Rebirth

Rebirth is the Buddhist view that the stream of consciousness does not end at death but, driven by karma, takes up a new existence. Sanskrit calls it punarbhava, "becoming again". Tibetan has several words for it, among them yangsi, "existing again", the same word used for the recognised reincarnations of teachers. In Tibet the idea is so taken for granted that hardly anyone argues about it. Most people in Europe start from somewhere else.

Who is reborn?

There is an obvious puzzle here. Buddhism denies that there is a fixed, lasting self. So what is it that goes from one life to the next?

The classic answer is an image. Light a new candle from one that is already burning. Is the second flame the same as the first? Not quite. But it isn't a different one either. Something connects them, yet nothing has been handed over that you could hold in your hand. The tradition describes the mind in the same way, as a stream of moments, each arising from the one before. That stream carries the imprints of karma: the habits and leanings we have built up. This is why Buddhist teachers tend to say rebirth rather than reincarnation. There is no soul changing bodies the way you change a coat.

Nobody expects you to accept this on the spot, and the Tibetan tradition does not turn it into a creed. You are asked to consider it seriously, though, and to notice what it changes in the way you look at your own life.

Between one life and the next

Tibetan Buddhism pays close attention to what happens between dying and being born again. That passage is called the bardo, the intermediate state. According to the teachings, the mind is briefly free of a body there and unusually fluid. If it recognises its own nature at that point, it can be liberated. If not, old habits carry it on into another existence.

Practices for the time of death grow out of this. In the Düdjom Tersar they include phowa, the transference of consciousness at the moment of dying. The tradition of tulkus rests on the same understanding: teachers recognised as the deliberate rebirth of an earlier master, a realised mind choosing where its stream goes next.

Still, the most practical consequence is closer to home. If this life is one link in a much longer chain, then a human birth with time, teachers and room to practise looks rather different. It is not something to count on, and it will not last. At Rigdzin Dzogchen Ling we come back to that every Saturday in Hoofddorp, in the four thoughts that open the Düdjom Tersar Ngöndro class.