Transmigration and Liberation

Liberation (mokṣa 解脫) from the bondage of transmigration (saṃsāra輪廻) has been accepted, in many philosophical and religious traditions of Asia, as the ideal goal of all sentient beings. In these traditions, people believe that conscious beings must live-and-die repeatedly, and this endless cycle of life-and-death (生死)^[1] constantly brings suffering to them. It is of top priority for all these beings to try to liberate themselves from the bondage of transmigration and end their suffering. They believe that no one can avoid this fundamental problem of suffering and transmigration; it must somehow be faced and met. Indian traditions have taken liberation as one of the ultimate goals of their philosophical and religious practices.

Buddhism originated in the Indian subcontinent and has spread throughout the rest of Asia. How does Buddhism solve the problem of transmigration and suffering? Buddhist scriptures report that the Buddha taught what was afterwards named the Noble Fourfold Truth and showed his students the way to eliminate suffering and achieve nirvana. Our life is fundamentally unsatisfactory, and we cannot but suffer. But we can end this suffering by eliminating its cause. Craving is the cause of suffering. Craving must be eliminated if we wish to end suffering. To help us get rid of this craving more effectively, the Buddha suggested that we follow the Noble Eightfold Path. If one can eliminate all craving and get completely free of all suffering, she attains her nirvana. If she continuously remains in nirvana, her transmigration stops once and for all. The logical flow of this teaching may look unusual, but this is the way Buddhists initially introduce the way of liberation.

Contrary to what most of us would expect, however, philosophically-minded Buddhists would not like to directly tackle the problem of transmigration. They do not avoid it, either. Buddhist philosophers would choose to approach the problem by radically changing the way we view and interpret the problem itself. It is our philosophical wisdom that it would truly be a problem to think of an issue of life-and-death as a problem if the issue itself is in fact not a problem at all. In other words, Buddhists can make the problem itself effectively disappear by showing that the problem has never really existed. Buddhist philosophy does not try to solve the problem of life-and-death and transmigration; it instead provides a new perspective with which we can simply dissolve the problem itself. This is the way that most Buddhist schools in Mahayana traditions would prefer. This chapter aims to provide the detailed procedure for this dissolution project. I will suggest a contemporary Buddhist way to approach the issue of transmigration and liberation.

1. Transmigration

           You live this life, and you eventually die. But you are not finished. You will be born again as a sentient being. You live again and die again. You still are not finished. You will be born yet again. This process of life-and-death continues infinitely unless you liberate yourself from the bondage of these cycles. This is the ancient Indian idea of transmigration.

In many religious and philosophical traditions of ancient India, it was not clearly explained what triggers and sustains the process of transmigration. Most people simply accepted the ‘fact’ of transmigration without question. After all, it was a very popular idea of their time, and its popularity did not allow for much room for philosophical discussion. Many accepted the existence of souls and believed that it was these souls that transmigrated. This view was intuitively easy to follow once people came to believe in souls.

Buddhists famously denied the existence of soul or self,^[2] though. But they still believed in transmigration.^[3] This is quite puzzling. If there is no self or soul, what is it that transmigrates? How is transmigration possible at all if there is no self or soul? If the Buddhist thesis of non-self is correct, and if a person does not have her own essence that constitutes her identity, how can we ever track the same person across different lifetimes?

The paradigmatic response that Buddhists provide for such a question would be the dialogue that may or may not have actually happened between King Milinda and Buddhist monk Nāgasena^[4] about 2,200 years ago. King Milinda’s question was exactly the same as ours: How is transmigration possible if there is no self? Nāgasena answered this straightforwardly logical question with an analogy — with style. Let me summarize his answer as follows.

Suppose you have dozens of candles made of all different stuffs, colors, and shapes. You light the first candle and let it burn for hours. About the time it is to burn out, you light another candle with it and let this first candle burn out. You then let the second candle burn for enough time. When it is about to burn out, you light the third candle with it and let this second one burn out. You let the third candle burn for hours. And so on. You continue this procedure with many candles for many days.

