It's not much different from the question about what if anything continues from one moment to the next, or from your birth and as a young child to the present.
It's one common misunderstanding that you can only realize non self when you die. But Buddha reached nirvana while alive as a young man, and continued to teach for many years.
And he referred to himself as a person, talked about his childhood, what he did when etc. So whatever it means, realizing non self and awakening and escaping from samasara doesn't mean denying that you are a person.
Then, if you believe in reincarnation, then that's the idea of a continuity to another life. But for Buddhists who believe in reincarnation, it's not that some particular thing continues.
Just like a young child, has many interests and hopes and aspirations etc - almost none of those still shared by the old man or woman in their 60s or 80s. So it is with your next life, which for Buddhists need not even be a human rebirth. Yet there is some continuity just as there is with the child and the adult. That's just as paradoxical or not paradoxical as it is for the child and the adult.
This is what Walpola Rahula wrote in his famous book "What the Buddha Taught"
So the truth of non self is something that applies to this life as well as to the transition from this to the next life.
Buddha taught that there is some insight there, something you can see when you contemplate this, which can lead to awakening. But it's not an intellectual understanding .
Nobody can write it out and say "Look this is the truth you need to understand to be free from Samsara - just understand these six pages of reasoning and you'll be free" - it can't work like that.
If it was like that it would be dependent on conditions, so couldn't possibly be any form of awakening. Forget the reasoning, get Alzheimers or whatever and you fall back into Samsara. Obviously he doesn't mean something like this.
This is something we don't really have in the West - the idea of a truth you have to see for yourself. Some truth you have to awaken to. In Buddhist teaching they talk about relative and absolute truth. The truths you have to see for yourself, that can never be fully written down, are the absolute truth. The truth of non self is one of these.
The truths that can be understood intellectually and written down are important also - but are called "relative truth".
It's not a creed that you have to assert any belief in anything as a Buddhist. Buddha taught that there is no value at all in affirming belief in things that you can't see for yourself, whether it is impermanence or non self, or past and future lives, or effects of karma.
Some people take that as meaning that you don't have any truths in Buddhism at all - that it is all a matter of making up anything you would like to be true and using that.
That's like the kind of "hippy" approach to Buddhism.
It's true that you don't have to affirm any truths. Affirming a truth you can't see for yourself is thought to be of no value.
But to follow the Buddha's path you do need a keen wish to discover the truth of your situation, rather than to invent things for yourself. It's once you get sick of all your self invented truths, and imagination based ideas, and "fluffy pink clouds" and wishful thinking, that you can begin to practice like a true Buddhist.
And there are truths to be found, at least so the Buddha taught. But they are truths you have to see for yourself.
Also - there are many teachings about impermanence and about past and future lives and death in the sutras. Buddha himself talked about his own previous lives and often talked about past and future lives.
As to what happens when you die - some traditions leave this very vague, some go into a lot of detail.
The main thing is that it is not so easy to practice as a Buddhist if you have a closed mind about any of the central topics - and have already made up your mind about them, without proof and without investigating them, just because of some idea prevalent in your society, and such like.
So, it can be quite a handicap as a Buddhist, if you think that when you die that's it and if you have a totally closed mind to any possibility of anything continuing after death.
But if you have an open mind that you don't know what happens when you die, that's all that's needed.
It could be a handicap the other way around if you have too rigid an idea about what happens when you die. If you've been brought up as a traditional Buddhist and you go to your Lama or to the books, and think you understand every detail of how rebirth works, just because your teachers say that's how it works - that can be a rigid non open mind also.
Some Westerners go into this in a gullible accept everything way and have these concrete ideas, suddenly they accept, without question, a whole panoply of strange kinds of creatures that are not native to our culture, just because that's what the teachers say. That sort of approach also is not really having an open mind and investigating it for yourself.
So, if you say "I think that when I die that's it, but I can't prove it and I don't know for sure" that's all you need to have a sufficiently open mind here. That means you are now practicing in a way that lets you examine everything, rather than hide certain things and ignore them because for you they are unpalatable.
It's hard to practice as a Buddhist if you are absolutely sure that when you die, that's it - as that it would mean that when you die, there's an end to suffering and unsatisfactoriness right away at that point. For everyone no matter what life they led.
If so, one wonders in what sense your life ever was unsatisfactory? If at the end of your life that's it, then what does it matter what happens during your life either?
