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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:

  1. Suffering (dukkha) is inherent in all life.
  2. The cause of all suffering is desire.
  3. There is a natural way to eliminate all suffering.
  4. 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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Yoga is one of the six orthodox schools of Indian philosophy.

A darshana is an outlook, a philosophy, literally, a “vision.” The term darshana is especially associated with the six orthodox schools of Indian philosophy, the so-called shaddarshana, or “six visions.” What makes them orthodox, and therefore Hindu, is that they accept the authority of the Vedas. With good reason, the shaddarshana are often presented in pairs: Samkhya-Yoga, Nyaya-Vaisheshika, and Mimamsa-Vedanta. In this post, I shall, of course, be focussing on Samkhya-Yoga.

The Samkhya School

The founder of the Samkhya school is held to be Kapila, who lived, perhaps, in the sixth century BCE. Little is known about him. He is sometimes described as an avatar of Vishnu or the grandson of Brahma. He is mentioned by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita as the greatest of sages: “Amongst the gandharvas I am Chitrath, and among the siddhas, I am sage Kapila.” According to Puranic lore, his meditation produced such intense inner heat that, when they disturbed him, he incinerated the Sagarputras, the 60,001 sons of King Sagara, simply by opening his eyes.

In the Buddhist tradition, the students of Kapila built the Shakya capital of Kapilavastu. The Buddha, who was raised in Kapilavastu, was therefore steeped in Samkhya philosophy, explaining the affinities between Samkhya and Buddhism.

Kapila is held to have authored the Samkhya Sutra, although the extant text appears to be medieval in origin. Instead, the school’s primary text is the Samkhyakarika by Ishvarakrishna, who lived in the third or fourth century CE.

In the first verse, Ishvarakrishna states the aim of Samkhya: to eliminate the three forms of dukkha (suffering): internal, from physical and mental disease; external, from outside threats, especially other people; and divine, that is, from natural disasters.

Samkhya is a radical dualism that holds that the universe is made up of two independent, infinite, and eternal realities: Purusha (souls) and Prakriti (matter or nature). The Purushas are conscious but have no attributes. They are pure ‘witness consciousness.’ Prakriti is composed of the three gunas (qualities or tendencies of matter), sattva (preservation, harmony), rajas (creation, passion), and tamas (destruction, apathy). 

Initially, the gunas are in equilibrium. But at its approach, Purusha disturbs this equilibrium in favour of rajas, and this imbalance sets off material creation.

Comparisons With Western Dualism

Unlike Western dualism, which is between mind and matter, Samkhyan dualism is between self and matter—with “matter” encompassing most of what Westerners would consider “mind” (intellect, ego, emotions, etc.)—everything, in fact, except witness consciousness, of which mind is the instrument.

Also, unlike Western dualism, Samkhyan dualism is atheistic or agnostic. Although an orthodox school, Samkhya is remarkably silent about God and the Vedas.

The Samkhyan Account of Creation

At the approach of Purusha, undifferentiated Prakriti evolves 23 tattvas (elements, aspects), first buddhi (intelligence), and from buddhi ahamkara (ego or self-consciousness).

Under the influence of sattva guna, ahamkara yields the five organs of sense (eyes, ears, nose, skin, tongue), the five organs of action (arms, legs, speech, organs of elimination, organs of creation), and manas (mind).

Then, under the influence of tamas guna, ahamkara yields the five subtle elements (sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste), from which the five material elements (earth, air, water, fire, ether) emerge.

Notice that the material world is last in the order of creation. Its evolution from the five senses suggests that the world is an illusion, although this is never explicitly stated.

Manas has a special role in mediating between the ten organs, the five senses, and the world without. Being of Prakriti, buddhi, ahamkara, and manas are not conscious. However, they appear to be conscious and are set into motion by proximity with Purusha—functioning, as it were, by reflected consciousness.