Is there anything that remained identical across all these flames on various candles that burnt out one by one? They were all different candles made of different stuffs, colors, and shapes, and they had different flameslights during different time periods. There was no real entity that remained the same across all these different candle lights. However, since each candle was lit by its previous flame, all these candle lights were (causally) connected. If there had been no such connection, there would have been no series of candle lights. We need to conclude that there is nothing real that remained the same across all the different candle lights, but that these lights are still (causally) connected.

The meaning of this analogy is self-explanatory. One flame is an analogy of a life of a particular sentient being. Its death triggers the birth of another sentient being. And this procedure repeats indefinitely many times until a flame does not start another one when it burns out, that is, when the sentient being reaches her nirvana, the state in which all the fire of her burning desires and suffering is blown or burnt out. There is no self that remains the same across different lifetimes. But there still exists transmigration that is triggered and sustained by (causal) relations. Readers of Buddhist literature have often come across this well-known question of ‘transmigration with no self.’ I believe that Nāgasena’s stylish response provides a reasonably good answer.

The problem I see is, however, that very few of our contemporaries would literally accept this ancient belief in transmigration. After all, we are living in the 21st Century and natural science has been in its full swing for centuries. Our physics has reached subatomic levels, medical science has researched molecules of our body, and our scientists and engineers have built spaceships that have reached outside the solar system. We believe we now know enough about the world not to uncritically accept the ancient concept of transmigration – not without scientifically acceptable empirical evidence. But we also believe that the availability of such evidence is practically zero.

Buddhists of our time might have to choose between two options: They give up on the idea of transmigration once and for all, or they re-interpret the concept of transmigration in such a way that our contemporaries can also reasonably accept it. Let us explore the second option. We do not want to impoverish the heritage of such rich Buddhist literature by eliminating the concept of transmigration. We would rather like to have a new perspective on transmigration so that we could conduct more productive discussions on the possibility of liberation from its bondage.

I suggest that we begin our discussion with Bhikkhu Hyun-Eung’s view on the nature of transmigration.^[5] Since the 1980s Hyun-Eung has ‘modernized’ the concept of transmigration and made it more acceptable to our Buddhist and non-Buddhist contemporaries. He points out that the concept of transmigration can be understood more appropriately if we try to illuminate every aspect of our ordinary life with the Buddha’s teaching of dependent arising (Pratītyasamutpāda, 緣起) and impermanence (anitya, 無常). According to him, we live-and-die every day (every instant!) innumerably many times because the elements and components that constitute our body and mind are in constant flux. They come into existence (‘arise’) and cease to exist (‘cease’) every instant.

Our body is basically ‘digested food,’ for one thing. It changes constantly as we breathe in and out different air molecules at every moment, and as we consume different food at each meal. It now is a well-known scientific fact that every single molecule in our body is replaced with another molecule in at least less than every seven years. That is, our body does not retain even one molecule that it used to have seven years ago. The body depends for its existence and survival on its interactions with various environmental factors. These constant interactions make the replacements of molecules inevitable.^[6] No part of our body remains the same. It changes constantly. Every part of our body lives-and-dies and lives-and-dies indefinitely many times. In this regard, it would be fair to say that it transmigrates all the time. The body, which is a collection of these parts, also transmigrates constantly.

That was about our body. What about our mind, then? Beliefs (believing) constitute a part of what we call mind. But we constantly come to have new beliefs, change beliefs, and discard or forget beliefs. Beliefs always come into, and pass out of, existence. It is fair to say, again, that beliefs transmigrate all the time. We can say the same of our feeling, volition, and other kinds of mental states. They are also in constant flux: They come into and go out of existence all the time. Since these mental states live-and-die and live-and-die innumerably many times, we may very well say that they too transmigrate. Buddhism does not recognize the existence of any substance – that is, any independent existence – because Buddhists believe that everything exists and ceases to exist only depending on conditions. The mind certainly is not an exception.

From the ultimate point of view, the mind is not a substance. However, well, perhaps we can conventionally or pragmatically call the intimately close interactions of these mental states ‘mind.’ After all, the concept of mind serves many useful functions in our everyday life. So, let us agree that the mind exists from the conventional or pragmatic point of view. We would then need to admit that the mind, as well as the body, transmigrates every single instant of our life.

The Buddha’s teaching of dependent arising and impermanence explains to us how our mind and body go through the process of transmigration and how we live-and-die indefinitely many times at every moment. This process of transmigration continues incessantly for all our life. This is how I interpret Bhikkhu Hyun-Eung’s view of transmigration. In this chapter, I follow his suggestion.

