The karma doesn’t follow a person in the next rebirth.lnn wrote: ↑Wed Mar 10, 2021 4:59 am
I am a student studying Buddhism right now and also had apprehensions with regards to the idea of rebirth given the foundation of karma in Buddhism. I am confused at how one's karma can follow with them into a next life without there being an atman for that karma to link itself to? Does anyone have any insight into how this cycle of samsara continues for a specific individual if that individual is not grounded to one specific being?
The karna is what creates the person in the next rebirth.
It’s a whole different being, you might say ‘modeled’ or ‘based on’ the previous being. Like a movie sequel.
In the case of tulkus, when people say “that person is recognized as being so-and-so in his previous life” it’s really a convenient way of saying that the causes and conditions which ‘produced’ (was) that particular person before are the same causes and conditions which have produced the person we recognize today as tulku.
Of course, everybody is the rebirth of some other being.
But they aren’t still “that” being. They are a new being.
If the causes and conditions (karma) resulting in that previous individual existing as, say, a horse, are strong enough, then those conditions (karma) will result in that individual being a horse in this life.
But, if other causes and conditions are, you might say, ‘stronger’ or more dominant (even causes from many earlier lifetimes) then the result will be that being is born as the culmination of those stronger conditions. If those stronger conditions are such that what occurs as a result is a human, then even if there was a horse previously, if the ‘horse-producing conditions’ aren’t there any more, and the ‘human-producing conditions’ are there, and they are the strongest, then the result will of course be a human.
That is why ‘precious human birth’ is so rare. It’s like when astronomers talk about how rare a “Goldilocks Zone” is, which refers to the exact conditions needed for a planet such as our Earth to occur.
The karmic conditions don’t happen to the sentient being.
The sentient being is the result of the karmic conditions.
It’s kind of like making a snowman. You aren’t putting snow onto something that already exists (atman).
You put the snow together a certain way, you roll it into balls and stack them and then that, itself, is the snowman.