The Buddhist Explanation of Rebirth

The Buddhist Explanation of Rebirth

Alexander Berzin
Morelia, Mexico, June 2000

[edited course transcript, supplemented with material from courses given in Munich, Germany, October 2000 and Berlin, Germany, February 2001]

Part One: The Place of Rebirth in Buddhism and the Topic of Mental Continuums

Part Two: The Analysis of How Mental Continuums Perpetuate Themselves

Part One: The Place of Rebirth in Buddhism and the Topic of Mental Continuums

The Importance of Rebirth in the Context of Lam-rim

This evening we are going to be talking about rebirth, a topic that is central to Buddhism. I think it is very important to acknowledge that. Why is it important? Let’s examine some of the reasons.

If we look at the lam-rim -- the graded path to enlightenment or, more specifically, the graded pathway minds leading to enlightenment -- it speaks about the pathway minds of persons of three levels of motivation. The first level motivation is to aim for a fortunate rebirth. If we don’t believe that there is such a thing as rebirth, then why would we possibly aim for a more fortunate one? That wouldn’t make any sense. The second level is to aim for liberation. Liberation from what? Liberation from uncontrollably recurring rebirth, which is what samsara is referring to. So, if we don’t believe that rebirth exists, why would we want to get liberated from it? That wouldn’t be an issue at all. And if we look at the advanced level of motivation, then we are aiming to become a Buddha and we are aiming for that in order to be able to help everybody else overcome and get liberated from uncontrollably recurring rebirth. This is the way the stages of the path are presented in lam-rim and, again, we wouldn’t want to be able to help everybody overcome rebirth if we didn’t believe in rebirth.

Now, some nontraditional Buddhist teachers tend to serve “Dharma-Lite” like “Coca-Cola Lite,” rather than “The Real Thing” Dharma. And so, with Dharma-Lite, we water down these levels of motivation and, instead of aiming for a more fortunate rebirth, we aim for just making things better in this lifetime. And instead of aiming to liberate ourselves from uncontrollably recurring rebirth, we aim to liberate ourselves from all the problems and difficulties we may have in this life. And becoming enlightened is not in order to be able to liberate everybody else from uncontrollably recurring rebirth, but to liberate everybody else from their problems in this life. This is the “Dharma-Lite” version of the three graded levels of motivation in the lam-rim.

[See: “Dharma-Lite” Versus “The Real Thing” Dharma.” See also: Comparison of the “Dharma-Lite” and “Real Thing” Dharma Versions of Lam-rim.]

Some people, of course, prefer “Dharma-Lite,” but it’s not “The Real Thing.” And, although “Dharma-Lite” may be helpful, since certainly we do gain benefits from practicing Buddhism in this way without taking into consideration rebirth, the initial and intermediate levels of motivation tend to resemble therapy, trying to make things better and not to have any problems in this life. Then the “Dharma-Lite” advanced level of motivation comes to resemble social work: “I’m going to go out and help others get rid of their problems in this life.” All of that is very nice, and Buddhism has a lot of very helpful suggestions that can be of benefit in a process of therapy and training for social work, but I think this is really short-changing Buddhism. Buddhism offers much more than this. So, we need to appreciate why it is so important to work on ourselves within the context of rebirth.

The Importance of Rebirth for Appreciating the Precious Human Life

First of all, why would we want to work for a more fortunate rebirth? Buddhism is not talking about aiming to be reborn in heaven as our ultimate goal and that everything there is going to be really nice and wonderful and we will have eternal happiness. That is not the reason for aiming of getting a more fortunate rebirth in Buddhism, and it is not the ultimate goal. But rather, we are working to develop ourselves to the point at which we overcome our problems and shortcomings – and not just those of this lifetime -- and realize our fullest potentials, so that ultimately we can benefit everyone to the fullest degree possible. This is going to be a very long process.

Chances are that we are not going to finish this process in this lifetime. So, the spiritual path is something that we would naturally want to continue beyond this life. It is not that we are running a race and we just want to see how far we get before we drop dead; we want to reach the finish line. But, if we don’t think in terms of rebirth, then it is very easy to get quite discouraged as we become older and face our deaths, if we haven’t made terribly much progress. This is because, let’s be honest, most of us are not going to make tremendous progress in our lifetimes, because we are very busy with other things and very few of us can devote twenty-four hours every day for the rest of our life to Dharma practice. Also, when we look at how we make progress, it is never linear: it’s not that it is going to get better every day. Rather, it will always go up and down. This is natural; this is how life is, isn’t it? Some days it goes well; other days we’re in a bad mood and it doesn’t go well at all. That is going to happen all the way until we become free from samsara.

So like this, if we think in terms of rebirth, then it helps us to have a longer perspective and we don’t get so uptight that “I’m not really making fantastic progress now.” If we can continue having what Buddhism calls “precious human rebirths,” then eventually, with enough hard work, we will reach our ultimate goals of liberation and enlightenment. A precious human rebirth is one in which we have a respite from all situations in which we would have no freedom to practice the Dharma and one in which we have all the enriching factors that give us the fullest opportunity to practice. Therefore, the provisional goal we need to aim for first is ensuring that we continue to gain precious human rebirths in all our lifetimes until we become liberated beings.

[See: General Introduction to the Initial Scope Teachings of the Graded Path (Lam-rim): Day One.]

Also, if we look at the teachings on “the four thoughts that turn the mind to the Dharma,” the first of these, appreciating the precious human life, emphasizes appreciating the difficulty and rarity of gaining such a birth. This not only implies that, in the future, we can take many other types of rebirth besides a precious human one and that we need to build up the causes for such a rebirth; it also implies the existence of past lives. After our immediately preceding life, we could have taken many other types of rebirth, for instance rebirth as a tiny bug. And so we need to appreciate what a wonderful opportunity we now have. It is significant, then, that rebirth is completely essential for this point about appreciating the precious human life, and that it is counted as the first thought that turns the mind to the Dharma.

[See: The Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind to the Dharma.]

Furthermore, thinking of continuing to gain further precious human lives in the future is very important for tantra as well; otherwise, there’s the danger of self-deception while practicing tantra. The highest class of tantra, anuttarayoga tantra, teaches that it is possible to gain enlightenment in this lifetime. A lot of people are very attracted to that because they think, “Now I don’t even have to consider rebirth because that’s irrelevant in tantra: there’s enlightenment in one lifetime. Great!” This is a big mistake, because even following the most advanced practices of tantra, the chances are that we’re not going to reach enlightenment in this lifetime. It is very, very rare -- possible, but incredibly rare.

So, as in sutra practice, if we have the understanding of rebirth, we don’t get discouraged. We think instead, “I’m going to try for enlightenment in this lifetime. But if I don’t reach it in this lifetime, that is not the end of the world, there is rebirth; I’ll keep on trying next time.” As the saying goes, and this actually comes from pre-Buddhist Indian Upanishadic thought: “There is no loss of a beginning once made.” Do you follow that? If we’ve made a beginning, if we’ve made a start of something, it’s not going to get lost, because we’ll be able to continue in future lives. This is general Indian thinking, not just Buddhist, and it’s quite relevant here.

Also, one of the main features of anuttarayoga tantra is purifying, in the sense of ridding ourselves, of samsaric death, bardo and rebirth. Bardo is the in-between state between death and rebirth. Anuttarayoga gives a very detailed analysis of how that process works and it entails practices that imitate death, bardo and rebirth. If we don’t actually believe that rebirth takes place, why would we want to practice purifying death, bardo and rebirth? What in the world are we doing? Without conviction in rebirth, the whole anuttarayoga tantra practice becomes a game. So, all of that is one point.

The Importance of Rebirth for Understanding Karma

The second point concerning why it is so important to think in terms of rebirth is for gaining a proper understanding of karma. That’s because the results of our actions mostly do not ripen in this lifetime. For example, we might practice really hard and meditate every day, do hundreds of thousands of prostrations and all these sort of things, and then we get cancer and die a slow, painful death. Obviously, we can get very discouraged if we expect that the results of our actions are going to ripen in this lifetime.

Then we look at a corrupt official who is cheating everybody and becoming fabulously rich. Such a person might never get caught and live his whole life in extreme wealth and power, so where is karma? It doesn’t have to be a government official, it can be a business person.

Now, of course, some of our actions may ripen in this lifetime, especially when they are done with an extremely strong motivation, whether positive or negative, but most of them ripen in future lives. In fact, most of what we experience in this life is not the result of what we have done in this lifetime, but are the result of what we have done in past lives.