2. Suffering (duḥkha)

Why is transmigration bad, then? What is wrong with it? Can we not just accept it and be content with it? Transmigration is bad because, according to Buddhists, it necessarily brings to us duḥkha (unsatisfactoriness or suffering, 苦). The constant changes and the continuous process of transmigration make it impossible for us to rely on, and rest comfortably in, anything, any place, any time, or anyone. This unavoidable situation is no doubt fundamentally unsatisfactory. Since everything transmigrates every instant, our life is basically only floating around in this transient world of constant changes.

Buddhists classify a number of different kinds of duḥkha. The simplest kind would be the various physical pains that occur in our body. We are all familiar with this kind of pain. The body never really remains in a very comfortable state for any good duration of time. It always comes to have pain, sooner or later. Psychologically painful experiences also make our life difficult. We are all very familiar with this, too. It is a part of everyone’s life that they cannot always live with their loved ones. When you go to college, for example, chances are that you will have to live far away from your family against your wish. Friends you love often get jobs in distant places. When your parents die, they leave you and never come back. All this is quite unsatisfactory. Its flip side is equally painful. If you have to live with the people that you truly dislike, your everyday life comes to be full of difficulties. Simply imagine what the life of conscientious people must have been like when they had to live with all those fanatic followers of Hitler or Stalin. Also, even if one can have a peaceful state of mind for some time, it never lasts long enough.

These physical and psychological pains are bad enough. However, the primary reason that Siddhartha Gautama left his family and kingdom and became a mendicant monk was his realization of the ‘existential’ duḥkha that no one can ever avoid. The major stages of our life are marked and loaded with this existential kind of duhkha: aging, illness, and death, all of which are necessarily imposed on the mode of our existence. These are all fundamentally unsatisfactory; and they are also unavoidable. Youth, health, and life do not last long enough, and all these are replaced sooner or later by the unsatisfactory stages of old age, illness, and death. This existential problem of our life is truly what makes this world ‘a sea of suffering (苦海)’. It was what drove Gautama out to the life of a monk trying to find a solution. No one can liberate herself from the bondage of transmigration without solving this existential problem. How did the Buddha solve it?

3. Liberation

We have witnessed in the history of Buddhism a variety of solutions designed and presented to help and save people. For instance, the Buddha’s Noble Fourfold Truth teaches that excessive attachment is the cause of our suffering, and that suffering can be eliminated by removing our craving. To help us achieve this craving-elimination, the Buddha proposed his famous Noble Eightfold Path as specific rules to follow. This Path teaches us to cultivate wisdom, improve moral conduct, and engage in meditation. If we can eliminate all our craving that causes suffering, we will be liberated from suffering and achieve nirvana. When one remains in nirvana being completely free from all attachments, her death would not have the causal efficacy to trigger the birth of another sentient being. This should put an end to the cycle of her transmigration. The final destination of her journey as a Buddhist has been reached.

A more philosophical version of Buddhism can provide an ingenious ‘solution’ to the problem of transmigration and suffering. Philosophical Buddhists do not need to directly provide a solution to this problem. This new ‘solution’ is to be obtained by viewing the problem itself from a completely different perspective. I believe that Buddhist philosophers of many traditions would prefer ‘dissolving’ the problem itself, rather than trying to solve it, by showing that the problem is in fact not a problem at all. The truth is, according to these Buddhist philosophers, that there is no problem to begin with. How is this ‘dissolution’ of the problem possible?

The answer lies in the Buddha’s teaching of non-self (anātman, 無我).^[7] Contradicting the predominant views of other Indian traditions of his time, the Buddha taught that no one has a self. What he meant with his claim of non-self is that there exists nothing that is the referent of the word “I,” and that nothing makes the given person the person she is.^[8] The definition of self in Indian traditions fits squarely in the Western-philosophical definition of soul. As the soul is assumed to be immutable, indestructible, and permanent, so is the self. According to the Buddha, however, there is no such a self or soul. The Mahayanist claim of emptiness reconfirms the Buddha’s teaching of non-self. The Mahayana traditions of Central and East Asia claim that there exists no self because everything, including persons, is empty of intrinsic nature. If there is a self, it is what makes the given person the person she is. In other words, the self is the person’s essence. However, the Mahayanist thesis of emptiness applies to persons as well. The person lacks her essence, which is in this case her self. Therefore, there is no self.^[9]

