The Dark Side of Reincarnation

By Neel Burton | July 19, 2024

Why Rebirth Is Worse Than Death

The wheel of Samsara — The wheel of samsara has a curious parallel in Greek mythology: the wheel of Ixion.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Essay substantially revised on 14 August 2026.

Whenever I tell people that I’ve written a book on Indian thought, the conversation often turns to reincarnation. ‘How wonderful,’ said a neighbour, ‘if people never really die.’

I replied, ‘Actually, reincarnation, even into a higher station, is a kind of punishment. The aim is not to come back. The aim, you might say, is to have a proper death.’

In Indian thought, the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth is called samsara. The problem is not that we die, but that the cycle goes on. Liberation—moksha in Hindu traditions, nirvana in Buddhism—consists in escaping it.

The wheel of samsara has a curious parallel in Greek mythology: the wheel of Ixion. For trying to seduce Hera, Ixion, king of the Lapiths, was bound to a winged, fiery wheel that spins for all eternity in Tartarus. In both traditions, the horror is not death, but to be unable to come off the wheel.

Even Hindus and Buddhists sometimes forget this, and hope, modestly, to be reincarnated into a slightly easier life, perhaps with a faster Wi-Fi. The principle bears explaining, and one way to do that is through the prism of Buddhist thought.

The Doctrine of Dependent Origination

The Buddha was struck by human suffering and spent years trying to understand its causes and the means to overcome them.

An early insight that led to his enlightenment is the Doctrine of Dependent Origination, according to which life is a continuous process of change, with every instance of change having manifold causes and effects. This means that all things are conditioned by other things, so that all things are interconnected.

Suffering arises from a craving for permanence; but all permanence is an illusion that, in time, can only lead to pain and disappointment.

The other, brighter side of the coin is that, if all things are conditional, and subject to change, then so too is suffering.

The Doctrine of Dependent Origination extends even to the self. Buddhism famously denies the existence of an eternal, unchanging soul or atman. What we call the self is a changing constellation of causes and conditions—body, consciousness, sensations, perceptions, dispositions…

But if there is no enduring self, what is reincarnated? The Buddhist answer is not a soul or substance, but a causal continuity. One life gives rise to another rather as one flame might light another. The second flame is neither the same flame nor entirely another.

The Four Noble Truths

It is said that, upon enlightenment, the Buddha understood the Four Noble Truths, which he outlined in his first sermon in the deer park at Sarnath:

Suffering (dukkha) is inherent in all life.
The cause of all suffering is desire.
There is a natural way to eliminate all suffering.
The Noble Eightfold Path is that way.

The first truth, dukkha, acknowledges the unsatisfactory nature of existence. The second truth, samudaya (origin), attributes a cause to this suffering, namely, desire. The third truth, nirodha (cessation), posits a state that is free from suffering. And the fourth truth, marga (path), points to the method for achieving that state.

Although usually translated as ‘suffering’, dukkha refers more broadly to the inherently impermanent and unsatisfactory nature of all things, including the pleasant ones—for, really, it is on account of them that we suffer most.

Nirodha is also referred to as nirvana (‘blown out’, as in a candle), indicating that, rather than a positive state, nirvana is more of a negative state of absence of desire. Nirvana is the state of wishing for nothing, not even nirvana—a state akin, in that respect, to the deepest sleep, or death.

This is the reverse of my neighbour’s fantasy of reincarnation. The object is not to secure an endless succession of lives, but to extinguish the craving that drives the wheel.

Wisdom and Liberation

If the cause of dukkha is desire, the cause of desire is ignorance—pointing to knowledge or wisdom as the way forward. With proper perspective, there would be no desire, and so no suffering—and no (re)birth, which is the outcome of desire, and the source of all suffering. ‘Rebirth’ is a misleading term: had it been called ‘re-death’, people would look upon it very differently.