I need to qualify that, though. There are certain things that we do in this lifetime, like stub our toe on a table in the dark, and then we experience our toe turning black and blue and feel intense pain as a result. We shouldn’t think that Buddhism is denying that this type of physical cause and effect doesn’t work during this lifetime. But, we can work very hard to get a good university education and then not find a well-paying job or end up driving a taxi. It doesn’t follow simple cause and effect, does it, that just because we get a good education that we’re going to get a good job? Whether we get a good job or not is dependent on many other karmic factors from previous lives. So, it is very important for the understanding of karma and cause and effect to think in terms of rebirth. It is not that it is merely helpful; it is absolutely necessary. Otherwise, the whole discussion of behavioral cause and effect does not make sense at all.

Without bringing in karma, we are left with a very different view of what happens to us in life. We went to university and then we got a job or maybe we didn’t get a job. Well, what would that have depended on? We might think that it depended on luck or fate, or maybe it depended on God’s will. Buddhism says that there are many problems with each of these proposals. The Buddhist presentation of rebirth and past lives, on the other hand, is a way of explaining what is happening to us now that not only makes sense, but also gives us some way to affect what will happen to us in the future.

We could in fact live thinking that everything that happens is just on the basis of luck, fate or God’s will. There are certainly many societies that think that way. But believing like that doesn’t leave very much room for affecting what happens to us. Will wearing a lucky charm around our necks really change our luck? If everything is in God’s hands, then even if we follow commandments, disaster might still strike us. If that happens, is it satisfactory just to trust in God’s wisdom and accept His will? And if what happens to us is predetermined by fate, there is nothing we can do to change what happens, is there? Buddhism says, on the other hand, that we need to take responsibility ourselves for what happens to us – although the results of our actions might not be visible in this lifetime.

[See: The Mechanism of Karma: The Mahayana Presentation Except for Gelug Prasangika.]

The Importance of Rebirth for Opening Our Hearts Out to All Beings

The next point why rebirth is important concerns the meditations for developing love and compassion, starting with recognizing everybody as our mothers. Now, “The Real Thing” Dharma version is recognizing that all beings have been our mothers in previous lives. The “Dharma-Lite” version is that, well, anybody could take us home and be kind to us and give us a place to stay and feed us like a mother would do. Anybody in this room, anybody on the street, anybody could be like that to us.

There’s no question that this “Dharma-Lite” version is very helpful. It enables us to see that everybody has the possibility to be kind to us and we could be kind like that to anybody as well. We could take anybody home and feed them, as if we were their mother. This type of meditation opens our hearts out to other people. But even within people, it is limited pretty much to grownups. We don’t really feel that the baby could take us home and take care of us and feed us, or that the baby could act like our mother. We might reply, “Well okay, maybe not now, but when the baby grows up, it could act like a mother toward me, and I could certainly take care of any baby now as if it were my own child.” But then what about cockroaches or mosquitoes? It is very difficult to apply this type of meditation to non-humans. Could we sincerely feel that the cockroach could be like a mother to us and take us home and feed us, or that we could be like a mother to the cockroach and take the cockroach home and give it a nice place to sleep and feed it? Any dog could be our pet, but it’s pretty weird to think that this cockroach or mosquito could become our pet, isn’t it?

That is the disadvantage of this “Dharma-Lite” version. Although there is no need to throw away “Dharma-Lite,” it has serious limitations and cannot really get us, by itself, to the full scope of the Buddhist aim of opening our hearts out to all beings, not just to adult humans.

The Importance of Rebirth for Relating Equally to All Others

The next point is that if we think just in terms of this lifetime, we tend to identify quite strongly with our own present situation – that we are whatever age we might be, that we are young, that we are old, that we are a man, that we are a woman, that we are a Mexican, that we are a German, that we are an African, and so on. Identifying with our own situation like that, we would find it is not so easy to empathize with people in other situations. We tend to feel like we can only really relate to other Mexicans, or to other people from our own religious background. Or we feel we can only really relate to people our own age or our own gender or our own sexual orientation. It is absolutely normal that people think like that.

But, if we think in terms of rebirth, then we have been every age. Sometimes we have been young; sometimes we have been old. We have been both male and female. We have been different nationalities. Also, very importantly, we have been different life forms, not always human. Because thinking like this gives us a much broader concept of ourselves, it allows us much more easily to develop compassion for others in situations that are different from what we are experiencing right now. We don’t tend so much to identify solidly with what we are now as our concrete, permanent, absolute identity, because we realize that we have been so many different life forms, etc. This helps us to understand more easily the teachings on voidness (emptiness), that we have no solid permanent identity.

The Importance of Rebirth in Understanding the Nature of Mind

Most significantly, rebirth is really essential for being able to understand the nature of our minds, which is so crucial for our Buddhist development. We need to understand how mind has no beginning and no end, and that necessarily brings in the topic of rebirth, doesn’t it? If we think that our mind only exists in this lifetime, then we have a big problem concerning what is the cause of the mind. Confusion about that issue adversely affects our understanding of voidness -- how the mind exists. So, the understanding of rebirth is essential for being able to gain the understanding of voidness in terms of the causes for mind continuing and so on, and how cause and effect work. It is all tied together. We’ll discuss all of that in detail later in this lecture.

For all these many, many reasons, then, the understanding of the Buddhist explanation of rebirth is really very, very central and important for the fullest practice of Buddhism. This is the case despite the fact that some teachers in the West serve “Dharma-Lite” and some Dharma students in the West prefer it as their spiritual drink.

The Importance of Understanding Specifically the Buddhist Explanation of Rebirth

As we have seen, even the very first step of turning our minds to the Dharma – appreciating the precious human life -- assumes an acceptance of rebirth. Of course, this means accepting the specifically Buddhist explanation of rebirth, not just some other explanation of it. Many non-Buddhist systems of thought assert rebirth – Hinduism, Jainism, Theosophy, certain ancient Greek philosophers, and even some early Christian sects. The explanations in each of them are different.

Also, as Westerners, we’re not coming from a traditional Buddhist background. If we were, we would, as most Tibetans do, just sort of naturally accept that there is rebirth, like we accept that the earth is round. That doesn’t mean that we would necessarily have a sophisticated understanding of rebirth. Most Tibetans don’t. But they at least accept that there is such a thing as rebirth and, if they are going to study the Dharma, then they are interested in learning the Buddhist explanation.

This point, I think, is very important for us Westerners. It would be quite unfair and forced or artificial to insist that before we can really start to study “The Real Thing” Dharma, we would need to understand and accept rebirth. That is unreasonable to expect. But I think that in order to study “The Real Thing” and not just “Dharma-Lite,” we need to acknowledge the central place of rebirth in Buddhism and not deny it and not say, “Well, I can do without it.” And we need to have interest and the intention to learn about and understand the actual Buddhist explanation of it.

To do all that, we need to exclude all the non-Buddhist explanations of rebirth. In other words, we need to acknowledge that the Buddhist explanation is not talking about a static soul that flies from one body to another. And Buddhism is not talking about how we are being dealt lessons to learn from one lifetime to the next and, until we learn each lesson, we cannot go on to the next lesson -- that is not Buddhism. Nor is Buddhism talking about how we are always improving – that our rebirth situation is always getting better and better and we’re going to a higher and higher rebirth. That is not Buddhism. Nor does Buddhism assert that humans can only be reborn as humans, and animals as animals. Also, Buddhism is not saying that there is just one afterlife and that it’s eternal: either you go to heaven or you go to hell -- although there may be a purgatory in between -- and that’s it, forever.

From the beginning, we need to understand that Buddhism does not assert any of these explanations. It is something else. So, the attitude we need to develop is: “I’d like to understand what Buddhism actually teaches about rebirth. I’m interested and I realize that it’s very important.” I think that with that basis, we can start drinking “The Real Thing” Dharma, without having to be satisfied with “Dharma-Lite.” Then, we progress by thinking: “I will provisionally accept the Buddhist explanation of rebirth and work with it, even if I don’t understand it fully yet, and, as I progress along the path, I’ll try to understand it more deeply.”

Continuums as Successions of Moments of Something

What is the Buddhist understanding of rebirth, then? As in many topics in Buddhism, it is not terribly simple, but that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to understand. The issue of rebirth in Buddhism is basically an issue of continuity. But, what do we mean by “continuity?” By “continuity,” we mean “an unbroken succession of moments of something.” It is not like the continuity of a road, which is a spatial continuum; but rather, Buddhism is talking about a temporal continuum – the continuous succession of moments of something over time.

A helpful analogy here might perhaps be the continuity of a movie. With rebirth, we are not talking about the continuum of the actual plastic film on which the movie is printed. But rather, we are talking about the continuum of the movie as it is playing – the succession of one moment after another, with only one moment ever playing at a time. It’s possible to see a whole stream of water – or at least a portion of it – we’re not talking about that. But it’s impossible to experience more than one moment at a time.

