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46 EASTERN HORIZON | TEACHINGS

all the time, never in full control and never forever Just as we see continuity in nature such as in trees,
happy. The Buddha frequently reiterated that one is the water, air, etc. likewise there is the continuity of a
product of multiple causes and effects interacting in person, a mind and a consciousness without the
complex ways. Just as one’s body and mind are changing existence of any permanent, unitary, and independent
all the time due to such causality in this lifetime, the entity that one may call ‘soul’, ‘self’, ‘atma’, etc.
same process continues in the afterlife. Thus while we
use conventional language to say one dies or is reborn, 7. The goal of Buddhism is to “attain” Nirvāṇa
there is actually no one there but a continuous process (nibbāna) where there is no more rebirth. Yet
of causes and effects that condition causes and effects Nirvāṇa is explained as not a physical location.
from one realm of existence to another. Yet there is So it becomes extremely difficult to understand
a specific permutation and continuity of causes and what happens to us when we are finally no
effects for each person thus making every one uniquely longer gets reborn. Do we just disappear or
different from others. become nothing?

Ming Wei: Buddhism strongly advocates that the Aggacitta: Nibbāna is often described in the negative,
idea of self or soul is nonsensical and is a grasping for such as The Unborn, Deathless, Unconditoned,
permanence in an impermanent existence. In this light, Sorrowless, Extinquished, but also sometimes in the
there is no such thing as rebirth or reincarnation as positive: The Highest Happiness, Peace, Haven, Sublime.
the ‘self’ one supposes will be ‘reborn’ doesn’t exist in I suppose trying to explain something that cannot be
the first place. However, the energies that make up an apprehended by the five senses through the use of
individual’s sense of consciousness may indeed pass on vocabulary based on sense experience would be as
to another “existence” or “rebirth”. The ultimate reality futile as trying to explain colors to one born color-
is that the mind simply arises and ceases at the last blind or sights to one blind at birth. Nibbāna is the
moment of life and then a new mind arises at the first transcendence of existence and non-existence, whereas
moment of rebirth based on the last one, very similar only the latter two states can be conceived by the
to as has been occurring throughout one’s life, except unawakened mind bound by the limitations of sense
this time there is no old physical phenomena for it to experience and the intellect.
be based on, so it is based solely on one’s final state of
mind in the last life. Perhaps it would be more useful to understand the
attainment of Nibbāna as the complete destruction of
Dadul Namgyal: Here we can speak of continuity or greed, hate and delusion, a state of immutable, complete
continuum. It is important to understand that there purity and peace free from oppression by and slavery to
is no thing that actually moves from point one to them.
point two. At the same time, there is a continuity. The
previous moment of consciousness is not the same as Ming Wei: Nirvāṇa can do nothing with disappearing
nor completely unrelated from the following moment of or becoming. Nirvāṇa simply means no longer stuck in
consciousness. In his Essence of Dependent Origination, the cycle of rebirth. Therefore, Nirvāṇa is described as
Āchārya Nāgārjuna captures the eight examples the extinguishing of the fires that cause rebirths and
explained in the above sūtra in a single stanza: associated suffering. In the Mahāyāna context, Nirvāṇa
(Like) recitation, lamp, mirror, seal, refers to the realization of non-self and emptiness,
Magnifying glass, seed, sourly taste, and echo where there is no essence or fundamental nature in
When a being enters conception anything, and everything is empty, marking the end
The wise understands that nothing is transferred. of rebirth by stilling the fires that keep the process of
rebirth going. So, nirvana is not the place where we