Does this mean that people ought to refrain from having children? No, insofar as being born is an opportunity to escape being born. The purpose of life is to provide us with an opportunity to escape it, by achieving wisdom. Otherwise, we shall have to try again, and again. It is said that on the night of his enlightenment, the Buddha remembered hundreds of thousands of his former lives. The world is either an aberration or created for the edification or purification of soul or consciousness. Creation is, maybe, God’s form of exercise.

Unfortunately, wisdom is hard to attain, because it runs counter to everything we have learnt and everything we love, including the thing we love most, our self. On top of that, it confronts us with everything we fear, not least death and impermanence. For these reasons and more, it takes long practice and training to attain wisdom, and even longer practice and training to hold on to it in the face of temptation, fragility, and adversity.

Coming Off the Wheel

With desire firmly under control, everything becomes a lot better and a lot easier. In an absence of desire, why lie or steal, or be envious or greedy? Or why be anxious, or angry, or depressed? The opposite of envy is not merely an absence of envy, but shared joy and admiration. The opposite of greed is not merely an absence of greed, but decency and generosity. The opposite of anger is not merely an absence of anger, but compassion. The opposite of anxiety is not merely an absence of anxiety, but tranquillity. The opposite of depression is not merely an absence of depression, but wisdom.

Seen in this light, reincarnation is not a promise that saves us from death. It is the problem from which wisdom is meant to save us. The aim is not to live for ever, nor even to return in happier circumstances, but to become wise enough at last to step off the wheel—and, as I told my neighbour, to die once and for all.

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India’s Boldest Idea: The Illusion of the Self

By Neel Burton | May 11, 2024

The Buddha and Buddhism on the Illusion of the Self

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Essay substantially revised on 12 August 2026.

Who are you?

The answer seems obvious. You have a body, a mind, a personality, a history, a name. You remember your childhood, make plans for the future, and feel yourself to be the same person from one day to the next.

The Buddha thought otherwise.

More than two and a half thousand years ago, he advanced one of the boldest and most unsettling ideas in the history of philosophy: that the self we spend so much of our lives constructing, indulging, and defending is, in an important sense, an illusion. This is not to say that we do not exist. Rather, the person we ordinarily take ourselves to be is far less fixed than we imagine. Understanding this, taught the Buddha, is not a cause for despair but the beginning of freedom.

The Middle Way

Two early insights that led the Buddha to enlightenment are the doctrines of the Middle Way and Dependent Origination.

According to the doctrine of the Middle Way, we are more likely to achieve insight and wisdom if we avoid the extremes of self-gratification and self-mortification. According to the doctrine of Dependent Origination, or Interdependent Arising, life is a continuous process of change, and every instance of change has manifold causes and effects. Everything is conditioned by everything else; nothing exists in complete isolation.

Suffering arises from our craving for permanence. Yet permanence is itself an illusion, and our attempts to cling to it can only end in pain and disappointment. Although nothing exists permanently, it is equally mistaken to say that nothing exists at all. This, too, is a middle way.

Does the self exist?

In one sense it does. In another, it does not—which is why, when asked the question directly, the Buddha, as was often his way, simply remained silent.

The Illusion of Self

How is it that the self can both exist and not exist?

According to Buddhism, the self—or rather the not-self (anatta)—is composed of five elements (skandhas): body, sensation, perception, will, and consciousness. These five skandhas are in a constant state of flux, yet together create the illusion of integrity and continuity that we mistake for a permanent self.

This explains why, when I turn my attention inwards, I can become aware of such and such a sensation, such and such a perception, or such and such a thought, but never of any actual, enduring self.

Try it now for yourself.

There are thoughts.

There are feelings.

There is awareness.

But where, exactly, is the self?

Nagarjuna on Emptiness

The Middle Way and Dependent Origination pervade all aspects of Buddhist thought. After the Buddha, the most celebrated Buddhist philosopher is Nagarjuna (d. c. 250 CE), who founded, or perhaps re-founded, the Madhyamaka (‘Middle Way’) school, an important strand of Mahayana (Great Vehicle) Buddhism.

