Many people have been questioning about this question.

At this Mo Fa Period, San Qi Mo Jie Period, people including other Religions believed that many unknown and mystery Deities are coming down to Mortal World or make Vows to reborn into the Mortal World again.

You believe in the saying?

Let's start your vote and discussion. ;)

I think it's up to the individual ba this topic...

In cases where there really are deities being reborn as human beings, there would be major signs and miracles, like the baby being especially well behaved, the child being well-versed in the scriptures without being taught, and the child demanding an enthronement (this all happened to the current Karmapa and many other reborned enlightened Masters, who are all considered emanations of the various Bodhisattvas and deities).

Only when there are signs like these, and recognition is done by another Enlightened Master, then can we consider it authentic. In cases where there are no formal recognition, and a lot of discrepancies, I urge all members to exercise discretion and investigate thoroughly the person concerned.

In the case of Buddhism, it is extremely important, because this ensures a continuous lineage, and the stream of blessings is not broken. If the claim is dubious, there is no lineage in the first place, and there is no blessings. In the case of Taoism, I would believe that there would be a lineage in one form or another, and there are many ways to authenticate the so-called rebirth.

Bro Javewu, care to enlighten me?

In Buddhism, yes, they need to continue the lineage or the jobs by transforming into different human forms to lead the mortals onto the "carriage" to the Western Heaven.

In Taoism, the teaching believed in No Ending. All things will diminished and soon it will return to the land again. Only those who have attained the Immortal-hood can be release from the suffering of falling into the Six Realms again (using the Buddhism System here).

Taoism Deities can be categorised into a few groups (Buddhism too, like Maitreya, only be in the Mortal World after Lord Buddha's turn, etc), before, now and after.

Before, are so-called the Pre-Historical (or Pre-World) Stage where all the Deities exist before the Existing of this World formed. Follow by the Present, the Post-Historical Stage (or After World Formed). All the Deities that we can see now are just the passing stage. They are here to guide on the Mortals on certain teaching, allowing them to attain certain cultivation level, results in-order to attain the next level and then pass-down the necessary teachings to the next batch of people (who consider as the group with faith in Immortal Hood or Xian Yuan).

Whereas for Future Deities, they entered into this Mortal World to take over certain position and tasks.

Then why the Future Deities have already entered into this World? Reasons are, human are starting to have more and more different cravings, greeds, wished. In-order to maintain the rightoues in the past, all these Future Deities have to step in earlier to stop and hope that the humans can proceed to the next stage smoothly and safely.

In Taoism, seldom we will used the reason of Lineage to promote the culture of tasks to be done, etc. Neither using saying of Lineage continuity. A Taoist or so-called devotees believed that they will only be appointed a certain tasks after they have entered or reborn into this World OR get certain enlightenment from the Heaven or certain Deities.

Unlike Yi Guan Dao or some other Religions that had been urgenging the Future Deities to proceed down to the Mortal World, Taoism believe and strongly agree on the Natural Process that take place.

Everything in this World happened with a reason or pre-recorded plans. Nothing can be done to change such pre-recorded "events". What we see now are actually being planned and recorded very long ago.

Human, as small as a grain in the Big Universe, what can we do? We can only follow and attain the next level for overselves in-order to jump out of all these restrictions, etc.

Future Deities that being sent down to the Mortal World or reborn as new human forms are part of the reasons. And one thing we must take note that, such Deities eneterd or reborn into this Mortal World is not mend for trickers or Cons to cheat on devotees' money but to provide the necessary helps to the Mortals in-order to proceed to the next level or area of peacefulness.

Hi,

I just want to add in abit of my thoughts.

Yes, there is a possbilities that new deities reborn as human form.

But think again, if there is deities reborn, then there must also have demon/devil also reborn as human form.

Otherwise, no purpose for the deities to reborn.....

Question: How to distinguish who is deities and who is dempn/devil ? All 3 start with letter "D" ....


:P

Hi Bro and all,

this is indeed a good enquiries. in these era, deities and demons are born together into this world.

Demon born with a heart of evil while a Deity is born with a heart of decent. how to differentiate the individual one, this you will have to study on their reaction, emotional and the words or teachings that they give to you.

I asked my Guru about this topic, and he gave me his thoughts to share.

According to Rinpoche, there are two forms of rebirth in Buddhism. One is deliberately choosing rebirth for the sake of helping other beings, as in the case of Lamas and Bodhisattvas. The other form of rebirth is driven by Samsara, and is controlled by your Karma, as in the case of the sentient beings of the 6 Realms.

