The Case for Rebirth

Dalai Lama Quote of the Week

When this world initially formed, there seem to have been two types of events or entities, one sentient, the other insentient. Rocks, for instance, are examples of nonsentient entities. You see, we usually consider them to have no feelings: no pains and no pleasures. The other type, sentient beings, have awareness, consciousness, pains and pleasures.

But there needs to be a cause for that. If you posit there is no cause for consciousness, then this leads to all sorts of inconsistencies and logical problems. So, the cause is posited, established. It is considered certain.

The initial cause must be an independent consciousness. And on that basis is asserted the theory of continuation of life after death. It is during the interval when one's continuum of awareness departs from one's body at death that the subtle mind, the subtle consciousness, becomes manifest. That continuum connects one life with the next.

--from Consciousness at the Crossroads: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on Brain Science and Buddhism edited by Zara Houshmand, Robert B. Livingston, and B. Alan Wallace, published by Snow Lion Publications