To begin to answer the great question of what is born, decays and dies requires of us a very careful introspective examination. Some Zennists firmly believe the Buddha-nature gets born, decays and dies which means for them samsara is nirvana. But the Buddha-nature has never been born as something conditioned. So how can it decay, eventually to die?
What actually gets born, decays and then dies is the Five Aggregates consisting of form, feelings, perception, volitional formations, and sensory consciousness. But let me pause here. At this point we have to do some deep, profound thinking. Although it is the Five Aggregates that are born, decay, and then die does this mean that we die as well? The answer is, of course, no. We only seem to be born, decay, and then die because we blindly cling to the Five Aggregates as if there is nothing else besides.
Now we come to the place that separates the worldling (prithagjana) from the Bodhisattva. The worldling, and even the worldling Buddhists who might be a Zen teacher, is so hooked on the Five Aggregates, which is really their psychophysical body, that they can do scarcely else than follow it from cradle to grave. As a result of following the Five Aggregates, their course is naturally to always re-become (punarbhava) in some new psychophysical condition thus to experience suffering again and again. There’s no escape from samsara, in other words, without directly beholding the unconditioned (nirvana), that is, without transcending the Five Aggregates which are always conditioned.
In some older parts of the Pali canon we learn that consciousness, the fifth aggregate, is regarded as the transmigrant that re-becomes which means that consciousness is mutable, conforming to any aggregate formation. Only in nirvana does the mutability of consciousness appear to cease when it finally rests in the unmanifest, infinite and luminous (D. i. 223), this liberated consciousness and pure Mind being one and the same.
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