Q&A Excerpt (2017) : If There is No Self, What is Reborn?

[@dharmalearner7396]

Great to have these clips as a reference. Thank you

[@nathaniel4969]

I answered this for myself by turning the question around. On retreats, in mediation, I looked for a self. Never ever found one. Only found sense doors, contact and conciousness arising. It's all just processes arising and passing away 🙂. This is described in depth in Dependent Origination, but is best experiened directly.

[@NirvanicSunshine]

There are 3 interposed bodies for beings in the physical world. The body that requires food that we're most familiar with, the ethereal body that animates the physical body (our ghost, essentially), and the formless, mind-only "body" which performs all of the mental and cognitive functions using whatever brain that particular body has to work with. When the physical body dies, you're still left with the two remaining bodies which carry on the extent karmic tendencies since they're stored in the mind/mind-only formless body. Through meditation and attaining Cessation (of feeling and perception) you go beyond even the mind-only formless realm of being, which is why the mind stops and the karmic seeds of the defilements related to perception and feeling are destroyed. Take the batteries out, and they die. The battery is a mind that nurtures defilements through habitual tendencies. No mind, no habit, no tendencies. A full reboot. Fresh new mind.

[@Skyelement84K]

We're not going to find it intellectualizing about it.