A
Ahimsa
Guest
Thomas More:
To speak of the body as a shell, and the atman as sort of a ghost that lives in the shell and then departs at death, is a common statement, but it is not the most accurate description of atman and the body-mind, primarily because the atman neither comes nor goes, neither enters nor leaves, neither takes birth nor dies nor is reborn.
Thank you for your questions. This matter of reincarnation in Hindu and Buddhist teaching is rather complicated, and I can’t do full justice to it here. But I would like to point out that the “atman” (just to take a Hindu perspective on this) is not separable from either matter (body) or mind. The atman includes body and mind, and yet transcends them altogether. If atman is the real “us”, then “we” include matter and mind, and cannot be divorced from them.
To speak of the body as a shell, and the atman as sort of a ghost that lives in the shell and then departs at death, is a common statement, but it is not the most accurate description of atman and the body-mind, primarily because the atman neither comes nor goes, neither enters nor leaves, neither takes birth nor dies nor is reborn.