A succession of moments has to be a succession of moments of something. Here, in the case of rebirth, what does rebirth imply a succession of moments of? It’s a succession of moments of mind, which means a succession of moments of mental activity. We call it a “mental continuum.” It is sometimes called a “mind-stream,” but that image is too spatial. We want a much more time-oriented image.

Four Types of Temporal Continuums

In general, there are four types of temporal continuums.

The first type is a continuum that has both a beginning and an end. For example, this body that we now have has a beginning, when we were conceived, and an end, when we will die. And it continues from moment to moment while we are alive, without any break. That’s easy to understand.

The second type has no beginning, but has an end. This is more difficult to understand. Examples are uncontrollably recurring rebirth – in other words, samsara – and ignorance or unawareness about how we and everything exists. For the sake of simplicity, let’s call that “confusion about reality.” Samsara and confusion about reality, which fuels samsara, have no beginning. But, they can have an end. When that lack of awareness that is perpetuating our samsaric existence is replaced by awareness – in other words, when that confusion is replaced by correct understanding -- and perfect concentration is maintained without any break on that correct understanding, then our confusion comes to a true end, and so does our uncontrollably recurring rebirth. Correct understanding and incorrect understanding – knowing and not knowing -- cannot coexist at the same moment on one mental continuum.

The third type of temporal continuum is one that has a beginning, but no end. An example would be the disintegration of a glass. When I break a glass, that disintegration, that ending of the glass, has a beginning. It starts when the glass breaks, but it has no end, does it? It is going to go on forever: that glass will always be broken. A million years in the future, that glass will still be broken. It is not going to come back. The disintegration of the glass, then, has a beginning, but no end.

The fourth type is something that has no beginning and no end. A mental continuum is an example of something with no beginning and no end. This is what we need to understand when we are trying to understand the Buddhist teaching on rebirth: we are dealing with a continuum of mental activity that has no beginning and no end.

We need to be careful, here, and make a clear distinction. Any individual mental continuum has no beginning and no end. But, each mental continuum can have two phases. One phase is the samsaric phase, when that mental continuum undergoes uncontrollably recurring rebirth under the influence of confusion about reality, and therefore is filled with the various forms of suffering. This first phase has no beginning, but can have an end. The second phase is the nirvanic or liberated phase, when that mental continuum continues to manifest birth and death, but totally free of confusion about reality, so that it contains no suffering at all.

This second phase will have a beginning, but no end. Different schools of Buddhism offer several interpretations of this second phase. Let us simplify the discussion here and present only one point of view. The nirvanic phase may continue for a limited period as merely being liberated from samsara. During this merely liberated period, the mental activity will still be limited; it will not yet be omniscient. But, eventually, the merely liberated period will come to an end with the attainment of enlightenment and the nirvanic phase will then have an unending period as an omniscient Buddha. And so, if we consider these phases and periods all together, then any individual continuum of mental activity has no beginning and no end.

To understand the Buddhist teaching on rebirth, then, requires understanding what underlies rebirth – the Buddhist explanation of mind.

Mind

What Buddhism means by “mind” is very specific. It refers to a continuum of mental activity – a “mental continuum.” Let’s not go into a detailed explanation of mind here, but rather let’s make it simple. A mental continuum is an unbroken succession of moments of experiencing things. There is a moment of experiencing, followed by another moment of experiencing, and another, and so on. That’s what we’re talking about. And it is an experiencing of things, an experiencing of something. There can’t be experiencing without it being the experiencing of something, just as there can’t be thinking without thinking something.

We’re not talking about a physical or immaterial object that does the experiencing. And we’re not talking about some sort of “tool” that somebody is using to experience things, like a camera to take a photo, or as in: “I’m using my mind to experience this.” It’s not that the mind is some sort of thing that is experiencing something. Because of that, then to understand the Buddhist presentation, it’s perhaps better to use the word mind as little as possible, because it can be confusing. All we’re talking about is the activity alone, the activity of experiencing something. If we want to specify it more, we would have to say it is the “mere, individual, subjective experiencing of things.”

I should add here that we’re not talking about a continuity of experiences that accumulate, so that one person can “have more experiences” than another. We are talking about the mere experiencing of things. “Mere” means that it’s just the simple mental activity of, for instance, seeing, hearing, or thinking something -- these are all an experiencing of something. “Mere” also implies that the experiencing of them does not need to be deliberate, as in: “I deliberately went to India to have an experience.” And it doesn’t have to be emotionally moving. Some people think, “If you weren’t moved, you didn’t really experience it.” It’s not that type.

And merely experiencing something doesn’t even have to be conscious, for instance like experiencing unconscious hostility, experiencing being asleep, or even experiencing death. It is just mere experiencing. For Buddhism, the difference between what Western psychology calls “consciously” and “unconsciously” experiencing something is merely a difference in the amount of attention that accompanies the experiencing. So, we need to specify all of this clearly, because we don’t have any word in our Western language that corresponds exactly to the Buddhist concept of “mind.”

[For a more detailed definition of “mind,” see: An Introduction to Mahamudra and Its Practical Application to Life, Chapter Four.]

Furthermore, the experiencing of something is always individual and subjective. Two people could experience seeing the same movie, but their experiencing of it would not be the same: one may like it, the other may not. How they experience the movie depends on many interrelated factors: the mood they’re in, their health, the people that they are with, even their seats in the movie. Are they sitting in the back or close up, is someone’s head blocking part of the screen, are they comfortable, and so on? So everybody’s experiencing of seeing the movie is going to be different. It is individual.

Feeling a Level of Happiness

Moreover, experiencing something is subjective. This is because accompanying every moment of experiencing something is the mental factor of feeling a level of happiness or unhappiness. This mental factor of feeling a level of happiness or unhappiness is defined as the way in which we experience the ripening of our karma. In every moment, we feel some level of happy, unhappy, or neutral. Even when we are asleep, we experience a neutral feeling that is neither happy nor unhappy.

How does feeling relate to the ripening of karma? Buddhism explains that, as the result of our previously committed constructive actions, we experience something with happiness. As the result of our previously committed destructive actions, we experience something with unhappiness. And as the result of our previously committed ethically neutral actions, we experience something with a neutral feeling that is neither happiness nor unhappiness.

Usually, we committed these actions in a previous life, as we’ve discussed earlier. They are not necessarily the actions we committed in the immediately preceding moment or the actions we are currently engaged in. We might be sitting at our desk and looking at the wall, or looking at a photo of a loved one, and experience seeing this with either happiness, unhappiness or a neutral feeling, depending on an enormous number of factors, not all of which can be accounted for by what we have recently experienced.

Individual Beings

When, in Buddhism, we talk about an “individual being,” a “person” (gang-zag, Skt. pudgala), we’re talking about someone with a mental continuum, regardless of their present life form. In each moment of their existence, they experience something individually and subjectively, with feeling some level of happiness or unhappiness. Because of that, an individual being is different from a rock or a computer. Does a rock “experience” being in the rain? A rock may be eroded by the rain; but does that mean that the rock “experienced” the rain? No, it did not experience the rain with feeling a level of happiness or unhappiness. It’s the same with a computer that is processing data. The computer doesn’t experience the data, does it? Is a computer happy when it is running a program that works efficiently, but unhappy when running a program filled with bugs?

Again, our Western words could be confusing here. How do we define individual beings? How do we define beings that experience things? Buddhism says that they are beings that act with intention -- even if their actions are not conceptually planned. The worm doesn’t have to conceptually plan that it’s going to crawl over there. It just does it -- and it subjectively and individually experiences the immediate and long-term effects of what it does. The worm is an “individual being.”

We could go into a long discussion of whether or not plants and the fungus between our toes are individual beings. This is difficult for many of us to understand, because science classifies plants and fungus as living beings, according to the biological definition of life; but then again, science does not consider ghosts as living beings. Buddhism says the opposite: plants are not individual beings with mental activity, whereas ghosts are. But the bottom line is this: an individual being acts with intention and experiences the results of what it does through the karmic laws of behavioral cause and effect.

This is important because who is undergoing rebirth? It is individual beings, those with intention. They experience things based on intention and experience the results of what they do. Because their experiencing of things -- because their doing of things -- is different from moment to moment, and because the universe functions according to cause and effect, individual beings are experiencing the results of what they do.

And they are individual. Individual beings, and so mental continuums, interact with each other; but they remain distinct, even in Buddhahood. Remember, Buddhism asserts that these mental continuums have no beginning and no end. Each one consists of an unbroken succession of moments of experiencing things forever. During the phase of an individual mental continuum before it becomes enlightened, the individual being is a “sentient being,” someone with limited awareness, because their experiencing of things is mixed with either both emotional and cognitive obscurations, or with just cognitive obscurations if they are already liberated. During the phase of an individual mental continuum after both sets of obscuration are removed forever and it becomes enlightened, the individual being is no longer a sentient being. But it is still an individual being.

