I don't hold any truck with Hoddle's religious views and think that he was an idiot for expressing them but given the billions of people on the planet who believe in karma and reincarnation, why should he be singled out for criticism?
The major religions that hold a belief in reincarnation, however, are Asian religions, especially
Hinduism,
Jainism,
Buddhism, and
Sikhism, all of which arose in India.
They all hold in common a doctrine of
karma(
karman; “act”), the law of cause and effect, which states that what one does in this present life will have its effect in the next life. In
Hinduism the process of birth and rebirth—i.e., transmigration of souls—is endless until one achieves
moksha, or liberation (literally “release”) from that process.
Moksha is achieved when one realizes that the eternal core of the individual (
atman) and the Absolute reality (
brahman) are one. Thus, one can escape from the process of death and rebirth (
samsara).
Jainism—reflecting a belief in an eternal and transmigrating life principle (
jiva) that is akin to an individual soul—holds that
karma is a fine particulate substance that settles upon the
jiva according to the deeds that a person does. Thus, the burden of the old karma is added to the new karma that is acquired during the next existence until the
jiva frees itself by religious disciplines, especially by
ahimsa (“nonviolence”), and rises to the place of liberated
jivas at the top of the universe.
Although
Buddhism denies the existence of an unchanging, substantial soul or self—as against the notion of the
atman it teaches the concept of
anatman (Pali:
anatta; “non-self”)—it holds to a belief in the transmigration of the karma that is accumulated by an individual in life. The individual is a composition of five ever-changing psycho-physical elements and states, or
skandhas (“bundles”)—i.e., form, sensations, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness—and terminates with death. The karma of the deceased, however, persists and becomes a
vijnana (“germ of consciousness”) in the womb of a mother. The
vijnana is that aspect of consciousness that is reborn in a new individual. By gaining a state of complete passiveness through discipline and meditation, one can achieve
nirvana, the state of the extinction of desires and liberation (
moksha) from bondage to
samsara by karma.
Sikhism teaches a doctrine of reincarnation based on the Hindu view but in addition holds that, after the
Last Judgment, souls—which have been reincarnated in several existences—will be absorbed in GHod.
http://www.britannica.com/topic/reincarnation
