The you who took the previous step in Heraclitus’ river. You are not the same now as you were yesterday; what you are today is contingent on what you were yesterday, but you are not the same. The designation “you” is merely a convenience.
You are changing. Each new you is contingent on the previous you. All those different yous make up ‘you’.
rossum
Interestingly you used “you” when more appropriately it should have been “me”.
The reality is that there exists a “you”.
If it were just “me”, Buddhism would work better, with its emphasis on meditation and the salvation of the individual.
I am, and as an aspect of my being, I have a developed set of ways in which I perceive, understand and respond to my world, outer and inner.
Among these mental phenomena, is a self-image. Clearly, while it describes my being in the world, it cannot encompass the mystery of being, a being which is in the form of a relationship between the knower and the known, the lover and the beloved.
There exist a separation between you and me.
Your indisputable reality, for me exists in its vaguest form within my imagination.
I am me and I project onto you this concept.
Whoever you are in yourself, I imagine you understanding yourself as a “me” out there in time and space looking back at me in your way.
Though limited, we see here that communication is possible.
And, this seemingly unbridgeable gap between us ultimately can be overcome in love.
We have the capacity to not merely react to but actually connect with one another.
In Buddhism, there is no transmigration of the soul.
The karma that would cause us to be reborn may be the outcome of what we do now, but it would generate a new person, unless there exists a soul, timeless, a finite manifestation of one supreme Soul.
Either each person born is a separate being, illusory from the perspective of a one eternal mind, or there exists an eternal separate soul, arising from One supreme Being.
In the first case there is no true salvation; one awakens from a dream that would end regardless, in death.
In the latter, there would be reincarnation, as Hindus believe; or this one life which we form is the seed of life eternal, that would see all creation in loving union with its Creator.
Christianity makes so much more sense.
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