Also, if you are totally 100% sure that when you die that's it, and there is no possibility of anything more - if you have already made up your mind that there is no continuity after you die - then the whole teaching about a path to escape from the wheel of samsara is hard to relate to - not impossible, but it would be hard to make much sense of it. Also the teachings about impermanence would be hard to relate to.
Which doesn't mean you need any particular belief in anything. More just that it can help to unblock this idea that it is totally impossible.
After all what proof do you have of that?
Modern science isn't able to fully explain what mind is. You can't say that when we die that's the end of it if you don't know what mind is.
Many scientists think that something does continue after they die and see no contradiction with their scientific researches at all.
All of our science is based on experiment and observation - but that in turn is dependent on someone doing the observations - and then if you ask who does the observations and how observations are possible at all - then scientists are somewhat at a loss. How can a non sentient universe observe itself?
There are lots of analogies made. And some scientists think that eventually we will be able to understand the mind completely as some kind of a computer program. But to others that whole approach seems absurd. At any rate nobody has come close to proving this hypothesis. If that computer analogy is your reason for thinking that when you die that's it - well you need to realize it is just an analogy and that nobody has ever deduced any computer program for a human being. And some are very skeptical that this approach will work.
There are some fundamental issues with it also, well some would say that it's impossible to write an algorithm able to understand truth. If it can only simulate an understanding of truth, surely that's not what we are. When you say things like "I can see a tree" you aren't just simulating the ability to see a tree - you actually can see it, and you would say that you have said something that is true. But a computer program, some would argue, can never do anything except simulate understanding things. See my If A Program Can't Understand Truth - Ethics Of Artificial Intelligence Babies
You can also try asking yourself the question - if it is true that when I die I no longer exist - in what sense could I have ever existed?
In what sense then did I live at all, or did anything happen at all? After I die, there would be no memory of the world, nobody to have lost that memory because your belief is that there is nobody at all at that point - so in what sense was there ever anything at all?
And doesn't help to say that when you die, there are lots of other people around to remember the world who are still alive - when they die - then their memories also vanish too, and themselves. So in what sense could there be anything at all right now if when you die, then you no longer exist.
That argument might not make a huge amount of sense if you are totally convinced of the idea that when you die that's it. But it is worth contemplating I think. Just a tiny bit of flexibility here, that you don't have absolute proof yet that when you die that nothing continues, I think that's useful, to help to have an open mind on the topic.
Buddha did teach that there are truths to be discovered.
He is not saying that there is nothing to be found out., or that you can work out what has to be true without looking, or to just believe anything you like, whatever makes you happy, or that whatever you'd like to be true is true, or anything like that.
More the opposite, he was always undermining wishful thinking and this kind of laziness, the idea that you don't have to think about things, just accept some comfortable pleasant idea you happen to like.
It is rather that he said that he said there is no value in affirming truths you can't see for yourself. You have to put in some spadework yourself, you have to see things for yourself.
He said, in effect: "This is what I've found out - but come and see for yourself, is no point in just listening to me, make your own discoveries. However I may be able to give a few pointers to certain things it is worth paying attention to.".
BUDDHA REACHED ENLIGHTENMENT AS A YOUNG MAN OF 30 AND THEN TAUGHT FOR 50 YEARS AS SOMEONE WHO HAD ALREADY SEEN THROUGH THE ILLUSION OF SELF CLINGING
It's one common misunderstanding that you can only realize non self when you die. But Buddha reached nirvana while alive as a young man, and continued to teach for many years.
And he referred to himself as a person, talked about his childhood, what he did when etc. So whatever it means, realizing non self and awakening and escaping from samasara doesn't mean denying that you are a person.
CONTINUITY TO ANOTHER LIFE - LIKE CONTINUITY FROM CHILDHOOD
Then, if you believe in reincarnation, then that's the idea of a continuity to another life. But for Buddhists who believe in reincarnation, it's not that some particular thing continues.
Just like a young child, has many interests and hopes and aspirations etc - almost none of those still shared by the old man or woman in their 60s or 80s. So it is with your next life, which for Buddhists need not even be a human rebirth. Yet there is some continuity just as there is with the child and the adult. That's just as paradoxical or not paradoxical as it is for the child and the adult.
