, this detachment causes us pain, a sort of spiritual anorexia. With basic human feeling comes compassion, and being without either leaves us feeling very cold, alone, isolated, often paranoid. Being withdrawn from feeling is often our reaction to fear, a sickness which pervades us all.
This is why I think it's important to extend compassion to those who would harm us, rather than anger and vengence. After all, if someone would harm us, they have indicated to us a certain degree of detachment from compassion, and therefore must also be suffering on the inside. This even works on the grand scale. Can you imagine the misery Hitler must have felt, having been capable of pursuing a genocidal holocaust? Poor man. It's this same cold lonliness which motivates materialism, thing-addiction, power-hunger, totalitarianism, etc. To spit on those who would demonstrate this sickness would be to inject the same sickness into ourselves! What foolishness!
>> Yet our "true selves" somehow integrate our experiences in this life into itself in the next life?
Yes. If in irrational anger I were to punch somebody in the face, I would be doing equal injury to my True Self, my deeper self. I may not be aware of it, but I will be made aware of it's effects as they manifest in my life, like the ache of a bruise. The way this works is very subtle and pervasive. Our awareness of this process depends on how deeply buried our True Selves are beneath all the rubbish of fronts, acts, and personality, or how detached we've allowed ourselves to become from feeling. Birth and Death are not beginnings and ends, only transitions along samsara, the karma-driven wheel of life.
The Buddhist path is to seek that Self by shedding all the unnecessary layers and leading a life of service to the good of others. In fact, the pursuit of enlightenment itself is an act undertaken to benefit other beings, that the bright and shining example of Buddhahood might stir awakenings in all the suffering people of Earth. I can't speak for Hindu's and Taoist's, but I imagine they follow much the same line of reasoning.
This is my best and most practical interpreation of the Four Noble Truths . In Buddhism, these same ideas are expressed much more abstractly, and are meant to cover a much wider range of different people on the other side of the planet during an entirely different era. If you're interested in a clear-cut explanation of Buddhist ethics tailored for the present day, I encourage you to check out some of The Dalai Lama's books: specifically The Art of Happiness, and Ancient Wisdom, Modern World: Ethics for a New Millenium. The latter is an extraordinary read which has changed my life a few times over.
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