A reincarnation question

Ok, so I've been told many times that the personality and ego of a person do not carry on after death, but in the Jataka Tales, we see many examples of the Buddha doing things in the same fashion, life after life. So if our personalities and egos don't carry on after death, how did his?

 

nothing has to work the way anyone thinks it does.

=^^=
.../\...

 

I'm not an expert on this, but it is my understanding that when a being dies with volitional energy, that volitional energy dissipates into the surrounding environment and winds up becoming part of another organism, over time. Thus there is no organism that is exactly the same after reincarnation, but parts of an organism may find their way into new organisms.

 

^^pretty much the way I see it too.

We are just tiny little bits and pieces of each other, substance, energy, matter being constantly recycled and reborn.

 

Wow, thanks guys that helps me a lot.
Heh, I just realized that that sounded really sarcastic and stuff, but that's not what I meant. I really do appreciate the insights.

 

After the last person has attained awakening no one is posited to have attained awakening which is why we are free to speak of awakening.

 

Question what the Buddha can and cannot do, do you?

 

Buddha Gotama is dead

 

Does a puddle die when it becomes a cloud?

 

there are ten parts of the personality and we're allowed to choose our five favorites to take with us to the next life

 

Reincarnation has always been looked at in the wrong way...since I have no true self, I can never truly be "reincarnated." The spiritual essence is the entirety of existence and it can never die or be reborn; it just is. And I, having no self, am simply this spiritual essence and therefore can never be born and never die.

 

the ego is an illusion. it's like if the universe, all the people and rocks and thoughts and emotions and clouds, if infinity, were a piece of paper. you can cut the paper up, and give someone a piece of it. they have no knowledge of the rest of the paper, and so they think the piece they have is something individual, when really, it connects back to and is a part of infinity. "reincarnation" is just consciousness that goes on after the "individual" is put back together with the rest of the paper. you can't not be conscious, but you won't turn from one thing into another because you still are the other thing and always were what you "turned into". your "self" doesn't exist, it is only believed as a way to seperate yourself from the "big picture", which is all that really is, so you can look back on it as something outside of yourself, and understand it as being real.

 

I like that^^

 

its important to recite sutras

 

its important to just breathe

 

its important to poop

 

yeah I heard that somewhere too

 

If you don't eat, you don't poop, and if you don't poop, you'll die.

 

The reason why they are told is because Buddha told them these stories after he became Enlightened. Therefore it is in retrospect. It was not the ego which kept repeating these actions, it was the repeatition of these actions which were attributed to his ego. The actions were repeated because they were done through unconsciousness; karma was in effect. Once he became Enlightened his karma was burnt up, all his pass lives were remembered. Those are the stories he told. But when he told them the stories he was speaking from his current incarnation which the people attributed to his current ego.

Did Guatama remember any of his female incarnations?

 

Ok, but if there is nothing that carries on after death, than what is there for Karma to act upon in a further life?

Or will some person just randomly get my karmic debt?