Simply stated, the Buddhist view is that — at the conventional level — we have all experienced thousands if not millions of rebirths in every possible realm we can imagine. Not just as humans but as animals, in the spirit realms, in higher realms and lower realms. We should remember that if we met ourselves in our last lifetime, we wouldn’t know ourselves at all. It’s not me that gets reborn.

If we could see ourselves in the next lifetime, who would that be? I will be a completely different being. But that being is also thinking “me.” So we don’t have to cling too tightly to our personal identity, there is just a stream of consciousness going forward which as long as we do believe in an “I,” it will be endless.

-- Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo