The Continuity of Consciousness

It is important to define what death is. When we are unsure of that, we will also be unsure about reincarnation. In the West, death is when the heart stops beating, but according to Buddhism it comes later than that. Death happens when the mind disconnects from the nonfunctioning body and enters the intermediate state, the bardo.

If we didn’t have a mind that was distinct from the body, that would be the end of us, but the mind is not the body. If the mind were to stop with the physical body, like a flame being extinguished when the candle is spent, there would be no argument, but it is not like that. The mind is nonmaterial energy whereas the body is matter, and although the mind connects with a body for a certain period of time, when we die, when the physical body ceases to function, the mind continues and takes another body. This is what is called reincarnation.

What kind of body we take in our next life depends entirely on karma. There are only two ways to go: to be reborn in one of the three fortunate realms, as a human, a god, or a demigod, or in one of the three suffering realms, as an animal, a hungry ghost, or a hell being. 

Is there reincarnation? Does the consciousness cease the moment the body dies? For many of us, there is no clear answer to this. If you sincerely look at the question and answer, “I don’t know,” that is a very honest answer. Or perhaps you feel that there is no reincarnation, no karma, that everything finishes at death. Or perhaps you intellectually believe that, but the heart doesn’t feel it. You could harbor a deep dread of what happens when you die. Or you might feel, whether you are religious or not, that something good will happen after death. It is very important to think about this and to discuss it with others.

I have often led students in a meditation on the continuity of the consciousness. In this meditation, we see that this moment of consciousness must be the result of the previous moment of consciousness. And that moment of consciousness is the result of the moment before that. In that way, we can trace the moments of cause and effect all the way back to the first moment of this life, and further, to the consciousness in the womb and the first moment at the time of conception. But even that first moment of mind of this life must have had a cause, and that cause must have been a previous moment of mind, the mind of the last moment of our previous life.

Many people have done this meditation and really been able to make that link with their previous lives. I remember once a Western student with very stable concentration was able to remember right back to his mother’s womb and then went even further to his previous life in Tibet. He had a very strong image of the room of his previous life’s family, the blocks of tea and the churn that churned the butter. If we can’t remember our previous life, it is because our mind is too clouded, not because there was no previous life.

Reincarnation Cannot Be Disproved

It is illogical to claim there is no such thing as past and future lives simply because we have no personal experience of being reborn. By that reasoning we can “prove” we have never been in our mother’s womb. Empirical reasoning simply cannot cover this subject. Scientists can explain birth on a physical level, they can measure the growth of the fetus and show how it is nourished, but that is only one small part of the story.

While it can be scientifically shown that we were once in a womb, what caused us to enter our mother’s womb? This can be explained on a physical level, but there is no scientific explanation of the mental experience. If we can’t fully explain the evolution of mind in this life, how can we explain past and future lives? Based on the reasoning that the only things that exist are what we can see, we should say that there was no mind in the womb and there is none at death, because there is no experience of it. If we have to be skeptical of past and future lives, we have to be skeptical about mind too, because we are unable to accept what mind is.

The fact is we suffer because we have created the causes to suffer, and the imprints of our past nonvirtuous actions ripen in our mindstream when the conditions come together for them to ripen. This would be impossible if there were no mind. And if we had no mind, we would have no past or future lives.

Why aren’t we as skeptical about tomorrow as we are about future lives?

We are skeptical where we shouldn’t be and not skeptical where we should. What we need to do is escape from ignorance in order to be free from suffering, and skepticism of past and future lives does nothing to help us do this. We have no logical proof we will exist tomorrow—our mind does not have the power to see tomorrow—but then why aren’t we as skeptical about tomorrow as we are about future lives?

Our physical and mental constituents are not one, but they are very closely related. Not addressing this is the reason the science books are incomplete. Science states that life started in the ocean, that the beings we are now emerged from early life forms that came from the ocean, but that is an explanation of the physical evolution of living beings on this planet; it has no ability to explain the beginnings of the evolution of the mind, and therefore it is limited.

How can we believe in the other realms, especially the hell realm, when we cannot see them? We need to rely on the explanations of the enlightened beings, and we need to investigate to see whether the Buddha is indeed a reliable source. This is not something we should take lightly, because the more convinced we are in the words of the Buddha, the more faith we will have in all his teachings and the more we will be able to transform our mind.

When we investigate, either through our own analysis of his teachings or the fact that countless practitioners have been led from suffering to full enlightenment using his guidance, we will see that the Buddha is the perfect guide. Just look at the high lamas such as His Holiness the Dalai Lama. What they know is faultless and totally based on the wisdom of the Buddha. On the other hand, because they only ever work with empirical knowledge, even the top scientists are limited.

As the great yogis of the past progressed along the path, their understanding of reality improved and they saw things that we can’t even imagine. This was all the product of the mind, not of machines. The great Indian yogis such as Milarepa had minds so powerful that they could influence their bodies, being able to fly and take many forms and so forth. They could clearly see not only past and future lives but also the different realms, just as we can see the table in front of us. These were not logical possibilities to them but actual objects of knowledge, things that they experienced as very real. In Tibet, the great bodhisattva yogis had control over where they reincarnated and so could choose their future rebirth to be of most benefit to others. Everything they experienced confirmed the truth of the dharma that the Buddha taught.

Because reincarnation is not an accepted part of Western culture, many people think it can’t be real. But now people in the West are hearing about reincarnation more and starting to accept it. If there is a person who doesn’t suffer from goiter in a country where almost everybody else has it, they are considered strange. Our beliefs are shaped by what kind of culture we encounter as we grow up. Because something is accepted by society doesn’t necessarily mean it is correct. We need to analyze what we have learned and decide whether it accords with reality and then accept or reject it, whether or not society tells us we should believe in it.

Many of us have feelings at birth that come from the previous life, but as we grow we quickly cease to remember them. There are plenty of accounts of people who have actually remembered past lives. I have been given the title “Rinpoche,” which in our tradition means a reincarnated lama, but I have no recollection of anything before my childhood. When His Holiness the Dalai Lama was a child, on the other hand, he could recognize his past servants and his past religious items. There are countless stories of lamas who have remembered previous lives, and additionally, there are many very ordinary people who, because of some karma ripening, have been able to remember the house they lived in or their family from a previous life. Many of these cases have been verified. There are many examples of Tibetans, Indians, and Westerners who have remembered past lives.

Whereas reincarnation is not that accepted yet in Western culture as it is in Asia, my feeling is that, in their hearts, many Westerners are questioning this assumption of only having one life. They are not sure.

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© 2025 by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, How to Live and Die: The Transformative Power of Meditating on Impermanence. Reprinted by arrangement with Wisdom Publications.