The Samkhyan Account of Liberation

Adding Purusha and Prakriti to the 23 tattvas makes a total of 25 tattvas—of which 24 are of Prakriti. Nonetheless, it is for the sake of Purusha that the differentiation occurs, to provide it with experience and, in time, with liberation (moksha). By reflecting the consciousness of Purusha, Prakriti is showing Purusha to itself.

Purusha and Prakriti are like a lame man and a blind man, lost in the wilderness. The blind man carries the lame man, who guides his steps. Both are looking for their way home, to moksha, when they will part ways. But having never traveled, the lame man is avid of experience and so enthralled by his adventure that he forgets about his destination.

To be consistent with the universal law of karma, Samkhya assumes that a Purusha that is bonded to Prakriti (that is, a jiva), has two bodies: a gross, mortal body, and a subtle body made up of the higher functions which transmigrates according to past merit. The continuity of the subtle body enables the Purusha to keep on learning through numerous incarnations.

Final liberation consists in the realization of the separateness of Purusha and Prakriti. This involves a process of involution, or “going back to the womb”—that is, reversing, through intellect and understanding, the process of evolution from the material elements back to undifferentiated Prakriti and beyond.

In short, salvation consists in counting backwards.

The Yoga School

Samkhya exerted such a profound influence on Yoga that the two schools are sometimes merged as Samkhya-Yoga. But whereas Samkhya emphasizes knowledge and discrimination as the path to liberation, Yoga rather emphasizes discipline.

Although Yoga essentially borrows the metaphysics of Samkhya, it introduces a twenty-sixth tattva, namely, Ishvara, or “the Lord”—for which reason it has been called “Theistic Samkhya.” The nature of “Ishvara” is open to interpretation, but it may be regarded as a special Purusha that is unentangled and, therefore, inactive.

The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali

In the second century BCE, or perhaps the fifth century CE, Patanjali collected the ideas around yoga in the Yoga Sutra. These 196 verses became the foundational text of Yoga, which, towards the end of the first millennium, began to be mentioned as a separate school.

Patanjali’s synthesis influenced all other schools of Hindu philosophy, which regard it as authoritative. It is sometimes referred to as Raja Yoga (Royal Yoga) or Ashtanga Yoga (Eight-Limbed Yoga) to distinguish it from the many other forms of yoga, such as Jnana, Karma, Bhakti, Mantra, and Tantra—which are, of course, more complementary than mutually exclusive.

The Yoga Sutra has four sections: Samahdi (Concentration), Sadhana (Practice), Vibhuti (Yogic or Magical Powers), and Kaivalya (Isolation or Liberation). In the first section, Patanjali defines yoga as “the cessation of mental fluctuations” (chitta vritti nirodha)—with chitta (mind) assimilated in the Samkhyan system to buddhi, ahamkara, and manas. In the third section, he warns against practicing yoga for the perverted purpose of acquiring yogic powers—suggesting that this sort of thing may have been common.

Ashtanga or Eight-Limbed Yoga

The eight stages of Patanjali’s Yoga are:

  1. Yama (abstinence or restraint)
  2. Niyama (discipline or observances)
  3. Asana (‘seat’, posture)
  4. Pranayama (breath control)
  5. Pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses)
  6. Dharana (concentration of the mind on some object)
  7. Dhyana (steady meditation on that object) and
  8. Samadhi (absorption, ecstatic union with the ultimate).

The first two stages are ethical preparations. Yama involves abstinence from injury, falsehood, stealing, lust, and avarice. Niyama involves purity or cleanliness, contentment, austerity, study, and devotion to God.

The next two stages are physical preparations, each involving a series of exercises to remove physical or bodily distractions.

The fifth stage involves taking control of the mind by emptying it of impressions.

The remaining three stages, which may take several lifetimes to perfect, aim at increasingly heightened states of awareness and return.

According to Patanjali, the five kleshas (poisons, obstacles to Yoga and liberation) are ignorance, ego, attachment or desire, aversion to unpleasant things or truths, and fear of death and desire to live.

