♥ Non-Self : What is Reborn if Not The "Self" ?

The body is mortal and when it dies, consciousness and all mental activities cease. That is why there is no soul. The idea of soul is simply an extension of the self. Soul is the immortal version of the self that supposedly survives physical death.

Since we know that consciousness is a function of our nervous system, it seems difficult to believe that the conscious self survives death. Hence, Buddhists deny the reality of both self and soul.

The idea of an abiding self is deceptive, because it is derived from unenlightened reasoning. The word self simply provides a reference frame for the mind-body phenomena of sentient beings. We usually identify it with our body and the stream of consciousness induced by sense perceptions and thoughts.

In reality, what we call self is neither abiding nor detached from the rest of the world and other beings. Buddhists call this the "neither self nor non-self".

If the idea of non-self sounds odd, then it must sound even more curious that non-self can be reborn. There is a seeming contradiction between the canon of rebirth and that of the non-self, which even many dedicated Buddhists find difficult to understand. The contradiction is, however, only on the surface and can be solved if one pictures the self as the result of karmic formation.

This can be put into less abstract words:

If we imagine the world as an ocean, we are like the ripples on the ocean. Formations like ripples and waves occur, because of wind, tides, and other kinetic forces. In the Buddhist analogy, the universe is in motion due to karmic forces. A ripple, a wave, or a billow may seem as an individual entity for a moment, creating the illusion that it has a self, but it is gone in the next moment.

The truth is that all individuals are one. A ripple is a temporary phenomenon; it is just water in motion. We know that kinetic energy causes wave forms on a body of water and it would be ridiculous to say that a single ripple or wave has a self.

Similarly, in case of beings, the process of coming into life and being conditioned in a particular way is caused by karmic forces. The up and down of the ocean's waves corresponds with the rotation of the wheel of life. The sea that surges, falls, and resurges, is the life that is born, dies, and is reborn again. It is therefore obvious that we should not focus on the temporary phenomenon of the wave, but on the force that causes, forms, and drives it.