Nature, Reality, & Buddhism

[takso]

Birth And Rebirth

 

For general comprehension, rebirth is not transmigration.  A single soul does not migrate from one physical body to another spontaneously as soon as it matures.  In Buddhism, rebirth refers to the evolution of an individual’s consciousness or stream of consciousness.  This means that the new consciousness that appears in the same person (in the new person after death) is neither identical nor wholly different from the old consciousness, but it is part of a continuum of causation or stream with it.

 

The underlying cause of this persistent reappearance of the personality is the consciousness that remains in ignorance; when ignorance is eradicated, rebirth comes to an end.  For example, a flame is transferred from one candle to another, or the fire propagates from one field to another.  Just as it depends upon the original fire, there is a conditioned relationship between one life and the other; they are not identical, but they are not completely distinct either.

 

Meanwhile, the rebirth may take place from a separate source with several different personalities at some point in time, just as the genetic line changes from generation to generation.  Typically, most individuals were unable to remember each other’s past lives because of the assimilated heritage of the myriad of ancestral sources.  However, some people vividly remember their past life and the whole episode depends on the density of legacy elements as shown below: -