In some discourses we learn that it is consciousness that survives the death of the body and reaps the fruit of previous actions (karma). In others it is mind or citta that survives death and goes to excellence or distinction (visesa). At SN 35:21 we come across this interesting section which is about mind going to distinction. This is what the Buddha as to say to Mahānāma who worries about the afterlife if he is accidentally killed. The Buddha tells him,
When a person’s mind has been fortified over a long time by faith, virtue, learning, generosity, and wisdom, right here crows, vultures, hawks, dogs, jackals, or various creatures eat his body, consisting of form, composed of the four great elements, originating from mother and father, built up out of rice and gruel, subject to impermanence, to being worn and rubbed away away, to breaking apart and dispersal. But his mind, which has been fortified over a long time by faith, virtue, learning, generosity, and wisdom—that goes upwards, goes to distinction.
For Buddhists disposed to a theory that nothing survives death (many of them Western Buddhists) this noteworthy passage, to reiterate, clearly says that the mind goes to distinction unlike the physical body which becomes the food of animals. Here again, in the same discourse, the Buddha gives another illustration of the mind’s place after the death of the physical body.
Suppose, Mahānāma, a man submerges a pot of ghee or a pot of oil in a deep pool of water and breaks it. All of its shards and fragments would sink downwards, but the ghee or oil there would rise upwards. So too, Mahānāma, when a person’s mind has been fortified over a long time by faith, virtue, learning, generosity, and wisdom, right here crows ... or various creatures eat his body.... But his mind, which has been fortified over a long time by faith, virtue, learning, generosity, and wisdom—that goes upwards, goes to distinction.
What are we to make of all this? Well, for one thing, the Buddha is not a materialist who believes that when the physical body dies, so does the mind. Mind is, apparently, transcendent in that it was never really a part of the physical body; nor can we say that the physical body is something real and fixed when in fact it is illusory owing to its impermanence.
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