[For an explanation of emotional and cognitive obscurations, see: The Five Pathway Minds (Five Paths) – Basic Presentation.]

As for how an individual being exists and the relationship between an individual being and a mental continuum, that brings in the whole topic of voidness and mental labeling, but let’s skip that for the moment.

Buddhism Does Not Assert a Collective Mind

Buddhism does not assert a collective mind, not even in Buddhahood. There is no concept, as there is in some forms of Hinduism, that in the end, all streams flow into the ocean and become “One.” According to Buddhism, individual beings and mental continuums, each with no beginning and no end, always remain distinct, even in Buddhahood, although they interact with each other.

Now, a lot of people have problems with that point concerning Buddhas being distinct beings, so let me explain a bit further. Shakyamuni Buddha and Maitreya Buddha, although equivalent in their attainments of enlightenment, are not the same person. Each has unique connections with different beings. This accounts for the fact that some individuals can meet and benefit from this Buddha and not from that Buddha. This is because each Buddha is a different person: Shakyamuni is not Maitreya. Before becoming enlightened, each interacted with different beings and did different things on the way to enlightenment. This is the reason why some beings have a karmic connection with this Buddha and some with that Buddha. Some persons can be helped by this Buddha, some by that Buddha. If all Buddhas were the same person, there wouldn’t be that difference.

In short, we all have individual, subjective mental continuums -- different movies. That is the easiest image to work with, I think -- different movies. The Shakyamuni movie is different from the Maitreya movie. Each of them has a different history; each is benefiting different beings. But they interact; everybody can interact. Being individual and distinct does not mean being isolated and existing on its own, unrelated to anything.

Part Two: The Analysis of How Mental Continuums Perpetuate Themselves

Continuums Remain in the Same Category of Phenomenon

Let us examine the nature of continuums, since understanding this is crucial for understanding the Buddhist teaching on rebirth.

One of the main qualities of a continuum is that whatever category of phenomenon there is a succession of moments of, it must always remain the same category of phenomenon throughout the entire succession. What does that mean? Let us give an example. We can speak about a continuum of something physical – in other words, a continuum of matter and energy. A seed can transform into a tree, then in a later moment it could be lumber, then a table, then fire and heat, then smoke and ashes. Like this, the continuum remains in the same category of phenomenon: it is always a succession of moments of some form of matter/energy.

Be careful, though. The words we’re using here, change and transform, don’t mean that there is some sort of truly existent “blob” of matter/energy that changes or transforms into various states, but underneath these transformations, remains the same static substratum. It’s not like a piece of clay being molded over and again into different shapes. Nor is it that there are the same unchanging atoms or the same unchanging subatomic particles, which are merely being rearranged to constitute the seed, the tree, the lumber, the table, the fire and the ashes. Nor is it that all these various forms of matter/energy are transformations of a greater static entity: the unchanging sum total of all the energy of the universe. Remember the image of the changing moments of a movie that we see. We’re always talking about a succession of something, but without that “something” being a static entity that endures. Please think about that. This is a crucial point.

The same analysis applies to a succession of moments of a subjective, individual experiencing of things. The type of experiencing changes from moment to moment, transforming into different types, but it still stays basically in the same category of phenomenon: a type of experiencing something. For example, interest in something, like in a television program, can transform into paying attention to it, and then attention can change into annoyance, and that can change into boredom and that into tiredness, sleepiness, being asleep, dreaming, and so on. The type of experiencing is changing from moment to moment, but always staying within the same category of phenomenon. It always remains an experiencing; although, as in the case of a succession of moments of matter/energy, there is no static underlying “thing,” such a “mind” or “consciousness,” that is taking a different form in each moment. Again, remember the analogy of the movie.

The most important point here, however, is that in moments of the succession of something, that “something” does not and can not change categories of what general type of phenomenon it is. Anger cannot transform into a table and wood cannot transform into anger. The next moment of wood cannot be anger. We are talking about two quite different categories of phenomena: matter/energy on one side and subjectively experiencing something on the other.

This is very profound, actually. It underlines the fact that we are talking about something quite different from physical things when we are talking about mind. It means that matter and energy cannot transform into experiencing things. That is very important because most scientists believe that a joined sperm and egg, or various biochemical compounds, can change into life. Buddhism says most emphatically that they do not change into life. We can look at this on a macro or on a micro level.

Comparison of the Scientific and Buddhist Assertions Concerning the Macro and Micro Levels of Continuums

According to science, first the universe evolves and then life emerges. So, matter/energy transforms into experiencing things. Buddhism, on the other hand, takes a much larger view than science does. It explains that matter/energy and experiencing things both have no beginning. In one particular universe, similar to the scientific explanation, the material environment develops first and, once that environment is sufficiently developed so that it can support life, individual beings start to take rebirth in it. Also, in agreement with science, the life forms available for rebirth in one particular universe or, on one particular planet in it, may follow the Darwinian laws of evolution. But, Buddhism asserts countless universes, with no beginning of universes in general, and with each universe going through a cycle of evolution and destruction, but out of phase with each other. So, in terms of beginningless time, we cannot say that the material universe came first and then transformed into the experiencing of things.

On a micro, individual level, many scientists assert that the chemical and electrical processes in an embryo transform into the experiencing of things, with the physical basis coming first. But again, Buddhism refutes this position. The electrochemical transformations in a network of neurons do not create or transform into the individual, subjective experiencing of things. A succession of moments of electrochemical processes and a succession of moments of experiencing things constitute different continuums, because they are continuums of different categories of phenomena. Nevertheless, the two continuums have a relation with each other.

The Relation between Physical and Mental Continuums

Buddhism asserts that a mental continuum must always have a physical basis; it needs a support. On the grossest level, a physical body is needed as a support for a mental continuum. The support, however, doesn’t create what is supported on it. The ground supports the people standing on it, but the ground does not create or transform into the people standing on it, does it?

Perhaps we can understand this relationship between a body and a mind with an example that is not exactly precise, but it’s a nice example anyway: a glass of water. The glass represents the body and the water represents the mind. Now, the glass is necessary as the container for a glass of water, but the glass doesn’t create the water, does it? The glass comes from its own continuum; the water comes from its own continuum. But, you need the glass to contain the water in order to have a glass of water, right? And even when the water is not in the glass, still, basically, water has some sort of form, some sort of shape. That’s because it’s still matter and therefore is shaped by the forces of gravity and other physical forces.

So, we’re speaking here about “the experiencing of things.” The experiencing of things always has to have a support and it’s usually the gross matter and energy of a body, for instance during a lifetime as a human or as an animal. But it could also be just some subtler form of energy, such as in between rebirths or when reborn as a ghost.

If you have water and you pour it from one glass to another, it has a certain form and support in this glass; it has a certain form and support in that glass. But, during the time when it is pouring from one glass to another, you wouldn’t say that it doesn’t exist during that period, would you? It has sort of a subtle form, shaped by the forces of gravity. The same is the case with an individual continuum of experiencing things when it is passing from one body to the next. You can’t say it doesn’t exist then, just because it lacks the container of a solid body. Buddhism explains that during the bardo period in between one life and the next, an individual continuum of experiencing things is shaped by the forces of that individual’s karma.

Now, of course, this is just a rough analogy, since water and a glass are both forms of physical phenomena. As something physical, water can be physically contained inside something. Mental activity, on the other hand, is not some physical thing that can be contained inside another physical object. Mental activity is what a brain and nervous system are doing. Its locus may be a brain and nervous system, but the activity itself is not some thing sitting inside a brain and nervous system. Remember, Buddhism is not talking about a “mind” sitting inside our heads as a kind of “tool” that we, as individual beings, use to know things. But, in a loose sense, we can say that we have a gross physical body that serves as a support for experiencing things.

Now, our physical body changes from moment to moment and constitutes an individual continuum. The physical continuum of our body of this lifetime is one continuum; but, the continuum of our body in a past or future lifetime would be a different continuum, wouldn’t it? Our body of one lifetime doesn’t transform into a body of another lifetime, the way that our body as a child transforms into our body as an adult, does it? But, is it the same with our mental continuum?

Analysis of the Physical Continuum of a Body

Let’s look at little bit more closely at the difference between the physical continuum of a body and a mental continuum. First, consider every atom and every unit of energy, if I may use these words loosely, comprising the body at a specific moment. The body, in every moment, is made up of lots of various types and number of atoms and lots of various types and amounts of energy. Each of these little bits and pieces has its own individual, ever-changing continuum. The continuums of the bits and pieces present in any specific moment in the body continue to be present in the body for only a brief period and then the succession of moments of each may separate and go their own ways.

Some of the bits and pieces may have a continuum over successive generations. The joined sperm and egg of a set of parents transforms into the body of a fetus; the body of a fetus transforms into the body of a baby; the body of a baby transforms into the body of an adult; and part of the body of that adult, a sperm or an egg, together with an egg or sperm from someone else’s body, transforms into the body of someone of the next generation.