If you are talking about deities as in Wu Dou Xing Jun, etc. etc.,These deities have either cultivated their way up to be gods or were reborn in the god realms. As these deities have not crossed the barriers into Bodhisattvahood or Arahantship, these deities are subject to the forces of Karma, and their rebirth is driven by Samsara.

In the god realms, everything is beautiful and carefree. There is nothing these gods and deities want or need, because everything they want or need immediately appears in front of them. The main suffering they have is that they get to find out that they are going to die one week before by a very loud voice in their minds, and it will remind them of their death every day until it arrives. The bodies of the gods quickly degenerates then, and the other gods will casually pray that he return to be born in the god realm again. These prayers by the gods do not have any benefits because they are only done as formality, with no motivation.

The most important point is that when these gods, goddesses and deities are reborn, they are always born in the lower three realms, i.e. the Hell realms, the realms of the Pretas and the Animal realm. This is because they have exhausetd all the merits when they are born and lived in the God realms, hence only the demerits remain. They will be reborn in the lower three realms until they have either accumulated enough merits to be born in the upper three realms again, or until they have exhausted their demerits.

Looking at this context, yes it is possible for the gods and deities to be reborn in the mortal realm, as they are part of the 6 Realms of Existence, but they will take a long time to be reborn as humans.

*****

In the context of those who are reborn because of vows, then they can choose any form of rebirth anywhere they like in any form, in order to best benefit sentient beings. Those reborn this way are known as bodhisattvas. They are beyond the 6 Realms of Existence, and are not bound by Karma and Samsara. Even if they choose to be reborn in the Hell realms to help the hell-beings get out of their suffering (as in the case of Di Zang Wang Pu Sa), they will not experience the sufferings.

*****

So according to Rinpoche, when you say these Deities are being born as humans, it's up to you what you want to believe, because Taoism and Buddhism have very different views. For me, if a deity is said to be reborn in human form, then I'll look at the status of the deity before the rebirth. If the deity is not considered to be a bodhisattva, to me it is impossible to be direcly be reborn as a human being because to be born as a human being is extremely difficult. It requires more merits than being born as a god/deity.

For this topic, yup, Taoism and Buddhism do have their own system in the Deities reborning to human forms.

In Taoism, we can categorised them in 3 simple systems:

1. Voluntary Basis of the Existing Deities
2. Being sent down to the Mortal World by their Supervisors, eg: Jade Emperor.
3. To gain merits in-order to proceed to the next cultivation level.

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1. Voluntary Basis of the Existing Deities

On seeing the mortals in the Mortal World suffering from wars, sickness, cruelity, etc, the Deities in the Heaven decided to dedicated themselves to the mortals, hoping by sharing and giving the right guidance to the mortals, the mortals can get rid of all the necessary sufferings (but not getting them out of Hell Realm, as this will need individual to attain Immortal-hood)

For this system, the Deities will not have any date-line restriction. They will only be summoned back to the Celestial Court if anything urgent happened or they are given another more important tasks by their Supervisors.

In this system, the Deities may not be necessary to be reborn into any human forms. They can just change their original form to any so-called human-form.

2. Being sent down to the Mortal World by their Supervisors, eg: Jade Emperor.

This system will be arranged by the so-called Deities Supervisor, eg: Jade Emperor.

At a certain time, when the Deities Supervisors notice that the Mortal World or the Hell needed some cultivated Deities to help in the giving of teachings and "saving" of the mortals and ghosts, an individual Deity or a group of Deities will be appointed to be reborn into human forms or maybe as Immortal forms to help the mortals.

Usually in this system, such Deities are being sent down due to serious war fighting or fatal diseases spreading.

Why the individual or the group of Deities being appointed? 'cos some of them still need to gain certain merits or need to go thru certain learning again.

3. To gain merits in-order to proceed to the next cultivation level.

For this system, usually are those lower cultivated level Deities.

They will need to go thru the training again in the Mortal World in-order to gain another level of merits in-order for them to attain another level of cuultivation.

To be frank, not all Deities that come down to the Mortal World to gain merits will ended up again in the Deities Ranking Chart, 'cos after reborn, some of them will totally give-up the hope of gaining another cultivation level.

some other reasons are:

- due to no good masters to guide them
- being lead into evil sects
- born into a chaos states or era
- etc...

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Hope that all these explanations do help in clearing some doubts. :P