Immortality, Reincarnation And Rebirth

by Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche

The Buddhist view of rebirth, as we have seen, refutes the notion of an immortal soul, because it denies that there is anything unchanging in either the physical or mental aspects of phenomena. The Buddha categorised the prevalent theories of body and soul of his time into two distinct miscomprehensions, which we have also touched upon. The first category comprised those that denied that the body and soul were separate — at death, we become extinct, with no after or future life. The other group were those that thought body and soul were totally separate. The body is perishable, but the soul is immortal and continues to survive from one birth to another. The first group he called “nihilists” and the second group “eternalists.” Interestingly, it is a situation not dissimilar to the one we face today, with the humanist materialists, on the one hand, denying the existence of mind or consciousness and rejecting any notion of survival after individual death, and the religious traditions, on the other hand, positing a soul that survives death and continues to exist in one form or another. The Buddhist position on rebirth, on the contrary, is based on the so-called middle view,  which avoids these two extremes, namely, the denial of the continuation of consciousness or mind altogether, and the positing of an immutable psychic principle (atman or soul, or some other descriptor of a greater self). According to the Buddha, both body and mind are subject to continual change, and so even at death what is transferred from one life to the next is not an unchanging psychic principle, but different psychic elements all hanging together, samskaras — memories, various impressions,  and so on, none of which is unchanging in itself.

The Buddhist concept of rebirth, therefore, needs to be clearly delineated from ideas with which it is sometimes conflated, especially the reincarnation idea frequently associated with Hinduism, whereby one returns in a different body but with the same soul. Buddhist rebirth also needs to be distinguished from the ancient Greek idea of immortality and the Christian notion of resurrection, both of which refer to an immortal soul, though they differ in regard to assigning this immortal nature to God. Nevertheless, an unchanging psychic principle that survives death and continues from one life to some other sort of life is inherent in all these ideas.

In Buddhism, that which “reincarnates,” to use that term, is not an unchanging self but a collection of psychic materials. It is not the same soul reincarnating. It is a rebirth. It is the same individual that has come back or taken a new life, but that individual is totally different because everything about him or her has changed. There is only continuity but not identity, in the strict sense.

The Buddha pointed crucially to there being only continuity — each moment’s being neither the same nor different, as stated above,  and to no notion of strict identity. The karmic impressions are transferred from one life to the next, but there is nothing in the collection of these psychic elements that remains the same, in the sense that it could anchor an idea of a surviving identity. The Buddhist scholar Francis Story has  made the same point:

Much misunderstanding of the Buddhist doctrine of rebirth has  been caused in the West by the use of the words “reincarnation,” “transmigration,” and “soul.”

. . . “Soul” is an ambiguous term that has never been clearly defined in Western religious or philosophical thought; but it is generally taken to mean the sum total of an individual personality, an enduring ego entity that exists more or less independently of the physical body and survives it after death. The “soul” is considered to be the personality factor which distinguishes one individual from another and is supposed to consist of the elements of consciousness, mind,  character, and all that goes to make up the psychic, immaterial side of a  human being. . .

The Buddha categorically denied the existence of a “soul” in the sense defined above. Buddhism recognises the fact that all conditioned and compounded phenomena are impermanent, and this alone makes the existence of such a “soul” impossible.

The Buddha, by rejecting the idea of soul, also rejected the concept of reincarnation. He was therefore at variance with many of the  Hindu traditions of India that retained the concept of a soul that survived death and went on to live a series of lives. In the Buddhist view, only a collection of psychic materials is transferred from one life to the next, and that, as with everything else, is subject to change. All physical and mental phenomena are compounded or conditioned, and whatever is conditioned is caused, and whatever is caused is impermanent and subject to change. Nothing can be permanent. Therefore, the Buddhist view cannot be seen as similar to, or in some way compatible with, the other beliefs we have mentioned. It is an alternative to them, which is not to say that it is superior. The Buddhist idea of rebirth is incompatible with the Hindu idea of reincarnation, theories of an immortal soul, and resurrection. It is important to recognise the real difference here, rather than mixing different ideas together.

These various concepts of self or soul that we have, according to Buddhism, are mental constructions and not something that we can go on to find or determine in any real sense, which is why different people have different ideas of what this real self might be. Certain traditions point to the observer itself as something akin to this real self. Buddhism,  though, and particularly the Madhyamaka tradition, negates this view of an observer as well, and so is clearly distinguishable from the direction of particular Hindu traditions, especially the Advaita Vedanta, which claims the presence of a so-called witness consciousness — another notion of atman, or transcendent conception of self — an observer that observes our experiences, feelings, perceptions, and so on, but is not those in and of itself. It cannot be known like a self can because it is not an object of perception; nevertheless, there is an observer there, said to be different from what is observed. From a Buddhist position, apart from its fundamental objection to a soul substance, there is an additional problem here in getting caught up in the idea of such an observer, which is the problem of infinite regress — the observer’s being observed, and another observer that observes that the observer is observing the observed, and so on, going back and back, and really explaining very little. According to Buddhism, nothing becomes any clearer for all this, and it can never be satisfactorily resolved in any case. As far as the observer’s being an observer is concerned, we are conscious beings, and merely through being conscious, we are aware of things, as opposed to being unconscious of them. Following on from here, to be enlightened means to be far more conscious in our waking state than most of us normally are. There is no need to posit an extra entity, a real self, to have the idea of an observer, because the function of consciousness is to observe and be aware. This is why it is named “consciousness” in English, and shepa in Tibetan, meaning “knowing.” Otherwise, we would be unconscious and not distinguishable from inanimate objects.