But, it is far more complex than that. Each little bit – let’s say each carbon atom or oxygen atom or unit of energy -- has previous phases as parts of something else. It may have been part of some food we ate, or part of some air we breathed, or part of the heat of the sun that we felt on our skin. It could have been part of some other being’s body, either as meat or as our parent’s sperm or egg. But it’s transformed and now has become part of our body of this moment. After a limited period of time as a part of our body, the continuum of that little piece is going to go on and be part of something else. It’s going to now be a part of bodily waste or the kinetic energy of a ball that we throw. It could be part of the body of somebody else: our child or a worm that eats our corpse.

In other words, all these little bits and pieces that compose our body at any given moment are coming from something else and going off and becoming part of something else. Each little bit of matter/energy is just constantly transforming. It can’t be created or destroyed, just transformed. And each little bit has its own individual continuum that lasts forever with no beginning and no end.

Of course, this is a bit of an oversimplification, because in light of the current Big Bang theory and views of how this present universe will end, it isn’t the case that the continuum of a particular carbon atom has no beginning and no end. Also, of course, in the succession of moments of the continuum of a specific carbon atom, the carbon atom changes from moment to moment, especially whenever it bonds with other atoms in a chemical reaction. But, I think you get the idea of what I’m trying to illustrate here.

Maintaining the Individuality of the Physical Continuum of a Body

Our present physical body endures as a whole entity for a finite succession of moments, with a beginning and an end. And while it exists as a whole entity, it retains its individuality, which is quite remarkable. How does it do that if every bit and piece of it is changing every moment? The atoms of the DNA in one cell when we were ten years old are not the same atoms as those of the DNA in some other cell when we are forty. And certainly the atoms of the genetic code of our parent’s bodies are not the same atoms as those of our own genetic code.

All the cells of our body are continually being replaced by new ones. Well, doctors would say that maybe there are a few cells or units from the parents’ sperm and egg that stay part of the marrow or something like that, and they remain like that for an entire lifetime. Actually, Buddhism says this too. Buddhism calls them “white bodhichitta and red bodhichitta.” But none of the rest of the little bits and pieces of the body is there from conception until death. And when we die, even those little bits that were there from our parents change into something else. They become part of a continuum of something else: soil or whatever.

So, in summary, it’s very clear that when we talk about our body, it’s coming from all sorts of other things. There is a continuum of the body as a whole entity – quite a strange one – but there is a continuum that lasts for a certain limited time – a life span. But all the bits and pieces are coming from all sorts of other things. What is part of our body at any one moment is actually just part of this continuum of our body for a short time, but actually it has its own continuum – it was part of something else before and will be part of something else later.

But, what about the experiencing of things, a mental continuum? Is it a similar same type of continuum? This is a very interesting question. This is really where we get down to the question of rebirth. Does part of our mental continuum come from our parents and part of it pass to our children, like some sort of genetic code, or what?

Analysis of a Mental Continuum

A continuum of experiencing things is also made up of many parts. In any moment, for instance, there can be the seeing of an object, such as an item in a store, interest in it, attention on it, liking it, feeling happy about it, desiring it, and so on. These are all parts of one moment of experiencing something. Each of these ways of experiencing something may have a succession of moments as part of one individual mental continuum. On our mental continuum, we could have a succession of moments of seeing something, of paying attention to something, of feeling happy about something, or of desiring something. That “something,” of course, may change, as may the level of attention, interest, happiness, or desire we feel. Some of these ways of experiencing things continue with unbroken succession even when we are asleep, such as feeling some level of happiness, unhappiness, or neutral. For others, such as desire, there is an in-between period when they are no longer manifest. Nevertheless, at those times, Buddhism explains that they still continue on our mental continuum in a subtler form, as a tendency.

But, unlike the atoms of our body, none of these mental bits and pieces will ever have a prior or subsequent phase in which it is part of another mental continuum. It’s not like a carbon atom being part of food, then part of our body, and then part of our bodily waste and eventually part of the soil. It’s not that the happiness we experience while watching a movie was part of the continuum of somebody else’s happiness before we experienced it and will later become part of the continuum of someone else’s happiness. It wasn’t that somebody else’s happiness stopped being their happiness, came into us and continued as our happiness for a while, and then left us and become somebody else’s happiness. It’s very different from the physical matter that makes up our body, isn’t it? A way of experiencing something didn’t come from our parents or from anybody else.

Now, we could say that our ability to experience things individually follows from the fact that our parents were able to experience things individually. We can say that. But, that’s like saying that because our parents experienced being alive, we can experience being alive. It’s true that if our parents didn’t experience being alive and having a body, we wouldn’t be able to experience being alive and having a body. But that’s an irrelevant truism. It’s not what we’re talking about when we analyze mental continuums.

The happiness experienced while watching a movie – the subjective, individual happiness that is experienced – is merely a subsequent period of previous periods of the experiencing of happiness within the same mental continuum. It can only be part of a succession of moments in one continuum! It didn’t come from our parents’ mental continuum and it isn’t going to pass into our children’s mental continuum. It can only be that it has its own continuum within one individual mental continuum – that’s what’s really significant here.

And our experiencing of happiness is individual and subjective, the same as is the case with our experiencing of things in general. We can learn from somebody else’s experience, but our individual, subjective experiencing of the weather doesn’t become somebody else’s individual, subjective experiencing of the weather. It is only another moment of our own individual, subjective experiencing of the weather.

For that reason, when we talk about our “individual mental continuum,” it doesn’t come from the body – in other words, from matter and energy. Each moment of our individual mental continuum has to come from a previous moment of an individual, subjective experiencing of things. And it can’t come from somebody else’s individual, subjective experiencing of things, such as that of our parents. It can only be part of the continuum of our own individual, subjective experiencing of things.

Can a Mental Continuum Have an Absolute Beginning or Absolute End?

We have established that an individual mental continuum can only arise from something in its own category of phenomenon. Although a mental continuum requires a physical continuum of a body as its support, the physical continuum of a body is only a condition for a mental continuum – although a necessary condition. It is not the immediately preceding cause that transforms into a mental continuum. We have also established that an individual mental continuum cannot come from someone else’s individual mental continuum. It must come from itself and continue from itself.

The main question left, now, is whether or not an individual mental continuum can have an absolute beginning – regardless of whether that absolute beginning is at the moment of conception or at some point later when the embryo is sufficiently developed to be able to support mental activity – and whether or not an individual mental continuum can have an absolute end. It is because of these two questions that the discussion of rebirth is very much connected with the discussion of cause and effect and voidness. Can the first moment of a mental continuum, which gives rise causally to the second moment, arise from no cause at all? And can the last moment of a mental continuum, which arose as the result of its previous moment, not give rise to a next moment? Can there be a cause that is not the effect of a previous cause, and can there be an effect that is the not the cause of a later effect? These are the issues we must analyze logically in order to understand rebirth.

Also, if a physical basis cannot be the cause of a mental continuum and if each moment of a mental continuum does not arise from a previous moment of the same continuum and give rise to a next moment, then what is the alternative? Is it that an absolute “nothing” transforms into an absolute “something” at an absolute beginning, and that an absolute “something” transforms into an absolute “nothing” at an absolute end? In other words, does a nonexistent mental continuum become an existent mental continuum at an absolute beginning, and does an existent mental continuum become a nonexistent mental continuum at an absolute end? These are important questions to answer when considering the ethical implications of issues such as abortion, suicide and euthanasia.

Buddhism answers all these questions by saying that there cannot be an absolute beginning or an absolute end to a mental continuum. Just as science asserts that matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed; Buddhism asserts that individual mental activity likewise can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed.

Recall that the physical continuum of a body -- or of some subtle energy in between lifetimes -- is merely a necessary supporting condition for a mental continuum, and nothing more. Now, the functioning of a particular body may support a mental continuum for a certain period of time. When a particular body stops functioning and can no longer support a particular mental continuum, Buddhism explains that this mental continuum continues with a different physical basis – first a subtle one and then another gross body. The mental continuum does not simply end when its present physical support stops functioning, because the physical support of a mental continuum is not the cause for the mental continuum to continue. As a form of matter/energy, the physical support is merely the supporting condition, as was just stated. The cause for a mental continuum to generate another moment of itself must be a way of experiencing things that is part of that same continuum. Nothing else makes sense.

The Perpetuation of an Individual Mental Continuum

According to the Buddhist explanation, three ways of experiencing things cause an individual mental continuum to generate a next moment during its samsaric phase, either in general or specifically at the time of death. These are (1) craving, (2) an obtainer disturbing emotion or attitude, and (3) a karmic impulse or urge that actualizes further existence – usually translated as “craving,” “grasping,” and “becoming.” These constitute three of the twelve links of dependent arising, a profound topic that explains the mechanism of samsara – uncontrollably recurring rebirth.

[See: The Twelve Links of Dependent Arising, Day Three.]

First, based on feeling some level of happiness, there is the disturbing emotion of craving. Craving may be (1) for not being parted from the ordinary happiness we are presently experiencing, or (2) for being parted from the pain and unhappiness we are presently experiencing, or (3) for a neutral feeling we are presently experiencing to survive and not to degenerate. As explained before during our general discussion of experiencing things, the craving does not need to be conscious. While asleep or even in a coma, we may still experience unconscious craving for the neutral feeling we are presently experiencing not to degenerate.

One or more of several different types of obtainer disturbing emotions and attitudes then follow, based on experiencing craving. They are called “obtainers,” since they obtain for us further existence with a body and mind tainted by unawareness of reality. The most basic of these obtainers is a deluded outlook toward our body and mind, with which we identify a seemingly solid “me” with some aspect or aspects of the two, or regard them as truly “mine.” For example, we may identify with our body or our relatives and, based on that, not want to ever be parted from them.

[See: A Deluded Outlook toward a Transitory Network.]

Craving and an obtainer disturbing emotion or attitude bring on a karmic impulse or urge that actualizes further existence. Somewhat like an urge to survive, this karmic urge actualizes further existence by activating the karmic aftermath of our previously committed karmic actions. “Karmic aftermath” refers to the karmic potentials, tendencies and constant habits imputable on our mental continuum. Consequently, our mental continuum generates a subsequent moment of itself, for instance the first moment of a next life. For short, let’s call this further existence urge a “survival urge.”

If you think about it, it’s very difficult to drown yourself by sticking your head in a sink full of water. Why? It’s because automatically, instinctively, you take your head out of the water. In the West, we might explain this in terms of a survival instinct or a survival reflex. Buddhism explains it with these three ways of experiencing things – craving, an obtainer emotion or attitude, and a survival urge.

During the samsaric phase of a mental continuum, then, certain disturbing emotions and attitudes and karmic urges account for the perpetuation of the continuum. During the nirvanic phase of the mental continuum, when the continuum of all disturbing emotions and attitudes, as well as karmic urges, that were parts of that mental continuum have come to an end, two other aspects of experiencing things that are parts of that continuum cause the continuum to keep on generating next moments. These two, in reference specifically to the enlightened phase of a mental continuum, are (1) untainted great compassion to help free all beings from their suffering and (2) the enlightening influence that a Buddha exerts to help bring about their liberation – sometimes translated as “Buddha-activity.”

Summarizing the Logic behind the Self-Perpetuation of a Mental Continuum

Let’s summarize the logic behind these points concerning the perpetuation of a mental continuum, for instance concerning the samsaric phase. If moment one of a mental continuum produces moment two and moment two produces moment three, because moments one and two both contain craving, an obtainer, and a survival urge; then why shouldn’t moment three produce moment four? It must produce moment four in the continuum because moment three also contains craving, an obtainer, and a survival urge. This must be the case even if moment three is the moment of death. It makes no logical sense for cause and effect to operate throughout an entire succession of moments of a continuum, but not to operate in the first and last moments.

Similarly, a Buddha’s compassion never ends. If each moment of a mental continuum during its enlightened phase has great compassion for all beings, there is no reason why each moment will not produce a next moment.

Remember, we are not talking about the physical continuum of the body here. Even after death, the physical continuum of the atoms of the body will continue, although the body can no longer serve as the support of the mental continuum. But, just as the physical continuum of a sperm and egg cannot transform into or give rise to a mental continuum, likewise a mental continuum cannot transform into or give rise to the physical continuum of a corpse. As we have already discussed, a mental continuum must remain a continuum of the same category of phenomenon.

The Individuality of a Mental Continuum

When we say that we have an individual mental continuum -- a succession of moments of experiencing -- and it is subjective, what do we mean by that? Is there something findable on the side of the mental continuum or on the side of its supporting physical continuum that gives it its individual identity or establishes that identity by its own power? Could it be a personality, fingerprints, or DNA that, as an individual defining characteristic mark, makes the continuum “me?”

Well, all the atoms of the fingerprints are changing throughout our life and so are all the atoms of the DNA in the cells. We can have an operation and have our fingerprints changed; we can have genetic therapy and have our DNA altered; we can change our personalities through intensive therapy or meditation training, or dementia may change it for us. So, what could that findable defining characteristic be? Buddha made a big point about this: there is nothing findable on the side of the mind or body that is solidly there, substantially, never changing, independent of everything else, and which, by its own power, by itself, establishes our individual identity. And yet, you are not me and I am not you. Everyone is an individual. How can that be?

There are two models for how a temporal continuum could continue and maintain its identity: the conveyor belt model and the movie model. Buddhism refutes the conveyor belt model in which there is a temporal continuum of a solid, substantial, unchanging, permanent “me” going from one moment to another -- through one moment of experiencing to the next moment of experiencing -- like a piece of luggage moving on a conveyor belt at the airport. It is not that now we are in this experience, now in that experience – the same identical “me”: “Here is a picture of ‘me’ in Rome; here is a picture of ‘me’ in India,” like a suitcase going further down the temporal conveyor belt of life. It’s not like that, despite the fact that most of us think like that and it feels like that, and so, unfortunately, with unawareness of reality, we believe that this model is true.

The more accurate model is that of a movie. Remember, with the movie analogy, we are talking about what is showing, what you see, not the strip of plastic. There is nothing solid there with what we see; everything is changing from moment to moment. We can label the film, we can give it a name and call it “Star Wars.” But a movie is not its title, and yet a movie does conventionally exist. The conventionally existent movie is what the title for it refers to. There is nothing findable on the side of the conventionally existent movie that maintains its individual identity as “Star Wars.” The title doesn’t appear with the showing of each frame. The movie retains its individual identity as “Star Wars,” simply by the force of the label “Star Wars” that can validly be imputed on it. And it retains this identity regardless of where or when it is screened and which copy of it is screened. That’s quite remarkable, isn’t it?

Likewise, we can label as “me” this mental continuum of the subjective experiencing of things, but there is no solid findable “me” inside that mental continuum, or inside the continuum of its supporting body, that makes the continuum “me.” All that is present is an individual, subjective experiencing of things, which can be labeled as “me,” and that “me” would refer to the conventionally existent “me.” And that conventional “me” retains its individual identity regardless of where or what it does, or when it does it, and even regardless of which body it does it with. Again, it maintains its individual identity as “me” simply by the force of the label “me” that can be validly imputed on it. But to understand this more deeply, we need to clarify the distinction between a conventional “me” and a false “me.”

The Conventional “Me” and the False “Me”

We do conventionally exist. It is certainly true that I am sitting here; I am writing this page; I am reading this page. It’s not that someone else is doing it who is not “me,” or that no one is doing it. However, during each moment of the unenlightened phase of a continuum of individually and subjectively experiencing things, the mental continuum automatically arises with a feeling or a sense of a solid, unchanging, permanent “me,” separate from the act of experiencing something and existing as the one who is experiencing it. Instinctively, it feels like, “I’m experiencing it.” “I just experienced a terrible time.” “I just experienced a wonderful meal.” It actually feels like that, doesn’t it? It’s as if we were that piece of luggage moving down the conveyor belt of time.

But, although it feels like there is a solid “me” inside us – if we may use that very strange way of expressing it – there actually isn’t one there at all. What we feel is just a confusing feeling. Based on that feeling that I am a solid “me,” however, then, before liberation, we believe that what we feel corresponds to reality. Then, with further unawareness and confusion, the feeling arises that, in order to make this solid “me” secure, “I” have to gather around “me” and possess things that “I” like and “I” have to get rid of those things that “I” don’t like. So, we experience longing desire, greed, hostility, and anger as parts of our mental continuum of experiencing things. Based on those disturbing emotions, we compulsively act them out and “bam,” what do we get? We experience all the sufferings of samsara, uncontrollably recurring rebirth filled with problems.

Such a “me” – a solid, findable “me” – however, does not refer to anything real. The feeling that we exist as a solid, findable “me” is known as a “dualistic appearance.” It is dualistic in the sense that it does not accord with reality, because there is no such thing as a findable “me.” That findable “me” is known as the “false ‘me,’” and a conventionally existent “me’s” total absence of existing as a false “me” is known as the “voidness” (emptiness) of the conventional “me.”

[See: Introduction to Voidness (Emptiness) and Mental Labeling.]

