How is belief in anatman consistent with rebirth?

[JimInBC]

I’m not sure you can ultimately address this question without reference to faith. Or perhaps, a better term might be conviction.

A Buddhist starts with the convictions that no-self and rebirth are true. At least contingently true, awaiting our direct experience as confirmation. And if they are both true, they must be compatible.

The issue you raised has a long history of being discussed, so there are lots of ways of answering your question. If you already believe both those statements are true, you tend to gravitate towards one of those historical ways of answering the question, one that makes sense to you, and move on.

If someone questions the compatibility of those two beliefs, you respond with various answers you’ve learned, because you already believe the two positions are compatible and you are just trying to help the other person understand.

But if the other person does not come from the conviction that both no-self and rebirth are true, those answers might not be convincing. They might ultimately find the other side of the long philosophical conversation - the position that the two beliefs are contradictory - more compelling than the Buddhist response to that challenge.

In sum, you might not get an answer to your question that satisfies you. But observe that we all seem quite satisfied with the answers we are providing.

[sujato]

@cdpatton

Life isn’t an objective mechanism to them; it’s more a moral narrative that every sentient being is living.

That’s really insightful, thank you.

[sujato]

I’m not sure to what extent your question has been answered, but let me propose that the question is wrongly put. The real philosophical problem is, “How is belief in atman consistent with rebirth?”

Why? Because the process of rebirth is messy, variable, and always changing. But the atman is eternal, pure, and never changes. How does one have anything to do with the other?

This problem was acknowledged by some post-Buddhist brahmanical philosophers, who accepted the Buddhist critique and agreed that the atman had nothing to do with rebirth. They still believed in an atman of course, but they just didn’t try to use it to explain rebirth.

Life is change. The end of life is simply a more drastic change. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. Personal continuity is an inner sense of the connection that links past experience with the present. The same continuity extends after death, it is just thinner due to loss of memory and change of physical circumstance.

You asked for the Pali word for this, there are a few: santāna is “continuity”, paṭisandhi is “linkage”.

To draw on Charles’ narrative imagery, life is like a series of sentences and paragraphs. Death is the close of a chapter and the start of a new one. The choices and actions that happened in the last chapter do not determine the course of the narrative, but they do influence it.

[andyebarnes]

Two factors for consideration spring to mind as I consider your question.
Firstly, there is the matter of how we translate/understand anatman. Secondly, as your question poses, the issue of what it is that gets ‘re-born’.

On the first factor, many, if not most, translations give ‘non-self’ or ‘not-self’ as the translation of anatman in preference to ‘no-self’. {See Anatta-lakkhana Sutta: The Discourse on the Not-self Characteristic } The distinction is critical.
Anatman isn’t a negation of self. It instead points to the fact that whatever we perceive or conceive as ‘self’ is incorrect. Whatever we think of as self is erroneous. The moment we think ‘this is self’, ‘this’ has already changed since all is flux, so, ergo, our perception of ‘self’ will always miss the mark.
So, to think of some ‘thing’ being ‘re-born’ will always fall short since whatever ‘thing’ we regard as the subject of re-birth will be an error of perception.

And, on the second. All things arise from conditions, so, all things, in each moment, is a ‘re-birth’. Or more correctly, a reincarnation. There is never a unique incarnation since every incarnation has arisen from it’s preceding conditions. So, all things are a reincarnation.
On a physical level, we are a unique person at birth, but, we are the result of our parents’ genetic code. We are the ‘reincarnation’ of our parents’ characteristics as stored in their DNA that came together in conception. We are not our parents as we are independently subject to the conditions we, uniquely, face but they do form a significant part of those conditions.
When ‘I’ die, ‘I’ cease to be since ‘I’ am simply an imperfect perception of ‘self’ that I hold. As the perceived ceases to be, so does the perception. As the perception ceases, so does the perceived.
But I can create the conditions for the coming into being of a new incarnation. Since that incarnation is dependent upon those conditions, it is, in fact, a reincarnation, but since ‘I’ have ceased to be, ‘I’ am not reincarnated.
For many, this might bring into question the whole purpose of our efforts towards greater awareness and development upon the path, but, for me, it makes it all the more wonderous. No longer am I about the business of making things better for ‘me’ in future incarnations.
I am now working towards making conditions as favourable as possible for another, distinct, being who will arise from those very conditions. My Bhavana has become an example of the greatest gift we all have to give.

[anon50778162]

Hi, an interesting question. Something everyone has asked in one way or another privately or openly. I’ve asked this myself. It may be worth looking at Vedanta, where the concept of atman is ‘alive’ and kicking. Another source is Carl Jung’s collective unconscious, an ideal candidate for the influence of past lives being experienced in our own minds. Then there is the cosmic mind, similar to the atman theory, where there is one great consciousness and ‘this life’ is experienced by that consciousness through the unique structure of the brain. It is seen as a receiver of consciousness or a transmitter of information from this world. This rings in with the aboriginal theory of dream time, this is the dream and reality exists elsewhere as a consciousness awareness that experiences nothing, no concept and this leads to the Buddhist theory, in a way, there is no concept of self, there is only nothing. Nothing is the self. It is reborn when nothing connects to an apparatus like a brain. Many old cultures, believe inanimate objects have a consciousness, rocks etc. There is said to be a God particle, something that connects all matter. It’s a kind of consciousness particle, an element of consciousness and the configuration of atoms into matter determine how these elements (of consciousness) form a mechanism of awareness, biological life seems to be the answer. A rock has conscious particles but is not aware but brains as matter seem to provide the correct material structure. Rebirth is the rearrangement of matter, atoms, energy or consciousness elements if you like. These questions go round and round in circles but are interesting. I love the theory of entanglement though and it fits in with the rearrangement of matter and the cosmic brain theory. If two or more particles are created in a reaction from a single source and are then separated anything that is done to one particle happens instantaneously to all of them. The distance between them is irrelevant. This is fact. This means that these reactions on a quantum level should connect everything in the universe because it all theoretically comes from one reaction. Everything in the universe is one thing, one consciousness assuming every particle has a consciousness element, this brings us back to Vedanta. Quite rightly the Buddha thought all this was not worth pursuing, it’s the stuff of madness rather than liberation from these circular thoughts.

[Erika_ODonnell]

@Hierodule

Though I guess that brings me back to my original question, but phrased differently: what links the people in each “chain” of rebirths together, if not something that can be considered an atman/self?

Think of a line of gunpowder across the floor. When it’s lit, how does the flame travel across the line? What links it?

In my unenlightened opinion, it’s the fuel (upadana) that is the link. As long as the flame has a fuel to draw energy from, the flame will propel itself forward. When the fuel runs out the flame disappears.

And obviously, we don’t need an atman to explain why the flame seems to persist as it’s traveling forward, it’s just a cause-and-effect process where the heat of the flame is igniting the fuel next to it.