Reincarnation

Hindus believe in reincarnation and pray to be released from this endless chain. Life’s a bitch, I guess; but for me it is quite the opposite. Sure I can see that life for many is a bitch and not just those who are starving or repressed or in prison but also wealthy people who have a King Midas mentality or people filled with hate like the man in the truck plastered with angry bumper stickers like “Impeach Obama”. Lot’s of unhappiness in the world, to be sure, and if I were one of the unhappy and believed that I would be forced to come back to life again and again, I’d want off the treadmill.
I have a happier version of reincarnation. The myth that I enjoy most is that this life is a virtual reality, that i (as I know myself here in this life) am a character in a kind of video game that I (as I imagine myself outside of life) am playing. i don’t know how the game works, of course. It may be that I can program the game before getting into it or I may be able to manipulate it as i go through life, or My friends outside life can mess around with my life-game. In this notion, as with any game we play here in this life we get better at it the more we play it. That notion fits well with the Hindu belief that they can get off the reincarnation loop by being good. In my notion I can get off any time but as long as the game is challenging, I’d probably want to keep coming back to play it better. Would I want to come back if life sucked or was painful? Sure. The pain and suffering within life is not felt outside of life anymore than the player of a video game feels pain or suffering of the characters in the game being played.