The Conventional “Me” Lacks Any Solid Identity

Not only is there no such thing as a findable “me” on the side of a mental or physical continuum, with findable defining characteristics that, by their own power, establish our identity as an individual “me.” But, even further, the conventional “me” lacks any solid, permanent, unchanging identity as a human being, as a male, as a female, as an insect or a fish, as a Mexican, a German or an Indian. There is no findable defining characteristic on the side of the conventional “me” making it have the solid identity of a human and so on.

Nevertheless, there is a conventional “me” and it is individual. It sustains an individual conventional identity by a sensible sequence of frames of experiencing something. A movie maintains its conventional identity by the fact that there is an orderly story line. The sequence of frames and scenes makes sense. It is the same thing with the individual subjective experiencing of things. The orderly continuity of its “scenes” is maintained by its individual karma – interacting, of course, with the karma of everyone else and the physical dynamics of the universe. But the karma, too, is also not findable on the side of the mental continuum or its supporting physical basis – just as the plot of a movie is not findable in each frame of the movie.

So, what is it that establishes “me” as an individual “me?” All we can say, then, is that what establishes “me” as the individual “me” is merely the fact that the label “me” refers to the individual “me,” based on its being validly imputable on an individual orderly sequence of moments of subjectively experiencing things. This is the case, despite the fact that there is nothing findable on the side of the continuum of moments or on the side of the orderly sequence that makes “me” “me.” In other words, other than “me” being what a validly imputable mental label refers to, there is nothing findable that we can say establishes our individual identity as “me.” It’s just like there is nothing findable on the side of the continuum of moments of a movie or on the side of a plot that establishes the movie as “Star Wars.” What establishes the movie as “Star Wars” is merely the fact that the label “Star Wars” refers to the movie “Star Wars,” based on its being validly imputable on an individual orderly sequence of movie scenes.

[For more detail about karma, see: The Mechanism of Karma: The Mahayana Presentation, Except for Gelug Prasangika.]

The Consequences of Understanding the Individual “Me” in Terms of Mere Mental Labeling

All of this is, admittedly, extremely difficult to understand. But it is really very profound, because, even if we understand it a little, we can start to look at individual beings in terms of both what they conventionally are at the moment and as mental continuums. We don’t look at someone as simply “human” or “insect,” or as “my uncle Fred” or “Fifi the poodle,” or as “male” or “female,” or this or that age. We also see them as an individual “me” validly imputable on an individual mental continuum that, because of its karma, is associated at present with this bunch of atoms in this bodily form. Understanding this is central to understanding the Buddhist explanation of rebirth.

With rebirth, we’re not talking about a solid “me” with a fixed solid identity that is taking rebirth. It is not that “Alex” is now reborn as “Fifi the poodle.” Rather, we’re talking about a succession of moments of experiencing things, which follows a story line based on karma and which extends over countless lifetimes. For this number of scenes, it’s continuing by being supported on the physical continuum of this particular human body. And this physical continuum is, of course, maintained by the individual physical continuums of all the atoms and energies that come in and out of it.

The conventional “me” is labeled temporarily with the name “Alex,” and “Alex” validly refers to the conventional “me” while it is validly imputable on the continuum of this physical basis. Buddhism is never denying this. But, after a while, the mental continuum may be supported on the basis of the physical continuum of a dog’s body. During that phase of this individual mental continuum, the conventional “me” could be validly labeled as “Fifi.” And “Fifi” will now be the conventionally correct label that refers to this individual conventional “me” labeled on this individual mental continuum.

Even deeper than that, regardless of any particular rebirth and what name it can be temporarily labeled with, the individual mental continuum can be validly labeled as an individual “me,” with no beginning and no end.

That’s what Buddhism is talking about with rebirth: nothing solid running through from lifetime to lifetime. Nevertheless, despite that fact, individual continuums of the subjective experiencing of things do conventionally exist. My experiencing of something is not your experiencing of it; and “I” am not “you.”

Summary

So, there is a very important distinction here between having a permanent identity and being individual. I am not you. My experiencing of things is not my parents’ experiencing of things. A mental continuum of experiencing things is individual and subjective, and it extends over zillions of lifetimes, with no beginning and no end. Moreover, a continuum of experiencing of things is not fixed as being a human one, or a female one, or a cockroach one. Nevertheless, the mental continuum is individual, and the physical continuum of the particular type of body that supports it in any particular lifetime is the result of karma -- the result of what we do in response to what we experience.

So, when we talk about rebirth in this way of explaining it, what is it that continues from lifetime to lifetime? It is the individual subjective experiencing of things, with an individual conventional “me” as what can be labeled onto it to organize and refer to it – and not the label “me” itself, but rather what the label “me” refers to.

Additional Detail from the Anuttarayoga Tantra Presentation of Rebirth

If we look at the explanation in the highest class of tantra, anuttarayoga, it speaks about different levels of experiencing things. And, in this context, it speaks about the subtlest level of experiencing things. This subtlest level of mind is usually called the “clear light mind.” Also, there is the subtlest life-supporting energy, which is the subtlest physical continuum that supports the experiencing of things. The subtlest mind and subtlest energy are inseparable and are actually two ways of describing the same phenomenon – but that is perhaps a bit too complicated to go into now.

[See: Relationships between Two Objects in General.]

So, ultimately, this is what continues with no beginning and no end: an individual continuum of the subtlest level of experiencing things, inseparably with an individual continuum of subtlest life-supporting energy and an individual continuum of a conventional “me” imputable on their succession of moments.

Although the continuum of these three goes on with no beginning and no end, the continuums of some other things also come along with no beginning. But these can have an end. They are an individual continuum of unawareness or confusion about reality and an individual continuum of karmic aftermath from committing actions motivated by the disturbing emotions and attitudes that derive from that confusion. A continuum of confusion is a continuum of a way of experiencing things; while a continuum of karmic aftermath – namely, karmic potentials, tendencies, and constant habits – is a continuum of something imputable on a mental continuum, as is the case with the continuum of a conventional “me.”

The continuums of confusion and karmic aftermath can come to an end because it is possible for the experiencing of things to be continuously accompanied by correct understanding of reality. Correct understanding and incorrect understanding of reality are mutually exclusive. They cannot occur simultaneously in one moment of a mental continuum. And since correct understanding has the backing of logic, an unbroken continuum of correct understanding can displace a beginningless continuum of confusion in such a way that confusion never recurs.

Because uncontrollably recurring rebirth – or samsara – occurs when a mental continuum is tainted with a continuum of confusion and karmic aftermath, then when these two tainting continuums come to an end, so does the samsaric phase of the continuum. Within the nirvanic phase, once the continuum of karmic constant habits comes to an end, the enlightened period begins and continues with no end. What endures, then, through the samsaric and nirvanic phases is the package of continuums of an individual clear light mind, individual subtlest life-supporting energy, and an individual conventional “me” imputable on them.

[See: The Twelve Links of Dependent Arising: Day Three.]

Implications

If we can start to think of ourselves in terms of a beginningless and endless continuum of individual, subjective experiencing of things, then if we don’t rid our mental continuum of confusion in this particular short lifetime, we will naturally want to continue in our future lifetimes. This is because we realize that our individual mental continuum will definitely go on with further lifetimes. So we would naturally want those next lives to be with the best circumstances so that we can continue working to rid our continuum of confusion.

Also, if we are able to conceptualize our entire continuum over beginningless lifetimes, then all the teachings on karma start to make much more sense. We understand that the rebirth state we now have and all the things we are subjectively experiencing during it are based on our previous karmic actions from many, many lifetimes and the continuous ripening of the continuum of their karmic aftermath imputable on our mental continuum.

And, if we understand that continuums of individual, subjective experiencing of things – whether our own or anyone else’s – lack any solid, unchanging identity as a human, a cockroach, or whatever; then when we see a cockroach, we realize that, as an individual being, it has taken rebirth in many, many different life forms. We realize that we, too, have taken innumerable life forms in previous lives. So, obviously, at some time, this being crawling on the bathroom floor must have been my mother. Because of the ripening of its individual karma, this individual being, in this lifetime, happens to be supported by the physical continuum of a cockroach body. But our mental continuum undoubtedly has also been supported at some time by a physical continuum of a cockroach body. This insight allows us to empathize with the suffering of a cockroach and not to be frightened by it or to kill it. We can relate to it as one individual being to another and, because of that, we can develop compassion for it instead. We might not keep it as a pet, but at least we won’t step on it!

Developing Conviction in Rebirth

So, we can see that when we begin to understand what rebirth actually means in Buddhism, our understanding becomes one of the basic keys for developing many of the further insights. Almost everything in Buddhism is built on this understanding of rebirth. So, first we need to acknowledge the importance of rebirth and then we need to be open to understanding it and want to understand it. Next, after listening to or reading a correct explanation and thinking carefully about it, we get an intellectual understanding of rebirth and conviction in it. But we don’t want to leave it at that; we want to get a visceral understanding and conviction in rebirth.

