Transcendental Tuesday: REINCARNATION and COTE DE PABLO

The January issue of Prevention has Cote de Pablo on the cover and a lovely Kate Hahn interview with her inside.  She is best known for playing the NCIS agent, Ziva David, on television.


Her character is a former Israeli Mossad liaison, but Cote de Pablo herself is latino, having arrived in the United States from Chile when she was ten.  In the interview, she says:


"I had literally forty-eight hours to learn a monologue in Herbrew.  That was terrifying.  I used to look down on people who were, for example, playing a Latin role, because I could tell that they didn't speak Spanish.  It would get on my nerves.  Then I realized, Oh, God, I'm in that place right now.  Everything I had judgments on has turned around and bitten me in the butt."


In the interview, she describes the warm relationship she has with her mother, despite a difference in religious views.  "I always tell my mom, 'My gosh, when I see you in the next lifetime, how much fun are we going to have?'  But because she's Catholic, she just turns her head away.  She doesn't believe in any of what I think."


Cote says that he believes in reincarnation, but that she doesn't try to fit her belief system under the label of Buddhism or anything else.


The number of books involving reincarnation far outnumber those involving Buddhism, and of course not all Buddhists believe in reincarnation or life after death.  In this space in the last week, I reviewed Raymond L. Atkins' Sorrow Wood, and a long annotated list of other such novels using reincarnation could quickly be compiled.  I'll post one soon.


Anyone looking for a scholarly history of the concept of reincarnation should peruse Joel Bjorling's REINCARNATION: A Bibliography.


Cote de Pablo, by the way, is interesting all the way around.  You should read the complete interview.  She is also an accomplished singer.  Her torchy rendition of "Temptation," from an episode of NCIS, can be found on Youtube at this link.