It is time to ask a crucial question and deal with our problem for its dissolution. If there is no I, how can there be my death? How can I be born, age, fall ill, and die if there exists no I to begin with? Since there exists no I, there is no problem of my life-and-death. And we would reasonably agree that there is no problem of transmigration if there is no one who transmigrates. Since there is no real transmigration, there is no problem of transmigration to begin with. For those who are enlightened with the Buddha’s teaching of non-self, therefore, raising the problem of transmigration is asking a misguided question.

Buddhist scriptures have it that the Buddha dismissed his students’ questions on the existence and whereabouts of an arhat^[10] after he dies. The Buddha’s response was that it is not the case that the arhat exists, it is not the case that he does not exist, it is not the case that he exists and does not exist, and it is not the case that he neither exists nor does not exist. The Buddha simply dismissed the questions themselves because they are misleading and off base questions: for, there is no, and has never been an arhat to begin with. In short, the inquiry about the existence and whereabouts of an arhat who has never really existed is a wrongheaded question.

We may well apply this insight to dissolve our problem of transmigration. Philosophical Buddhists do not have to try to solve the recalcitrant problem of transmigration. All they need to do is dissolve the problem itself by showing that there is no one, no self that transmigrates. The enlightened ones understand and willingly accept that the existential problem of life-and-death and transmigration has never really existed. I believe that this should be the way that Buddhist philosophy handles the problem.

4. Overcoming a nihilistic interpretation

A good number of Western readers of Buddhism, especially those readers of Indian Buddhism, have often expressed their suspicion that Buddhism might be a form of nihilism because it does not recognize the existence of self or soul. Further, they do not really understand why Buddhists strive to enter the state of nirvana and get out of transmigration when obtaining nirvana may feel like entering an empty space or sinking into the depths of a bottomless sea. Nihilism of course is not an attractive option to most.^[11] This suspicion of a nihilistic nature of Buddhism is in a sense understandable. After all, people are certainly attached to their selves, and this natural inclination creates a tendency to make them shun the Buddha’s teaching of non-self.

People might even want to stay away from the Buddha’s encouragement to free themselves from the bondage of transmigration. Many people would in fact like to be born again with their own selves keeping their own identities! The history of Buddhism has also recorded a number of Buddhist responses to this kind of very common, and very human, reactions. For instance, some Buddhist schools have thought that, although there is no real I, we can conveniently refer to an imaginary I for our everyday life. In other words, although there exists no self from the ultimate point of view, it is pragmatically advantageous if we postulate an existence of empty ‘person’ for our successful daily life. The Buddha taught that persons are made up of five different kinds of aggregates: Body and four kinds of mental states. Many of Mahayana traditions tend to think of persons, and everything else, in terms of processes. However, if we had to refer to Donald Trump, for instance, not as a person with his own identity but only as a collection of five physical and mental aggregates, or as an obscure metaphysical entity like a series of processes or a four-dimensional entity, it would be very difficult for us to successfully communicate with each other and handle the ordinary business of our everyday life. What would our life be like if we had to call Trump as “Hello, a collection of a body of such and such physical characteristics and four kinds of mental states with such and such psychological characteristics”?

It goes without saying that our language and everyday life have been formed on the unexamined assumption that there are persons with their own identities, with their own selves. Buddhists are willing to accept this familiar practice of our ordinary life. They in fact encourage us to use the ordinary language of our everyday life; and they also tell us to view things in just the way we always have viewed for all our lives. It is just that Buddhists wish to remind us, occasionally, that from the ultimate point of view Donald Trump and all the rest of us lack selves. Selves are supposed to be our essences, and therefore we are all empty persons.^[12] The realization of this ultimate truth is necessary to obtain enlightenment and achieve nirvana.