What is the difference between the intellectual and the visceral or gut level? These are Western categories and Buddhism doesn’t speak in terms of them. I think that this is because Western thought makes a great dichotomy between mind and heart, between intellect and emotions. Buddhism just speaks about different ways of experiencing things, which includes both Western categories. But, if we come from a background influenced by this type of Western thought, then we certainly believe that there is this dichotomy between mind and emotions, and thus between an intellectual and a visceral level of understanding and conviction. And because we believe that this dichotomy is real, we experience things that way. We actually do experience a difference between an intellectual and an emotional or visceral understanding of something and conviction in it. But, how does Buddhism, then, analyze the process of gaining deeper levels of understanding and conviction? That analysis may perhaps shed light on how to go from the intellectual to the gut level.

First of all, the Western distinction between an intellectual and a gut level understanding is not the same as the Buddhist distinction between a conceptual and a nonconceptual understanding. Conceptual cognition is always mental, not sensory. It entails cognizing something through a category in which we place it, such as seeing a wooden object with four legs and a flat top and then cognizing it as a table. Although we may understand some object to be a table, by associating with it a concept or idea of what a table is, conceptual thought does not need to be verbal – it does not necessarily entail saying the word table in our heads. By contrast, nonconceptual cognition of something does not mix the object with a fixed category. Nevertheless, nonconceptual cognition of something may also have an understanding of the conventional truth of what the object is.

I must admit that it’s really difficult to know what nonconceptual cognition and understanding of something actually means. But, in any case, the Buddhist distinction between a conceptual and a nonconceptual understanding certainly has nothing to do with the Western distinction between an intellectual and a visceral understanding. Obviously, we can have a visceral understanding of rebirth while thinking of it through the medium of the category rebirth or through an idea of what the category rebirth means.

Buddhism makes other distinctions that I think come closer to the distinction Western thought makes. This is the distinction between a labored and an unlabored understanding and conviction in something, and then, based on that distinction, further distinctions in the way that things appear to us. Let’s explore these points.

Labored and Unlabored Understanding and Conviction about Something

When we cognize something with a labored understanding and conviction about it, we need to build up to that cognition by going through a line of reasoning. For instance, we may look at our computer and then go through the line of reasoning that this is an object that arose dependently on causes and conditions and is affected by other causes and conditions. Therefore, it changes from moment to moment and is impermanent: it will inevitably break and, in each moment, it is drawing closer to its end. When we then focus on the impermanence of our computer, with understanding and conviction in it, our cognition of the computer as impermanent is a labored one. It is also a conceptual cognition, mixing the actual impermanence of the computer with the category impermanent phenomenon.

When we have familiarized ourselves thoroughly, over a long period of time, with the line of reasoning that all conditioned phenomena are impermanent, we will eventually be able to cognize the impermanence of our computer automatically whenever we see our computer or think about it, without needing to go through the line of reasoning. Our unlabored cognition of its impermanence will be with understanding and conviction in it, but will nevertheless still be a conceptual cognition that mixes the actual impermanence with the category impermanent. I think that this distinction between a labored and unlabored understanding and conviction is an important one, but still not exactly equivalent to the distinction between an intellectual and a visceral understanding and conviction.

Still it is important to progress from a labored to an unlabored cognition in order eventually to have a visceral understanding and conviction about something. To do this with regard to rebirth, we need to build up a lot of familiarity with the Buddhist explanation of rebirth, by repeatedly going through the lines of reasoning and points we’ve been discussing here. This is something we do mostly during meditation sessions. Then, we need to practice, over and again, viewing ourselves and others through this category rebirth, based on a labored understanding and conviction in it. We can do this in meditation, while thinking of ourselves and others we know, but we can also do this in daily life when we encounter others – even if we need to take a few moments to remind ourselves of the reasons supporting rebirth. When we are thoroughly familiar with rebirth by having repeatedly gone through the lines of reasoning and practiced seeing ourselves and others in that way; then eventually this way of viewing people and animals will automatically and spontaneously arise. It will be unlabored, although still conceptual, of course.

Automatically, then, we’ll see all beings in terms of each of them being an individual, subjective continuum of experiencing things, validly imputable as an individual “me,” and not just as a woman or a man, or as a dog or a cockroach. We’ll automatically see ourselves, our loved ones and our enemies in that way as well, because we have become so familiar with this understanding and conviction. But, if this is to be a proper understanding, we would not lose sight of who each one conventionally is now.

How Things Appear to Us

And eventually, not only will we see everyone like that, but after a great deal of familiarity with this insight regarding rebirth, everyone will automatically appear like that and seem like that to us. Everyone will appear to us like an individual “me” imputable on an individual beginningless and endless mental continuum, rather than appearing to us as being solidly and permanently just what a photo of them in the moment would reveal. It’s not that others are now appearing from their sides in terms of rebirth. Nor is it that the mind is some sort of “thing” that makes others appear in that way. But rather, automatically that kind of appearance is going to arise as part of our experiencing of seeing anyone.

What does that mean? What are we describing? We are describing a “feeling” of rebirth, which means an understanding and conviction in rebirth, as well as an appearance that it is so – all three of which are automatically arising as part of our experiencing someone in terms of their being an individual subjective continuum of experiencing things. That’s a lot of words, but the main point is that our understanding and conviction, as well as the appearance, will automatically arise as part of our experiencing of encountering others, and it will feel like what appears, what we understand, and what we believe to be true actually are true.

If we and others are not automatically appearing this way to us, then although we might have an unlabored understanding and conviction in rebirth, I think we would still call what we experience an “intellectual understanding.” And when, in addition to an unlabored understanding and conviction in rebirth, we and others automatically appear in terms of rebirth in our experiencing of them; then I think we would call this a “visceral understanding” or a “gut feeling” of rebirth. That’s because it feels like this is really the way it is. Whether or not we call this feeling an “emotion” depends on how we define “emotion,” doesn’t it? That’s why it’s difficult to say that the difference between an intellectual and a visceral understanding is an emotional one.

No Need to Discredit an Intellectual Understanding and Conviction about Rebirth

In any case, going from an intellectual understanding to a visceral understanding and from an intellectual conviction to a gut conviction are not things that just happen magically. It’s also not a matter of going from a conceptual understanding to a nonconceptual one, since that is unbelievably difficult to do. And it certainly is not a matter of going from thinking something to not thinking anything, as if thinking were only verbal and as if what people in the West call “being intuitive” means to stop thinking and just intuitively “feel” something. I think that going from an intellectual level to a gut level is simply the product of familiarity with viewing things, in a certain way, with understanding and conviction. And this starts with labored meditation and practice of viewing ourselves and others in that way.

So don’t worry if you only have an intellectual understanding and conviction in rebirth. That’s great that you have them, so no need to feel uneasy about it. A lot of people complain about their understanding and conviction being only intellectual, but I think it’s a great accomplishment to have an intellectual understanding and conviction about rebirth. The point is to meditate, to familiarize ourselves to seeing ourselves and others in that way, over and over again. And don’t just do this while sitting on your meditation cushion, but practice seeing people on the street, seeing the people in your house, seeing the cockroaches in your bathroom or in the garden, or seeing yourself in the mirror in that way. Through that type of repeated familiarization, eventually everyone will automatically appear to us as existing in terms of rebirth and it will feel like that is so.

Conclusion

Obviously, we really need to take the proper time to digest all these points concerning the Buddhist explanation of rebirth and, obviously, it will take years to digest them fully. The whole purpose of this lecture is to indicate the way in which we analyze and think about rebirth in Buddhism, how we try to understand it, and what the arguments for it are. The whole discussion hinges on understanding continuums, the different types of continuums, and how continuums perpetuate their succession of moments.

If, as a result of this presentation, we take the topic of rebirth much more seriously and think, “This is really important; I don’t understand it just based on this lecture, but this is something that I really need to work on,” then we have gained a great deal. We start to see, if even a little bit, how profound the topic really is – especially these points concerning our body. How does the continuum of this body maintain its individuality if every atom of it is constantly being replaced, coming from something that is not part of this body and going elsewhere to become part of something else? That is really extraordinary.

Next, we start to consider how an individual mental continuum of experiencing things and the physical continuum of the body that supports it maintain their continuities in very different ways. Then we have to put that together with the Buddhist presentation of karma and the voidness of cause and effect, and then the whole topic starts to become really very profound. We start to see, a little more, how this topic of rebirth is really very central for the understanding of how things actually exist.

There is no need to be afraid of including genetics, heredity from the parents, evolution, and so on in this discussion. In fact, these factors make it even more interesting and complex. We can say, “Oh, how interesting,” but it is not just interesting. Understanding rebirth in a way that is harmonious with Western science has profound beneficial consequences for how we deal with life and with our day-to-day experiences. Thank you.

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