Reincarnation, Machu Picchu & A Taoist Shrug
Why the next life isn't yours, the Tao doesn't care, and spiritual composting might be the most honest theology going
Reincarnation is one of those great topics in spirituality, isn’t it? You can say anything about it because it can’t be proven either way. That doesn’t stop us pondering upon it, though, eh?
I hope you enjoy today’s article…
“When I’ll be reincarnated, I’ll come back as someone else. That’d just be someone else.
“That’s all that’s happened. You’re not involved. That is just… someone else.”
That’s from English stand-up comedian Ricky Gervais, bless him.
Many folk believe in reincarnation. Some even reckon they remember who they were. There’s a crowd in California, naturally, who say just that.
According to Mr Gervais, they host a “Come As You Were” party each year and dress up as their past lives. In the documentary he watched, two Napoleons showed up, so yeah, at the very least one of those people was telling porkies.
Joking aside, though, he’s on the ball, isn’t he? Even if you are reincarnated, you don’t come back as you. Not really. That’s the part most people miss.
You return as someone else, with no memory, no continuity, no fond recollection of your time as a vegan barista who once kissed a stranger on a night out in Lisbon and wanted to relocate there and open a hand-painted ceramics shop. When you told Joao, though, he ran out of the disco.
If you do come back around into a new human life, it won’t be a Hollywood sequel, not even a B-list Bollywood one. It’ll be a full-on reboot, with a new cast of personalities inside your noggin formed based on early childhood traumas, a different soundtrack, and no reference to the original whatsoever.
I just had a horrific thought: imagine coming back as a Cody Jinks fan. Yikes, I’m getting literal shivers down my spine typing that.
Buddhism, lists, and my Machu Picchu problem
When I first dipped a toe into spirituality, as one does, usually during a quiet nervous breakdown or after a yoga class that got a bit too emotional, I landed square in the arms of Buddhism.
It’s appealing at first. Gentle. Reasonable. A religion where nobody’s yelling, and the gods aren’t lobbing thunderbolts, except for Vajrapani, but he only does it for your benefit, to give you a head-melting spiritual awakening.
But then the lists start. Oh, sweet and holy Mother of Mercy, the lists.
Four Noble Truths. Eightfold Path. Five Hindrances. Seven Factors of Awakening. Ten Fetters. Thirty-Seven Aids to Enlightenment. If you don’t get enlightened, it’s not for lack of stationery.
Still, it boils down to something quite decent: don’t be a dickhead and just be kind. Or, as we’d say in Ireland, be sound. Everything’s connected, folks, so maybe stop shouting at cyclists.
And then there’s the reincarnation part.
I remember thinking, quite sincerely, that’s handy. Because let’s face it, I’m probably never going to see Machu Picchu. Not in this life. I haven’t got the synovial fluid in my kneecaps for it, and my bank account regards ambition with pure scorn. But y’know, maybe in the next go-around, I’ll make it.
Some future me will hike up that fog-cloaked mountain, light up a doobie, and stand there like he’s in a North Face catalog, humming with cosmic awe.
There’s a snag, though: that won’t be me. It might be some backpacking Italian teenager in the year 2421 named Lorenzo who supports Inter Milan (I’m very much a Forza Juventus man) and Hard Bop jazz and has no idea I ever existed. He won’t remember this moment, or this yearning, or the odd ache in my lower back when I think too hard.
And that’s when it all fell apart. If I don’t recall my last life, and my next self won’t recall this one, then what’s the point? Who’s collecting the loyalty points on the LIDL clubcard? It felt less like reincarnation and more like spiritual composting.
Enter the Tao: no name, no form, no nonsense
That’s about when Taoism showed up. It didn’t knock. It just drifted in like the smell of rain before it lands. No declarations. No threats. Just a sly smile and a shrug that said, “You’re trying too hard, lad.”
Lao Tzu, whose name means “Old Boy,” which is gloriously apt, wasn’t concerned with afterlives or pearly gates. He didn’t argue with theologians or write in bullet points. He just pointed at the stream and said, in effect, this is it.
The Tao, unnameable, formless, older than gods and probably bored of your questions, is the source of all things. You are not separate from it. You are not a soul in a meat sack. You are a passing shape in the current. The wave does not fear death, because it was never separate from the sea.
To borrow a line from Lao Tzu:
“He who dies but does not perish has eternal life.”
But don’t mistake that for reincarnation in the Western sense. He’s not promising your soul gets reincarnated as a yoga instructor with great skin.
He’s saying that if you align with the Tao, you realize there was no “you” to begin with. Just Tao, briefly shaped like a person who had strong opinions about chinos and liked burnt toast with Nutella.
Then there’s Zhuangzi, that absolute headbanger, who once dreamt he was a butterfly. And when he woke, he wondered: was he a man dreaming he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was a man?
That’s reincarnation in Taoist terms. Not a journey of the soul but a question of perception. Identity becomes vapor. “You” become smoke in sunlight. And honestly, lads and lasses, to me, that’s a relief.
The blessed relief of not coming back
People cling to reincarnation because the alternative terrifies them.
The ego, that gobby wee tyrant in your head, cannot abide extinction. It wants to go on. Forever, if possible. It wants more chances. More drama. A second season on Apple+. Maybe a redemption arc.
But the Tao doesn’t do personal ego narratives. The Tao flows. Dissolves. Reforms. The Tao doesn’t offer you comfort, but it does give you peace, if you’re willing to dissolve.
Even if reincarnation does happen, it’s not for you. It’s not for continuity. It’s just the Tao playing with shapes again. You’re not coming back. Someone is. Or something. But it won’t remember this, and it won’t be your business.
So maybe the real liberation isn’t in coming back. Maybe it’s in finally showing up now.
Fully. Fiercely. Foolishly aware that this might be the only life you ever get as this peculiar assemblage of memories and breakfast preferences. Yes, boomer, I do like avocado toast, so what, you voted for a fascist to destroy your country.
No encore, no problem
Here’s the part they don’t tell you in the temple brochures:
You will die. You may come back. But you won’t be invited to your own sequel.
And that’s grand.
Because this life, this glorious, absurd, fleeting dance of neurons and quantum emptiness, can be enough. If you’re awake for it. If you drop the hope of being someone else later and start being this someone now.
Let Lorenzo see Machu Picchu. Let the butterfly dream on. You’ve got your own path, your own pint of delicious stout, and your own brief flicker in the Tao.
So tend to it. Mind it well. Sure, look, it’s the only pint you know you’ve got.
I’m Paddy Murphy — a counselor, teacher, and writer with over twenty years of experience helping people face the world without losing their soul. If this piece stirred something in you — if you’re tired of being told to switch off your feelings in order to keep up — I can help you reconnect with what matters. Not as a guru. Not as a brand. Just as someone who believes empathy is still worth fighting for.
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