Our true self (or nature)

Our human world is always covering our true nature with emotional downturns, speculation, and misinformation that only rebirth can remove so we might have a clearer vision of our true nature, although it is far from perfect.

For those who don’t accept rebirth their attitude doesn’t change the fact that life is continuous.  Death is far from a final ending.  Each death is only the end of a single life.  In the world of Buddhism, consciousness (P., viññāṇa) is the transmigrant that ensures the transition from one life to the next.

The antidote to the poison of the belief that death is final and that our lifeworld or Lebenswelt ends with our death is Buddhism.  It is always telling us that our attachment to this temporal body, also the five aggregates, is suffering because we are mistaking the real self with a false view of self.  In this respect, we will always be going from one false self to another false self until we wake up and see our true self.

I have found over many years that Westerners find it hard to believe that Buddhism does accept rebirth and does not accept the belief that there is no fundamental self.  In point of fact, the Buddha teaches us not to take what is not the self to be the self.  Our true self is never found in conditions.  It is not a dependent origination nor the five aggregates.  In truest words our true self is the Buddha nature.