Final Remarks

The aim of yoga, and ascetic practice in general, is essentially to react against ordinary human habits, which entangle us, or our Purusha, with Prakriti, to the extent that Purusha identifies with Prakriti and more particularly with the restless chitta and its manifold modifications.

This is a far cry from the yoga practised in the West as a form of physical culture, with postures borrowed from Hatha Yoga and optional spiritual sprinkling for stress relief. Even Hatha Yoga is about a lot more than that.

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Why the Ancient Indian Doctrine Is Far More Profound Than ‘What Goes Around Comes Around’

Konark Sun Temple wheel of dharma (karma)

The stone wheel of the Konark Sun Temple, Odisha, India.

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.

Why do good people suffer while bad people prosper?

It is one of the oldest problems in philosophy and religion. Every civilisation has wrestled with it. If the universe is just, why do the virtuous endure hardship, while the vicious flourish? Why are some people born into privilege while others are burdened from the very beginning?

The Indian traditions developed one of history’s most striking answers: karma.

Today, karma is widely misunderstood, even by Indians themselves. It is often confused with fate or destiny, or reduced to the cliché that ‘what goes around comes around’. Both are misconceptions. Properly understood, karma is a law of moral causation by which our modes of engagement come to determine our station and situation.

According to Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and several other Indian religions, every instance of thought, speech, and action is a cause, and every experience an effect. Reward and punishment are not arbitrary. Instead, the universe is governed by an intricate web of causes and consequences extending beyond a single lifetime.

Good karma is often referred to as punya (‘merit’), and bad karma as paap (‘demerit’). Even if punya does not immediately seem to pay off, it does in the longer term. This is why karma is closely tied to samsara, the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth—with future births conditioned by the accumulated balance of punya and paap.

Although karma is fundamentally individual, it can also, in certain circumstances, be transferred. The Kaushitaki Upanishad describes a rite in which a dying father passes his karma to his son, declaring, ‘Let me place my speech in thee… Let me place my breath in thee…’, with the son replying, ‘I take thy speech in me… I take thy breath in me…’

More ordinarily, the paap of a living or deceased person may be mitigated by the prayers, rituals, or pilgrimages of others.

Justice Beyond This Life

Why should justice extend beyond a single lifetime? Because a lifetime is simply too short. Vice and virtue do not always seem to receive their due. But over many lives, the moral balance can finally be restored.

Some ancient Greeks arrived at a strikingly similar solution. At the outset of Plato’s Republic, the sophist Thrasymachus argues that it is not the just but the unjust who flourish, and that the tyrant, being the most wicked of people, is also the happiest. At the end of the Republic, in the Myth of Er, Plato turns to reincarnation to guarantee that the genuinely just always come out on top, with each soul choosing its next life according to its accumulated store of wisdom. In this, as in much else, Plato was influenced by Pythagoras (d. 495 BCE), who, like the Indians, believed in the transmigration of the soul.

In the Catholic tradition, heaven serves much the same moral purpose as karma. The soul of the newly deceased is judged and sent to heaven, hell, or purgatory. Then, there is also a Last Judgement that takes place after the Second Coming of Christ and the resurrection of the dead.

In the Letter to the Galatians, St Paul warns: ‘Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’

According to the Old Testament, punishment might even be extended to subsequent generations, that is, to future selves: ‘The Lord is long-suffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation’ (Numbers 14:18, and repeated almost verbatim in Exodus 34:7).

Whether through repeated rebirths or a final judgement, all these traditions share a common conviction: justice must ultimately prevail.

The Philosophy of Karma

Karma serves the same purpose as Eden in providing the major motivation to live a moral life. But it serves other purposes too, such as accounting for the existence of evil, rationalising rebirth (which could also operate independently of karma), and providing a soteriological goal of final liberation.

In determining our circumstances and even our temperament, karma may constrict our options, but it does not deprive us of choice and deliberation, enabling it to condone social inequities and the caste system while at the same time affirming human freedom.