In his Root Verses on the Middle Way, Nagarjuna argues that between the extremes of permanence and nothingness lies emptiness, or shunyata. Although phenomena exist, they are ‘empty’ insofar as they lack permanence and autonomous existence.

This sounds pessimistic—and Nagarjuna has often been accused of nihilism—but it is precisely this emptiness and fluidity that make change, freedom, and creation possible. In Zen Buddhism, a more dynamic alternative to the koan, or riddle, is for the master suddenly to slap his student, literally shaking him out of who he thinks he is and what he thinks he’s doing. This, however, would probably not be legal today.

Rebirth and Release

The death of the bodily self leads to the disaggregation of the skandhas and to their re-aggregation into another not-self, which is neither identical to nor entirely different from the previous one, but forms part of a causal continuum with it. A traditional analogy is that of a flame, fuelled by desire, passing from one candle to the next.

The cycle of rebirth can only be broken if the self is able to transcend its subjective and distorted image of the world, built around the ‘I am’ conceit. This is nibbana, or, in Sanskrit, nirvana. As I see it, nirvana rests on the understanding that consciousness is not one continuous, unbroken entity but a succession of conscious moments.

Western Parallels

If all this sounds rather mystical, consider that the Scottish philosopher David Hume independently arrived at a remarkably similar conclusion:

…when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I can never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.

Two thousand years after the Buddha, Hume found no permanent self behind experience, only a ceaseless stream of perceptions.

Why It Matters

Our ego defences as broadly conceived—that is, not only our ego defences proper but also our habits, customs, culture, and other ties—may provide us with an illusion of self, but they also define us as such and such, and, in so doing, constrain our range of thought, feeling, and action. Paradoxically, the very elements that furnish us with our sense of self are also those that prevent us from fulfilling our true promise and potential as human beings.

As I argue in my book on the psychology of self-deception, it is only by renouncing the self, that is, by dropping his defences and committing symbolic suicide, that a person is able to open up to different modes of being and relating, and transform himself into a pure essence of humanity. In so doing, he becomes free to recast himself as a more joyful and productive person, and attains the only species of transcendence and immortality that is open to us, mere mortals.

And so, if we are to live, we must first learn to die.

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The Buddha’s Solution to Desire and Suffering

By Neel Burton | May 5, 2024

Buddhism’s Most Important Teachings: The Middle Way, Four Noble Truths, and Eightfold Path

Wheel of the chariot of the sun, Konark Sun Temple, Odisha. 1250 CE. The temple is designed as a chariot with 24 such wheels. As a symbol, the wheel of dharma features in several Indian religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Essay substantially revised on 14 August 2026.

The Buddha was struck by human suffering and spent years trying to understand its causes and the means to overcome them.

After reaching enlightenment, he delivered his first sermon in the deer park at Sarnath, on the outskirts of Kashi (modern-day Varanasi). He preached the Middle Way between luxury and austerity, the Four Noble Truths, and the Eightfold Path.

In these core teachings lies the essence of Buddhism: why we desire, why we suffer, and how we might free ourselves from both.

The Middle Way and Dependent Origination

Two early insights that led the Buddha to enlightenment are the Middle Way and Dependent Origination.

According to the doctrine of the Middle Way, we are more likely to achieve insight and wisdom if we avoid extremes of self-gratification and self-mortification.

The Buddha had tried both. He had lived amid princely luxury and later practised such severe asceticism that he almost starved to death. Neither extreme had brought him enlightenment.

According to the doctrine of Dependent Origination, or Interdependent Arising, life is a continuous process of change, and every instance of change has manifold causes and effects. This means that all things are conditioned by other things, so that all things are interconnected.

Much of our suffering arises from a craving for permanence; but all permanence is an illusion that, in time, can only lead to pain and disappointment.

Although nothing exists permanently, it is equally wrong to say that nothing exists at all. This, too, is a middle way.