This is what Walpola Rahula wrote in his famous book "What the Buddha Taught"
"We have seen earlier that a being is nothing but a combination of physical and mental forces or energies. What we call death is the total non-functioning of the physical body. Do all these forces and energies stop altogether with the nonfunctioning of the body? Buddhism says 'No'. Will, volition, desire, thirst to exist, to continue, to become more and more, is a tremendous force that moves whole world lives, whole existences, that even moves the whole world. According to Buddhism, this force does not stop with the non-functioning of the body, which is death; but it continues manifesting itself in another form, producing re-existence which is called rebirth.
"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 24 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? When this physical body is no more capable of functioning, energies do not die with it, but continue to take some other shape or form, which we call another life. In a child all the physical, mental and intellectual faculties are tender and weak, but they have within them the potentialitiy of producing a full grown man. Physical and mental energies which constitute the so- called being have within themselves the power to take a new form, grow gradually and gather force to the full.
"As there is no permanent, unchanging substance, nothing passes from one moment to the next. So quite obviously, nothing permanent or unchanging can pass or transmigrate from one life to the next. It is a series that continues unbroken, but changes every moment. The series is, really speaking, nothing but movement. It is like a flame that burns through the night: it is not the same flame nor is it another. A child grows up to be a man of sixty. Certainly the man of sixty is not the same as the child of sixty years ago, nor is he another person.
"Similarly a man dies here and reborn elsewhere is neither the same person, nor another. It is the continuity of the same series. The difference between death and birth is only a thought-moment: the last thoughtmoment of this life conditions the first thought-moment in the so-called next life, which in fact, is the continuity of the same series. During the life itself, too, one thought-moment conditions the next thought-moment. So, from the Buddhist point of view, the question of life after death is not a great mistery, and a Buddhist is never worried about this problem. As long as there is this 'thirst' to be and to become, the cycle of continuity (samara) goes on. It can stop only when its driving force, this 'thirst', is cut off through wisdom which sees Reality, Truth, Nirvana.
A TRUTH YOU HAVE TO SEE FOR YOURSELF
So the truth of non self is something that applies to this life as well as to the transition from this to the next life.
Buddha taught that there is some insight there, something you can see when you contemplate this, which can lead to awakening. But it's not an intellectual understanding .
Nobody can write it out and say "Look this is the truth you need to understand to be free from Samsara - just understand these six pages of reasoning and you'll be free" - it can't work like that.
If it was like that it would be dependent on conditions, so couldn't possibly be any form of awakening. Forget the reasoning, get Alzheimers or whatever and you fall back into Samsara. Obviously he doesn't mean something like this.
This is something we don't really have in the West - the idea of a truth you have to see for yourself. Some truth you have to awaken to. In Buddhist teaching they talk about relative and absolute truth. The truths you have to see for yourself, that can never be fully written down, are the absolute truth. The truth of non self is one of these.
The truths that can be understood intellectually and written down are important also - but are called "relative truth".
NOT A CREED - BUT YOU NEED AN OPEN MIND
It's not a creed that you have to assert any belief in anything as a Buddhist. Buddha taught that there is no value at all in affirming belief in things that you can't see for yourself, whether it is impermanence or non self, or past and future lives, or effects of karma.
Some people take that as meaning that you don't have any truths in Buddhism at all - that it is all a matter of making up anything you would like to be true and using that.
That's like the kind of "hippy" approach to Buddhism.
It's true that you don't have to affirm any truths. Affirming a truth you can't see for yourself is thought to be of no value.
But to follow the Buddha's path you do need a keen wish to discover the truth of your situation, rather than to invent things for yourself. It's once you get sick of all your self invented truths, and imagination based ideas, and "fluffy pink clouds" and wishful thinking, that you can begin to practice like a true Buddhist.
And there are truths to be found, at least so the Buddha taught. But they are truths you have to see for yourself.
TEACHINGS ABOUT IMPERMANENCE AND DEATH
Also - there are many teachings about impermanence and about past and future lives and death in the sutras. Buddha himself talked about his own previous lives and often talked about past and future lives.
As to what happens when you die - some traditions leave this very vague, some go into a lot of detail.
HARD TO PRACTICE IF YOU HAVE A TOTALLY CLOSED MIND ABOUT FUTURE CONTINUITY AFTER DEATH
The main thing is that it is not so easy to practice as a Buddhist if you have a closed mind about any of the central topics - and have already made up your mind about them, without proof and without investigating them, just because of some idea prevalent in your society, and such like.
So, it can be quite a handicap as a Buddhist, if you think that when you die that's it and if you have a totally closed mind to any possibility of anything continuing after death.
But if you have an open mind that you don't know what happens when you die, that's all that's needed.