The importance of karma, and the degree of freedom and determination within it, have long been debated in and between the Hindu schools.

But even if karma theory is not literally true, it is at least metaphorically true. Being good does pay off, if only in peace of mind and mental health.

In which case, is karma theory a firm basis for morality, or an appeal to naked self-interest?

One way around this problem, which has been taken, is to broaden the scope of karma to include thoughts as well as actions, so that the system becomes impossible to game.

Doing the right thing for the wrong reason is not the same, and does not feel the same, as doing it for the right reason. According to the Great Forest Upanishad, the truly virtuous act is the one that is desire-less. More than two millennia later, Immanuel Kant would arrive at a remarkably similar conclusion with his Categorical Imperative. Like the Stoic archer, one must concentrate on doing the right thing, to the best of one’s ability, without being attached to the outcome. For it is from attachment that life and misery arise.

The Buddhist Solution

The Buddha had another way around the problem, which is to deny the metaphysical distinction between the self and others so that helping others is the same as helping oneself.

Aristotle makes a similar if more circumscribed move in the Nicomachean Ethics, when he says that there is no conflict between helping a friend and helping oneself insofar as a perfect friend is like another self.

When we are good to another, we are good to all, including ourself, because the distinction is an illusion, and karma travels.

If we have no self, why did the Buddhists not altogether give up on karma and samsara?

In part, because karma can still operate in the absence of a Self, or Atman, with future incarnations being conditioned by the sum of all the karmic actions that have been put into the world.

The Deeper Insight

Whether or not one believes in reincarnation, the deeper insight of karma remains compelling.

Every person—their parents, their teachers, and their parents and teachers—is the embodiment of every karmic action that has ever gone before. Our every action reverberates to the end of time. 

Our every kindness changes the person who receives it, and our every cruelty does the same. Those people, in turn, shape others.

We inherit the moral world created by all those who came before us, and leave behind the moral world that our successors will inherit.

Thus, karma is not merely a mystical doctrine, but a profound truth about what it means to be human.

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Gender Fluidity in Gods and Heroes

Ardhanārīśvara, the divine union of Śiva and Pārvatī.
Ardhanārīśvara, the divine union of Śiva and Pārvatī.

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 25 August 2026.

Many cultures feature gods, demigods, heroes, and other mythological beings with both male and female attributes, and it is worth asking why that might be.

In Hinduism, Vishnu’s female avatar, Mohini, seduced Shiva, later giving birth to the god Shasta. Shiva himself is often represented as Ardhanarishvara, an androgynous composite of Shiva and Parvati with a body that is male on the right-hand side and female on the left.

This recalls the Greek Hermaphroditus, son of Hermes and Aphrodite, who became fused with the nymph Salmacis—giving us the word ‘hermaphrodite’.

The great warrior of the Mahabharata epic, Arjuna—a kind of Hindu Achilles, but more thoughtful—spent a year as a woman, during which he took the name of Brihannala, and taught song and dance to the princess Uttara.

Speaking of Achilles, to prevent him from dying at Troy, as had been foretold, his mother Thetis sent him to live at the court of the king of Skyros disguised as another daughter of the king, under the name of Pyrrha (‘the red-haired’), Issa, or Kerkysera. The great killing machine of Homer’s Iliad was for a time a shy princess.

Hapi, the god of the annual flooding of the Nile, brought such fertility to the land of Egypt as to be regarded by some as the father or most important of the gods. He is usually portrayed as intersex, with a ceremonial false beard and pendulous breasts.

Hapi might be compared to Tlazolteotl, the Aztec goddess of fertility and sexuality, who was associated with the moon and, like the moon in Aztec culture, had both male and female attributes. Tlazolteotl inspired vice, but as Tlaelcuani the ‘Eater of Filth’ she was also able—not unlike Jesus—to purify sinners by absorbing their sins.