Does the self exist? In one sense, it does; in another, it does not—which is why, when asked the question, the Buddha, as was his way, simply remained silent.

The Four Noble Truths

The good news is that, if all things are conditional and subject to change, then so too is suffering.

It is said that, upon enlightenment, the Buddha understood the Four Noble Truths—more accurately translated as the ‘four truths for the noble of spirit’:

Suffering (dukkha) is inherent in all life.
The cause of all suffering is desire.
There is a natural way to eliminate all suffering.
The Noble Eightfold Path is that way.

The first truth, dukkha, acknowledges the unsatisfactory nature of existence. The second truth, samudaya (origin), attributes a cause to this suffering. The third truth, nirodha (cessation), posits a state comparable to the Greek ataraxia (tranquillity) that is free from suffering. And the fourth truth, marga (path), points to the method for achieving that state.

Although translated as ‘suffering’, dukkha refers more broadly to the inherently impermanent and unsatisfactory nature of all things, including the pleasant ones—for it is on account of those that we suffer most.

The cessation of suffering, nirodha, culminates in nibbana (‘blown out’, ‘extinguished’, as in a candle) in Pali or nirvana in Sanskrit, indicating that, rather than a positive state, nirvana is more of a negative state of absence of desire.

Nirvana is the state of wishing for nothing, not even Nirvana.

If the cause of dukkha is desire, the cause of desire is ignorance, pointing to knowledge or wisdom as the way forward. With proper perspective, there would be no desire, and so no suffering—and no (re)birth, which is the fruit of desire, and the source of all suffering.

Does this mean that people should not have children? No, insofar as being born is an opportunity to escape being born. The purpose of life is to provide us with an opportunity to escape it, by achieving wisdom. Otherwise, ‘we’ shall have to try again.

The Eightfold Path

Unfortunately, wisdom is hard to attain because it runs counter to everything we have learnt and everything we love, including the thing we love most: ourselves. On top of that, it confronts us with everything we fear, not least death and impermanence.

For these reasons and more, it takes long practice and training to attain wisdom, and even longer practice and training to hold on to it in the face of temptation, fragility, and adversity.

But even if we are unable or unwilling to commit to becoming a monk or nun, we can still embark on the Noble Eightfold Path:

Right view (maintaining perspective on reality)
Right intention or resolve (renouncing the worldly life for the life of wisdom)
Right speech (e.g. no lies, slanders, or idle talk)
Right action or conduct (e.g. no killing, stealing, or sexual misconduct)
Right livelihood (earning a living through a profession that does not visit harm to others)
Right effort (preventing unwholesome mental states, and encouraging wholesome, productive ones)
Right mindfulness (paying due attention to thoughts, feelings, sensations, and external phenomena)
Right concentration or meditation (cultivating the highest states of mind)

The eight categories are overlapping and mutually reinforcing, and to be worked on simultaneously rather than successively. Indeed, the Noble Eightfold Path is often represented by a dharma wheel, or dharmachakra, with eight spokes, none of which is either first or last.

The dharmachakra can also stand for dependent origination, change, and the cycle of rebirth (samsara), all in one. It is said that, with his first sermon, the Buddha set the wheel of dharma (‘law’, ‘rightfulness’) into motion.

With desire under control, everything becomes a lot better, and a lot easier. In an absence of desire, why lie or steal, or be envious or greedy? Or why be anxious, or angry, or depressed? The opposite of envy is not merely an absence of envy but shared joy and admiration. The opposite of greed is not merely an absence of greed, but decency and generosity. The opposite of anger is not merely an absence of anger but compassion. The opposite of anxiety is not merely an absence of anxiety but tranquillity. The opposite of depression is not merely an absence of depression, but wisdom.

First and foremost, the Buddha’s solution to suffering was not to change the world so it could satisfy our desires. It was to change ourselves so that we might cease to be ruled by them. Some centuries later, the Stoics would arrive at the same fundamental insight.