Expert: Joe McSorley - 10/4/2003

Question
I know this is asking for simple answers to profound questions, and I will welcome your response in that light. Q1. It is my understanding that Buddhim does not believe in the existence of individual souls. Is Tibetan Buddhism an exception to this as evidenced by the rebirth of the Dali Lama? Q2. What happens to our conciousness when we die? Thank you for your consideration. Wyck Howland

Answer
Dear Wyck,
 Thanks for your question and you bring up a good point about Tibetan Buddhism.  I, too, find this to be a difficulty with their teachings. If the self is ultimately empty then what can possibly reincarnate?  The Tibetans say it's the aggregates in different forms but the aggregates are not any substantive form of self so why is there identity attached to them?  I don't know how the Tibetans defend this stance and have had this conversation with several Tibetan scholars but I never got an answer that I felt was adequate.  So I can't help you with this one and it is surely not a stance I can defend.
   As for your second question there's an old Zen saying that answers it with,” If you want to know what happens after death ask a dead master”?  To deal with this more directly I will give you the answers my teachers gave me to this question when I posed it years ago.  The first is, ‘ where is your conscious now?' and the second is ‘where it is before your birth'.  To talk about conscious and its logos is to assume what consciousness is and what its ground is.  If you operate without these presuppositions then what are we talking about?  What is the ground for consciousness and what happens to that after death?   I think you can say that the ability to think, as we know it through our brains is gone but the root of consciousness is neither born nor dying.  If you were talking about the normal cognitive functions then I would say they are gone but is that really the self?  If a leaf dies it says nothing for the root.  So the crux here is to know the root of consciousness rather than the surface manifestation.  The root is unborn and undying.
 Take care,
              Joe