One of the more well known aspects of Buddhism is **rebirth**. Well-known in that many people know the word, but not well-known in that most people don't know what it actually is. Most people consider it another word for *reincarnation*, the idea that sometime after we die we will be reincarnated into another body somewhere and perhaps somewhen else. But that's not what rebirth is. 

![](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/dbooster/23tmDhB39MiQ7xAjXnGt9cqa747D7SbM5RkwCyx557Kaa1jXFqoHceU84p9bsjAwMx8Vw.jpg)

I have talked at various times on Hive about how we are not the same from moment to moment. I just talked about it a week ago in my [The Ship of Theseus](https://peakd.com/hive-111011/@dbooster/the-ship-of-theseus-and) post. In short, we are constantly changing and we are not the same from moment to moment. The you who started reading this post is not the you who is reading right now, nor is it the same you who will be reading at the end. 

This is rebirth. Every single moment there is a new you. That new you is passed the memories of the old you in a game of telephone so it thinks it is the same as the old you, just as the transported Captain Kirk thinks he is the same as the pre-transported Captain Kirk but isn't (again, see my Ship of Theseus post, where I talk about how the transporter is actually a killing device). But each new you is not the same.

One of my favorite analogies for this idea was given by Alan Watts using the example of a university. A university is constantly changing. Student populations change from year to year, buildings are constructed or demolished, and even faculties change. Despite these changes, we still refer to it with the same name for convenience. Harvard, for instance, remains Harvard, even though the institution today differs greatly from what it was a century ago.

Perhaps more the classic example, at least in the West, was from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who said we can never step into the same river twice. Because obviously any one spot in the river changes from moment to moment. At any time it is a completely new arrangement of water molecules, a combination that very likely has never been seen before and never will again. 

In this understanding, the concept of a fixed self or identity becomes an illusion. We are the river. Rather, the universe is the river and we are that one specific spot in the river that is constantly changing. Atoms move into our body and atoms leave at every moment, making a new us at each of these moments, and just as with a river, this new combination of us will very likely never be seen again in the lifespan of the universe.

In this way, there is no you. There is no self. The self is an illusion created by the complexity of all this. But even this illusion falls apart when we look at ourselves on a broader time scale and see how aging affects us. Then we give this constant changing names like *impermanence* and we go about trying to ignore it until all our friends start dying and we can't ignore it anymore. 

If we are constantly changing, from where is us? What is us? Are we entirely memories and if you erase the memories we would become a different person? The Scottish philosopher Hume posited that there is no single personality. When Descartes famously said *I think therefore I am* Hume replied, *But who is the I that is doing the thinking?*. He proposed the idea that there are multiple voices in our mind that combine to create the *I* that thinks and therefore is. 

This takes us back to Watt's example of the university, where all of the constantly changing student and faculty combines to create the "voice" and "personality" of the university. 

Most of us, if we are being honest, might admit that we do seem to have different voices/personalities in our heads sometimes that are sometimes at odds with each other. Carl Jung gave the number as "numerous" but gave personality "types" of each voice, which he referred to as archetypes, all working together to shape who we are.

That makes us not only constantly changing, but a chorus of voices instead of a single I. And perhaps, embracing this perspective allows us to appreciate the essence of life itself—not as a pursuit of an end goal, but as a dance to be enjoyed.


![](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/dbooster/23wCfSDYChUFaCf96tY5NERBse3RduxESUvWchFpo2qiZYeGCm8tSKNDuuuT9GH2H8mHh.jpg)

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 - leading photo by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/mc_quattro_beats_beats-11566228/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=7215605">Beats Beats</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=7215605">Pixabay</a>
 - dancing photo by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/marcuesbo-2280516/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=3272371">Marta Cuesta</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=3272371">Pixabay</a>


[divider]: https://images.hive.blog/0x0/https://images.ecency.com/DQmR3iwCn9yvwXDXfuNjmMX6FrjAvFfYQWgA4QRckpens1j/external_content.duckduckgo.png

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<td><img src="http://68.media.tumblr.com/9ed59bcbc3d0c81b382b0df883f91773/tumblr_inline_ni2uuza1ku1qz4uph.jpg" alt="Hi there!"></td>
<td><a href="https://hive.blog/about/@dbooster/about-david-laspina-v1-2">David LaSpina</a> is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku.</td>
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