What Goes from One Life to Another?

In the discussion of rebirth, most who believe in it seem to consider it as reincarnation of an entity, or a person. They believe that a person is born again as a human or an animal in another realm, which is contrary to the Buddhist teachings. Buddhist term for rebirth is punarbhava (in Pali) meaning again existence.

Teachings reject the reference to the corporeal as a person rather than a Name-Matter composition. It is said that the neither the Name-Matter composition nor any part of it, i.e. name or matter, passes from one existence to the other.

This phenomenon is best explained through the dependant origination doctrine which is the core of Buddhist teachings, i.e. due to ignorance kamma formation takes place which conditions consciousness or knowing. Consciousness in turn conditions the Name-Matter composition to create sense bases which enable re-cognition or arising of re-link consciousness, generating new contact. This occurs momentarily in our life where both name & matter ceases after every sense experience but stationing of consciousness continue to get conditioned (due to ignorance) to re-activate the body, preparing for further cognition through any of the sense bases. This continues in a cycle conditioning contact & resulting sensations that cause craving & clinging leading to becoming & rebirth and hence suffering (decay, death, grief, despair, lamentation etc.). 

At death when the consciousness cannot arise again in the dying body, it emerges within another body forming a new Name-Matter composition, along with sense bases enabling the continuation of the cycle.

If either of the Name-Matter composition, Name or Matter, or both pass from one existence to another, we cannot liberate says Ven. Sudassana Thero. 

The Venerable refers to the analogy of lighting a candle from another to explain this. We can use a flame of a burning candle to light up another candle. One may tend to believe that a part of the flame moves from one candle to the other to create the new flame. However, it has been established that as the flame of the 1^st candle is brought in contact with the wick of the 2^nd candle, the latter’s coefficient of heat is raised to its burning point and thus it catches fire. A new flame is borne, however, nothing moved from the one candle (or its flame) to the next one. Similarly nothing moves from one existence to another but an existence (a Name-Matter composition) creates conditions for the birth of a new existence.