Hi DNY,
Dark Night Yogi:
For me I think I'd cling less to this life if I knew there was rebirth, and it would make me relax more about personal goals or fantasies of being a rockstar ...if I thought that there would be no rebirth, then it might make me complacent in fixing unfinished business, knots that i need to untie and resolve that may show up in a future life.
Heh, funny how this one used to work exactly the other way around for me. For years, ideas like personal rebirth were high on my list of Beliefs That Turn People Into Sheep, making them complacent and easy to manipulate. You know, that list which also includes Christian heaven and hell, the idea that men have automatic social precedence over women (apparently due to the singular merit of men's external genitalia), the idea that averages are somehow special and preferred, and so on. Any idea which conveys the comfort that all might not be well, but within my little realm of illusions and hopes, I am the lord of all I survey - those ideas which give power away (to other people, to Death in the case of personal rebirth, etc).
I don't care for personal rebirth either way, neither as something that regrettably doesn't take place, nor as some comfortable means for procrastination. What I read in the buddha's sermons on rebirth is only, exclusively the urge to get over this, either way: both to stop fooling oneself into believing that there are innumerable lives available to dump all kinds of unfinished business into, as well as to stop being paralyzed by the idea of personal obliteration, but instead to strongly investigate just how it is to be a living human being here on earth right now - including the rockstar fantasies which are, after all, taking place right now, in the present moment. Fantasies of the future - occur in the present moment. Regrets about the past - happen in the present. This is it. There's
nothing besides. Watch it happen. That's how I interpret the idea of rebirth as presented in the suttas.
One of the few surviving works of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus is his
letter to Menoeceus, which contains the remarkable phrase
death is nothing to us. Compare with the Buddha's peculiar way of stating that Mara, Death, can't locate the mind of an Arahant. Big clues in their own right, I feel.
So I got side-tracked a bit. Anyway: the personal rebirth stuff can be great fuel for practice, either as a source of anger to ride, as in my case, or, as in your case, as a source of tranquility to slow down a bit. As long as it gets one to practice, I see it as a useful thing.
Cheers,
Florian