It could be a handicap the other way around if you have too rigid an idea about what happens when you die. If you've been brought up as a traditional Buddhist and you go to your Lama or to the books, and think you understand every detail of how rebirth works, just because your teachers say that's how it works - that can be a rigid non open mind also.
Some Westerners go into this in a gullible accept everything way and have these concrete ideas, suddenly they accept, without question, a whole panoply of strange kinds of creatures that are not native to our culture, just because that's what the teachers say. That sort of approach also is not really having an open mind and investigating it for yourself.
So, if you say "I think that when I die that's it, but I can't prove it and I don't know for sure" that's all you need to have a sufficiently open mind here. That means you are now practicing in a way that lets you examine everything, rather than hide certain things and ignore them because for you they are unpalatable.
IF SURE THAT WHEN YOU DIE THAT'S IT - THE CONSEQUENCES
It's hard to practice as a Buddhist if you are absolutely sure that when you die, that's it - as that it would mean that when you die, there's an end to suffering and unsatisfactoriness right away at that point. For everyone no matter what life they led.
If so, one wonders in what sense your life ever was unsatisfactory? If at the end of your life that's it, then what does it matter what happens during your life either?
Also, if you are totally 100% sure that when you die that's it, and there is no possibility of anything more - if you have already made up your mind that there is no continuity after you die - then the whole teaching about a path to escape from the wheel of samsara is hard to relate to - not impossible, but it would be hard to make much sense of it. Also the teachings about impermanence would be hard to relate to.
Which doesn't mean you need any particular belief in anything. More just that it can help to unblock this idea that it is totally impossible.
DO YOU HAVE ANY PROOF THAT WHEN YOU DIE THAT'S IT?
After all what proof do you have of that?
Modern science isn't able to fully explain what mind is. You can't say that when we die that's the end of it if you don't know what mind is.
Many scientists think that something does continue after they die and see no contradiction with their scientific researches at all.
All of our science is based on experiment and observation - but that in turn is dependent on someone doing the observations - and then if you ask who does the observations and how observations are possible at all - then scientists are somewhat at a loss. How can a non sentient universe observe itself?
There are lots of analogies made. And some scientists think that eventually we will be able to understand the mind completely as some kind of a computer program. But to others that whole approach seems absurd. At any rate nobody has come close to proving this hypothesis. If that computer analogy is your reason for thinking that when you die that's it - well you need to realize it is just an analogy and that nobody has ever deduced any computer program for a human being. And some are very skeptical that this approach will work.
There are some fundamental issues with it also, well some would say that it's impossible to write an algorithm able to understand truth. If it can only simulate an understanding of truth, surely that's not what we are. When you say things like "I can see a tree" you aren't just simulating the ability to see a tree - you actually can see it, and you would say that you have said something that is true. But a computer program, some would argue, can never do anything except simulate understanding things. See my If A Program Can't Understand Truth - Ethics Of Artificial Intelligence Babies
You can also try asking yourself the question - if it is true that when I die I no longer exist - in what sense could I have ever existed?
In what sense then did I live at all, or did anything happen at all? After I die, there would be no memory of the world, nobody to have lost that memory because your belief is that there is nobody at all at that point - so in what sense was there ever anything at all?
And doesn't help to say that when you die, there are lots of other people around to remember the world who are still alive - when they die - then their memories also vanish too, and themselves. So in what sense could there be anything at all right now if when you die, then you no longer exist.
That argument might not make a huge amount of sense if you are totally convinced of the idea that when you die that's it. But it is worth contemplating I think. Just a tiny bit of flexibility here, that you don't have absolute proof yet that when you die that nothing continues, I think that's useful, to help to have an open mind on the topic.
SEE FOR YOURSELF
Buddha did teach that there are truths to be discovered.
He is not saying that there is nothing to be found out., or that you can work out what has to be true without looking, or to just believe anything you like, whatever makes you happy, or that whatever you'd like to be true is true, or anything like that.
More the opposite, he was always undermining wishful thinking and this kind of laziness, the idea that you don't have to think about things, just accept some comfortable pleasant idea you happen to like.
It is rather that he said that he said there is no value in affirming truths you can't see for yourself. You have to put in some spadework yourself, you have to see things for yourself.
He said, in effect: "This is what I've found out - but come and see for yourself, is no point in just listening to me, make your own discoveries. However I may be able to give a few pointers to certain things it is worth paying attention to.".
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
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