On the other hand, Bhikkhu Hyun-Eung has a refreshing approach that effectively dissipates the nihilistic appearance of Buddhism. Hyun-Eung admits that the Buddha’s teaching of emptiness (空) can possibly give us an impression of nihilism. This misconception of Buddhism should give Buddhists even more reasons, according to him, to passionately engage in the life of suffering people and actively help them out with the compassion of Bodhisattvas. Hyun-Eung encourages Buddhists to make ‘existentialist’ decisions to take part in suffering people’s lives and guide them to the way of enlightenment and nirvana. As he repeatedly emphasizes, the life of these socially active compassionate Buddhists can never be nihilistic; it is in fact truly exciting.

I agree that various forms of socially engaged Buddhism can help eliminate the misleading nihilistic impression of Buddhism. For the remainder of this chapter, however, I will show why Buddhism, especially East Asian Buddhist traditions, can take life-and-death as the most exciting opportunity to engage in this dependently arising world. Buddhism can be shown to present to us the most exciting view of life and the world in such a way that we can never think of it as nihilistic. I will first focus on the Buddha’s teaching of a person as five aggregates (five skandhas). I will then present my own view based on the worldview of Huayan (華嚴).

If there is a self or soul, it should be immutable, indestructible, and permanent. But nothing in the real world has such marvelous characteristics. Also, if there is a self, it should be that which gives a given person her own essence. It must constitute her identity. As most contemporary metaphysicians would agree, however, there is nothing that can determine any individual’s intrinsic nature. There exists nothing that can satisfy the definition of a self or soul. This is why Buddhism teaches that there is no self. However, one may conventionally think of herself as a kind of imaginary entity ‘person’ composed of a number of elements such as five aggregates. This fictional entity would be something like a sports team made up of several players. The team keeps its existence through the continuous process of interactions among these players.

Imagine a basketball team that has exactly five members. Name it Dragons. The names of these players are Form, Feeling, Perception, Volition, and Consciousness (the five aggregates). None of these five players are immutable, indestructible, or permanent. Neither is this team of five members. Also, we cannot find any substrate that holds this team as one entity. So, it would be rather awkward to regard the team as a ‘real’ entity that exists on its own. However, we cannot take it to be non-existent, either, because these five members keep practicing together and play games as a team with other teams. In other words, Dragons is not really something in the sense that it can exist on its own independently of its parts and their interactions. However, it is not non-existence, either, because it performs a lot of functions as a team.

My stock example that further illustrates this Buddhist point is that of a tornado and hurricane. A hurricane is a continuous process made up of air and water molecules swirling around. There is nothing that holds all these molecules as a group and makes them one entity. It is just a constantly changing process which is not really something that can exist on its own. However, it is not nothing either because it has, or it is itself enormous causal efficacy that is often quite destructive. It even gets a proper name! Likewise, Dragons is not really something that can exist on its own, but it is not non-existence, either. Perhaps we can simply say that Dragons exists only conventionally or pragmatically.

Also, notice that Player Form constantly changes his plays. He might also leave Dragons, and another player from a different team may join Dragons and play in his stead. This transfer and replacement can of course happen to all the other players of the team: Feeling, Perception, Volition, and Consciousness. Each of these five players constantly changes their plays, and any one of them can be replaced by a player from another team. Further, the way these five players interact with each other also changes all the time. Nothing remains the same. Everything changes constantly. In this analogy, Dragons represents the mode of existence of every person. The Buddha taught that a person is made up of five aggregates: Body that has a form, and four psychological states such as feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness. Buddhists believe that each of us exists just the way Dragons exists. No one has a self, and life is the indefinitely modifiable interactions of constantly changing elements.

It is always fascinating and comforting to notice that Buddhist traditions allow for much theoretical flexibility. From the ultimate point of view, there is no true I. However, it is completely alright, actually recommended, to construct an imaginary I — just like Dragons — that exists for a little while (i.e., for a lifetime). But I am not a single subject who has to carry all the burdens of life alone. I am just like a basketball team in which members play games interacting with and helping each other. A team is usually much better off in many respects than an isolated individual. Also, a team competes with other teams and makes its function — its life — more enjoyable. Playing games with other teams is exciting. Life is good. It is constituted of constant interactions among the players within a team and also of more refreshing relations and interactions with other teams. Life is not only enjoyable but at times quite exciting.