There is an observer in Buddhism, of course, just not an unchanging “real me” that observes. If there were no self at all, we would not bother to meditate, as there would be no point since there would be no person to benefit from it. Therefore a conventional self is not denied. According to Buddhism, the observer we speak of, the experiencer, is the bundle of functions and attributes described by the five skandhas, and it is through meditation techniques that we inquire directly into this. We look at our body and find that we are not our body and that we are not our feelings or memory, and so on. This something called “me” or “I” is then searched for as a separate entity existing completely independently of our preferences and dispositions, characteristics, and personalities.

Normally we think we have these things, these personal characteristics, but somehow “I” remains different from all the things owned by us. In these self-inquiries, we ask, after disowning all these aspects that we have concluded do not ultimately define us — what is left? Nothing. If we are none of these things — not our memories, dispositions, body,  name, occupation, or any physical and mental attributes — then what are we? Yet we postulate at a deep level something separate from all these things. It is at this juncture that Buddhism states that nobody is there. With  thorough investigation, we find this out; we discover, or realise, “no self.”  We are not non-existing ghostly beings but quite real — just without an inner  essence about which we can say, “Well, this is me.” When we discover that, we realize no self. There are the five skandhas that the conventional self consists of, and that is enough. Why do we need anything more? We can call a table a table without concerning ourselves too much with  something called “tableness.” It is easy for us to see and reason in this way — that the table is not existent in the sense that it has an essence: The table is not the legs or the top. We can tear the table apart and see that there is no “tableness” to it. The table is what we see, with the legs and the top and so forth. The self is no different: we are our feelings, memories, aspirations, fears, and ambitions — all these things that we have are what we are. We are the five skandhas. Discovering that there is nothing there beyond this point, to know that there is no such thing as “tableness,” or “self,” is to realise emptiness or shunyata. Shunyata is not found somewhere else as a separate entity apart from the various existing things.

There is, of course, an observer because there is consciousness. It is the presence of an observer that makes it possible to integrate parts of ourselves and apply them to our own person. A schizophrenic person, for instance, is no longer able to do this. It is doubtful whether schizophrenics,  with so many different identities of self, would be able to integrate anything much, as they are unable to take the position of observing what is taking place within themselves. The integrating faculty of the self is dissolving in this case. Relatively normal persons, even after having meditated on the absence of a real self, will still emerge with a sense of being able to integrate the different parts of their body and limbs. Therefore, quite contrary to the idea that we should completely discard this sense, it is actually very valuable that we retain it. We should endeavour not to lose it.

There is a problem discussing these matters in the way we tend to revert to “thing” language rather than “process” language. The principle of process negates the need to define the observer so insistently as an entity, as we do with “thing” language and philosophies of substance. The process of observation and the construction of a sense of self is a process or many processes. Similarly, the idea of consciousness is often spoken about as if it were static. Something or other is said to be “in” my mind, or “in” my consciousness. It is as if the mind were a container and all the thoughts and mental processes we have were something different. From a Buddhist point of view, though, the mind is not like a container at all, for without these conscious processes there is no consciousness to speak of as a  separate thing.

Obviously, if we assert the imputation of self to be false in the above sense, then logically, the skandhas must be treated in a similar way as a false imputation. If they are defined as “self,” how can they have rebirth within a Buddhist understanding? Again, as with the notion of self, the only thing that is denied is the permanency assigned to the skandhas — nothing beyond that. The skandhas, or the five psychophysical constituents of form, feeling, perception, disposition, and consciousness, do have existence, do have reality. It is the skandhas, apart from the first skandha of the body, that is reborn and together make up the self. Yet, just as the material things that we use and handle have reality, but no underlying essence, so too do the mental elements. Essence is what is not there. Thinking in terms of essence is very ingrained, as demonstrated in the way that we persist in seeing it in material objects. There is no imputation that all that we perceive is totally illusory and has no existence whatsoever. There is simply no underlying or inherent essence. This is the illusion. The illusion is not in perceiving things, or that things themselves are completely nonexistent.

If we are a bundle of processes, then as current dispositions change, our process of consciousness changes, which is precisely the reason that enlightenment is possible. We are not enlightened merely by being alive, but from greater understanding, from greater insight. Understanding all the different aspects of ourselves is what makes us more enlightened. To be enlightened is to be two things: to have less emotional afflictions and to have mental clarity. This is achieved through the practice of meditation and through the cultivation of mindfulness and awareness. And again, the practices of mindfulness and awareness are also processes, processes that allow the mind to transform. At the moment, right now, there may be a lot of confusion, delusions, and obscurations, but this mind, through a process, can become more aware, more conscious, and more insightful, precisely because it is changing. If, on the contrary, it were a fixed thing, it would be unable to change, and whatever nature it had would necessarily remain, making a transformation of consciousness impossible. Therefore,  there is no need to fear this idea of a lack of an underlying, unchanging psychic principle. We will not disappear, or lose anything, or become less in some way. We actually become more because we have gained a  greater understanding of what is involved.