How Does Rebirth Happen?
How could rebirth exist? What is it that is reborn? To understand this, we must first understand the nature of our body and mind, and what is meant by "life" in a spiritual, not biological, sense. Each of us has a body and a mind. While these two are together, we say, "I am alive"; when they separate, we call it "death." Our body and mind are different entities. Our body is material substance, composed of atoms and molecules. We can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch it.
"Mind" refers not to the brain, and not merely to the intellect. Our mind is what perceives, recognizes, experiences and emotionally reacts to our environment. The mind is not made of physical matter and thus cannot be measured by scientific instruments. Our body and mind are conjoined, and they affect each other. However, they are different entities. For example, when we see something that we do not like, the neurons in our nervous system react in certain chemical and electrical patterns, yet these material substances are themselves not conscious elements which experience the object. It is our consciousness which experiences the unpleasant sensation and becomes angry.
At the time of death, our gross sense consciousnesses which enable us to see, hear, smell, taste and touch and our gross mental consciousness that thinks and conceives dissolve into a very subtle mental consciousness. This subtle mental consciousness leaves the present body, enters an intermediate state, and when the causes and conditions are suitable, it joins with another body. In this new body, all the gross consciousnesses again appear, and we see, hear, smell, taste, touch and think about our new environment.
This subtle consciousness which goes from one body to the next, from one life to the next, is not a soul. "Soul" implies a fixed, real and independent entity that is the person. The consciousness, however, is dependent and always changing, and thus, it is also referred to as the mind stream. A stream or river is constantly changing — sometimes it is narrow, other times wide; sometimes it flows peacefully in a broad valley, other times it gushes down over rocks and through gorges. What form the river takes downstream depends on what it was like upstream and on the present conditions in the place it is at. In spite of all the changes it goes through, the river is one continuous thing and it has the same name all along.
In the same way, the mind or consciousness continuously changes — sometimes it is peaceful, other times upset and angry; sometimes it is in a human body, other times it is in other physical forms. What happens to our mind in a future existence is dependent on what actions it created and motivated in a previous one. Although our mind is constantly changing, still it is regarded as one continuous thing.
To understand our mind, it is helpful to understand cause and effect. Our body also depends on cause and effect: our body as it is today is dependent on the body we had yesterday. Our body took in some food since then and eliminated some waste, but it still is a continuation of yesterday's body. We can trace the origin of our present body back to the fetus in the womb and eventually to the sperm and egg of our parents. The sperm and egg each have their own continuum, being produced by causes. And so on. Science has not identified a first moment of physical matter. In fact it is even questionable if such a first moment exists.
Similarly, our present mind depends on our mind from yesterday. That depends on the mind of the day before, and so on, we can trace back the continuation of our mind. Because our mind is a continuum that is constantly changing, we can experience new things each moment and we can remember what has happened to us in the past. At a certain point, we can remember no further. Still, we know that we had consciousness as a baby because we can see that other babies have minds. Our mind when we were a baby is a continuation of our mind when we were a fetus, and so on back to the time of conception, each moment of mind being a result of the previous moment of mind.
At the time of conception, when the mind entered into the union of the sperm and egg, where did it come from? As we have seen, each moment of mind is a continuation of the previous moment. So too is it at the time of conception. The mind was not produced by the sperm and egg, because mind is a different entity from the material substances which constitute the body. Neither is our mind a composition of our mother's and father's minds, for that would mean that our parents lost part of their minds by having us! Our mind is not created by another being or God, for what did he/she create it out of? Something — our mind — can not be created out of nothing. And why did he/she create us? Surely, there is no reason to create suffering or even create beings who have the potential to degenerate from perfection into suffering. If there were a God who is a perfect being, why is his creation imperfect? If the cause is perfect, the result should also be.2
Because each moment of mind is a product of a previous moment, the only logical cause of the mind at the time of conception is a previous moment in that same continuum. Thus, our mind existed prior to entering into this particular body. We have had previous lives, when our mind inhabited other bodies.
"Where did it all begin?" you may wonder. It didn't. Each moment of our mind stream arises because there is a cause for it, the previous moment of mind. There was no first moment. No one ever said there had to be a beginning, before which there was no mind. In fact, such a thing would be impossible, for how could a first moment of mind be created without the prior existence of its cause, a previous moment? The idea of a beginningless regression may be difficult for us to grasp at first, but if we remember the numberline from our math class, it will be easier. Is there a highest number? Is there an end to the numberline on either the positive or negative side? To whatever we may name as the first or last number, one more can always be added. There is no beginning or end. It is similar with our mental continuum.
Why can't we remember our previous lives? Some people can. But for the majority of us, who cannot, it is because our minds are obscured by ignorance and the imprints of negative actions we created in the past. Sometimes we cannot even remember where we put our keys. Nor can we remember what we ate for dinner on February 5, 1970. That we cannot remember something, does not mean that it does not exist. It simply means that our memory is obscured.
