Many of the ancient Jataka stories of Buddhism pronounce the same refrain, “at that time and place it was not another, I was ‘that person’.” This strongly implies spiritual continuity of the Bodhisat (S., bodhisattva) who transcends birth and death. These stories serve to illustrate spirit’s unchanging continuation through diverse forms of being which are always changing. In Buddhism, spirit has many names such as Buddha-nature, self, pure Mind, tathatâ, etc.. In all examples, spirit is never a created thing (sankhara). It is always increate (asankhara). We are this increate spirit but don’t realize it to its fullest extent as Gautama the Buddha did. Instead, our ignorance dooms us to countless rebirths.
All through the Buddhist canon we are taught by the Buddha that our self or atman is not the psychophysical body which is born and which will eventually die. Again, this implies spiritual continuity. From the canon we also learn that “he attains to complete nirvana in the very self” (S. iii. 53-54). Indeed, how else might nirvana, i.e., liberation, be attained if not in the self? To be sure, nirvana is not something the psychophysical organism (skandha) can apprehend as if nirvana were a sensory object. The willed-out, created psychophysical organism has no ability to attain nirvana which is increate.
According to the Buddha the psychophysical organism is made up of three components: A discarnate spirit or gandhabba which is re-linking consciousness (patisandhi-viññâna), the sperm and the ovum. This re-linking consciousness is directly interfacing with the psychophysical organism partaking in its existence as if it were truly itself. Fundamentally, this consciousness is spirit which is suffering from a great delusion, believing that it is a psychophysical organism thinking this is mine, I am this, this is my self. Yet, this spirit has never truly been born into any creature—nor has it ever truly died. It is like the Bodhisattva of the Jataka stories: a spiritual continuity.
There is a great danger in taking Buddhism as a non-spiritual teaching in which we are taught to accept as final, impermanence, suffering, and insubstantiality. By doing so we are not really studying Buddhism rather we are studying nihilism. The Buddha really wants us, as spirit, to see the spirit which we have always been; which is not a psychophysical organism; which above all is increate. But few can accomplish this. Almost everyone is caught up in their willed-out, created psychophysical body. They are like people watching a movie who are so deeply involved with the movie’s characters that, for an hour or so, they forgot who they were.
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