What is it that is re-born?

by Ven Narada Maha Thera

A part from mind (nama ) and matter (rupa ), which constitute this so-called being, Buddhism does not assert the existence of an immortal soul, or an eternal age, which man has obtained in a mysterious way from an equally mysterious source.

A soul which is eternal must necessarily remain so always the same without any change whatsoever. If the soul which is supposed to be the essence of man is eternal, there could be neither a rise nor a fall. Nor could one explain why ‘different souls are so variously constituted at the outset.’

To justify the existence of endless felicity in an eternal heaven and unending torment in an eternal hell, it is absolutely necessary to postulate an immortal soul.

If nothing in the form of a spirit or soul passes from this life to the other, what is it that is re-born?

In this question it is taken for granted that there is something to be re-born.

A few centuries ago it was argued - “Cogite ergo sum” - “I think, therefore I am.”

True, but first it has to be proved that there is an “I’ to think.

We say that the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, although we know for certain that actually it is not so. We have to admit that one cannot strike an identical place twice although to all appearance one has done so.

Everything changes so. for no consecutive moments are we identically the same.

Watsen, a distinguished psychologist, states.

“No one has ever touched a soul, or has seen one in a test tube, or has in any way come into relationship with it as he has with the other objects of his daily experience.

Nevertheless to doubt its existence is to become a heretic, and once might possibly even had led to the loss of one’s head. Even today a man holding a public position dare not question it.”

Dealing with this question of soul, Professor William James writes:-

“This soul-theory is a complete superfluity, so far as accounting for the actually verified facts of conscious experience goes, so far no one can be compelled to subscribe to it for definite scientific reasons”.

“And in this book the provisional solution which we have reached must be the final word: The thoughts themselves are the thinkers .”

And this is an echo of the very words of the Buddha from 2500 years ago in the valley of the Ganges.

Buddhism, teaching a psychology without a psyche, resolves the living being into mind and matter (nama-rupa). Matter consists of forces and qualities and mind or consciousness consists of fleeting mental states. One’s individuality is the combination of these two fundamental factors which change with lighting rapidity.

We see a vast expanse of water in the sea, but the water of the ocean consists of countless drops.

An infinite number of particles of sand constitute the sea-beach, but it appears as one long sheet.

Waves rise and dash against the sore, but, strictly speaking, no single wave comes from the deep blue sea to lose its identity on the shore. In the cinematograph we see a moving scene, but to represent that motion a series of momentary pictures must appear on the screen.

One cannot say that the perfume of a flower depends on the petal or on the pistil or on the colour, for the perfume, is in the flower.

In the same way one’s individuality is the combination of mind and matter (nama-rupa) .

The whole process of these psycho-physical phenomena which are constantly becoming and passing away, is at times called, in conventional terms, the self or atta by the Buddha; but it is a process, and not an identity that is thus termed. Buddhism does not totally deny the existence of a personality in an empirical sense. It denies, in an ultimate sense (paramattha saccena ) an identical being or a permanent entity, but it does not deny a continuity in process. The Buddhist philosophical term for an individual is santati , that is, a flux or continuity.

This uninterrupted flux or continuity of psycho-physical phenomena, conditioned by Kamma, having no perceptible source in the beginningless past nor any

end to its continuation in the future, except by the Noble Eightfold Path, is the Buddhist substitute for the permanent age or eternal soul in other religious systems.

How is rebirth possible without a soul to be re-born?

Birth, according to Buddhism, is the arising of the Khandhas, the five aggregates or groups (khandhanam patubhave), namely, matter (rupa) , feeling (vedana ), perception (sanna ), mental states (samkhara) , and consciousness (vinnana ).

Just as the arising of a physical state is conditioned by a preceding state as its cause, so the appearance of these psycho-physical phenomena is conditioned by cause anterior to its birth. The present process of becoming is the result of the craving for becoming in the previous birth, and the present instinctive craving conditions life in a future birth.

As the process of one life-span is possible without a permanent entity passing from one thought moment to another, so a series of life-processes is possible without anything to transmigrate from one existence to another.

The Buddhist doctrine of re-birth should be differentiated from the theory of re-incarnation which implies the transmigration of a soul and its invariable material rebirth.

(Courtesy- Buddhist Annual 1970)