B REBIRTH

NDE - EOL EEG SPIKE FOR AT MOST 5 MINS

Buddhism affirms that there is life after death. The position that there is no life after death, that the person is wholly annhilated after the physical body dies, is a view deliberately rejected by the Buddha countless times throughout the scriptures.

Walpola Rahula:

Now, another question arises: If there is no permanent, unchanging entity or substance like Self or Soul (atman), what is it that can re-exist or be reborn after death?

Before we go on life after death, let us consider what this life is, and how it continues now. What we call life, as we have so often repeated, is the combination of the Five Aggregates, a combination of physical and mental energies. These are constantly changing; they do not remain the same for two consecutive moments. Every moment they are born and they die. 'When the Aggregates arise, decay and die, O bhikkhu, every moment you are born, decay and die.'

Thus even now during this life time, every moment we are born and die, but we continue. If we can understand that in this life we can continue without a permanent, unchanging substance like Self or Soul, why can't we understand that those forces themselves can continue without a Self or Soul behind them after the nonfunctioning of the body?

Vasubandhu:

We do not deny an atman that exists through designation, an atman that is only a name given to the skandhas. But far from us is the thought that the skandhas pass into another world! They are momentary, and incapable of transmigrating. We say that, in the absence of any atman, of any permanent principal, the series of conditioned skandhas, "made up" of defilements and actions, enters into the mother's womb; and that this series, from death to birth, is prolonged and displaced by a series that constitutes intermediate existence.