The Mesopotamian Ishtar, the beautiful goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex, was sometimes represented with a beard to emphasise her more bellicose side. Ishtar could change a man into a woman, and the assinnu, kurgarru, and kuku’u who tended to her cult had both male and female features.

After the hero Gilgamesh rejected her offer of marriage, Ishtar unleashed the Bull of Heaven, leading to the death of Enkidu, whom Gilgamesh loved more than anyone: ‘Hear me, great ones of Uruk/ I weep for Enkidu, my friend/ Bitterly mourning like a woman mourning.’

Gilgamesh bears more than a passing resemblance to the Greek Herakles (Hercules), who spent a year enslaved to Omphale, Queen of Lydia. Omphale made Herakles wear her clothes and sit at the spinning wheel, while she herself wore the skin of the Nemean Lion and brandished his olive-wood club.

To seduce the nymph Callisto, Zeus, the king of the Greek gods, took the form of the goddess Artemis. Zeus took many lovers, but, according to the historian Xenophon (d. 354 BCE), granted immortality to but one, the Trojan prince Ganymede, whom he abducted and appointed his cupbearer.

Other instances of same-sex (typically male) love in Greek myth include: Apollo and Hyacinthus, Hermes and Krokus, Dionysus and Ampelos, Poseidon and Pelops, Orpheus and Kalais, and Herakles and Abderus, Hylas, and Iolaus. In these pairings, the eromenoi (younger men) usually got killed, with the first three, Hyacinthus, Krokus, and Ampelos, each finishing up as a flower or flowering plant, the hyacinth, the crocus, and the vine. If you love a god, you will probably die, but you will also flourish.

Also in Greek myth, the prophet Teiresias spent seven years as a woman, even giving birth to children in that time. One day, Zeus and his wife Hera dragged Teiresias into an argument about who has the greater pleasure in sex: woman, as Zeus claimed, or man, as Hera countered. Teiresias averred that, ‘Of ten parts, a man enjoys only one.’ For this, Hera struck him blind, but Zeus compensated him with the gift of foresight and a lifespan of seven generations.

Even the hyper-masculine Thor, the Germanic god of thunder, had to travel to the land of the giants dressed as a bride to retrieve his hammer, Mjölnir, without which he and the other Asgardian gods would have fallen to the giants.

But Thor had nothing on Loki, who turned himself into a mare, mated with the stallion Svaðilfari, and gave birth to Sleipnir, the eight-legged horse of Odin.

What It All Means

How might all this gender bending be read?

The union of masculine and feminine elements shows them to be complementary, inseparable, or one and the same, while also emphasising divine attributes such as power, fertility or creativity, and boundlessness. In its completeness, the union of the sexes also represents perfection and self-sufficiency, and, by extension, serenity or even ecstasy.

Spiritual schools tend to look favourably upon sexlessness, especially in the priestly caste, since the attraction between man and woman—or indeed between man and man, or woman and woman—gives rise to worldly concerns and attachments, such as children and a home, and jealousy and heartbreak, which can detract from spiritual work and the wisdom and liberation at which it aims.

In heroes, gender fluidity may mark out the hero as something more than a mere mortal. It may also, like the katabasis (descent into hell) undertaken by Gilgamesh, Herakles, Odysseus, Orpheus, Aeneas, and other mythical heroes, represent the search for knowledge, especially self-knowledge, which is the hallmark of the heroic quest.

As well as the search for knowledge, the katabasis represents death and rebirth. Wisdom is perspective, that is, objectivity rather than subjectivity—and the pretender has to die to himself, to die as a subject, to be reborn as a hero. The time that he spends as a woman, or in the guise of a woman, is another way of making the same point. To become more than himself, the hero must first cease to be merely himself.

But there is also an uglier, misogynistic aspect to all this gender shifting. Especially in Western myths, there is often the suggestion, as with Herakles and Teiresias, that having to spend time as a woman is a kind of humiliating punishment—made all the worse, in their particular cases, for being meted out by a woman.

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