However, we also know that I or the team will be gone, sooner or later. We ordinarily call this event death. Now that we have viewed life in a very different, Buddhist way, we can also have new and refreshing approaches to death. Firstly, the dismantling of the team would of course be sad, but it is not really such a tragic event that we cannot endure. The five members of the team may no longer be able to play together, but it would not be the end of the world to any of them. Likewise, we may well face death not too dramatically. It is sad, but it is alright. Secondly, and more importantly, although Dragons is no longer with us as a team, each of its players usually finds a new team and continues their careers with Chicago Bulls, New York Knicks, etc.

The ending of a team is, after all, not the end of the whole story. Its former members may well join other teams and can help their new teams play different, hopefully better, games. Some of these former members may even start new careers as golfers or baseball players. This kind of dismantling-assembly process will be repeated indefinitely many times for a very long time. We may very well view the ending of a team – that is, a person’s death – this way. The body will return to nature and constitute parts of other entities, some of which might be sentient beings. Feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness are used to have interactions with other sentient beings’ mental states; the results of these interactions will remain in these sentient beings, and these results will always evolve. This process will continue with yet other sentient beings – with no end.

Death is a powerful event. Anyone who has experienced the death of a family member or a close friend knows how many new effects it can create in this world. Ancient Indians and Buddhists believed that death is powerful enough to trigger the beginning of a new sentient life elsewhere. This powerful event we call death, as it occurs in this dependently arising world, brings about a lot of changes to many sentient and non-sentient beings for a long time. This new perspective on death I am suggesting here will naturally remind many East Asian Buddhists of their worldview of Huayan.^[13]

The death of an individual can have tremendous physical, psychological, positive, and negative impacts on these dependently arising natural and human worlds for a very long time (for eternity?). Some people might get unusually excited about this phenomenon and would like to think of this continuing process of dependently arising events as something wonderful that leads us to an eternal life — to immortality! But Buddhists, who deny the existence of an indestructible substance or permanent self that might carry an eternal life, would not accept this process as such magic. An eternal life is not possible in Buddhism. It still seems clear to me, however, that it is not just life that is not nihilistic. Death is also a part of the process of this dependently arising world, and, being able to have great impacts on many parts of the world, it can never be a nihilistic event. Life-and-death (生死) needs to be understood as a concept that refers to one continuous process; it had better not be understood as a concept created by combining two opposite concepts.

The Huayan claims that everything arises, abides, and ceases depending on all the conditions of the world. In other words, everything constantly changes in relation to everything else. In this Huayan view of East Asian Buddhism, everyone has wonderful chances to contribute to the world taking advantage of the dependently arising network of the world. Life-and-death is in fact an incredibly exciting phenomenon that gives us opportunities to create more positive changes in the world. It seems that each of us has a good reason to try to live a better life and die a good death.

5. It’s a wonderful life-and-death!

There is no genuine problem of life-and-death because there is no real one who lives-and-dies. Although there exists no subject that lives-and-dies, however, life-and-death exists at least as a phenomenon, or better, as a process.^[14] This is just like the way that a hurricane exists as a process with its enormous causal efficacy although there is nothing, no substrate, that holds this process as a hurricane. Are we ourselves not also little hurricanes in which all the particles of our bodies and psychological states are swirling around?

There is no reason that life-and-death has to be a painful, unsatisfactory, or tragic process. It surely is wise of one to ‘dissolve’ the problem of life-and-death by realizing that there is no subject who lives-and-dies. However, would it not be wonderful for her if she can make maximum use of her life-and-death as an instrument and opportunity to fully engage in this world of ‘the sea of suffering (苦海)’ and make positive changes to it? She may very well choose to become a Bodhisattva with her overflowing compassion and continuously produce and propagate positive impacts across the entire network of this dependently arising world. Isn’t it now clear that Buddhism is not, and has never been, nihilistic?

It’s a wonderful life. It’s a wonderful death, too.

Review

Transmigration, Suffering and Liberation

All sentient beings including humans are born, live, and eventually die. Buddhism teaches that life does not end there. Rather, all sentient beings with consciousness are reborn and die again. And re-birth and death repeat. The cycle of birth and death continues infinitely. The endless cycle of birth and death had taken place even before you were born into this world. This infinite cyclic process of birth and death is called transmigration in Buddhism.

Sentences 1 through 5 are all true.