What Is It That Gets Reborn? Q&A
by Ajahn Achalo
...I think this person is trying to understand something conceptually that isn't really a concept. The Dalai Lama explains that there is the subtle mind and then there's the extremely subtle mind and then there's more coarse types of consciousness which are associated with the sense bases. Obviously when your body dies and you leave the consciousness associated with the eyes, nose, tongue and body, this body isn't going to go with you. Some people call it the mind stream. Some people call it the mental continuum. It is mind that goes. And it's interesting, they've done some studies when people die, there's a certain point where all of a sudden the body is 300g lighter. It seems to be that the mind weighs something but not much. I remember my sister and brother were at my sister's deathbed last year and they both felt a kind of a whoosh at the same time like a energy that lifted upward and my brother said to my sister, "Did you feel that?" My other sister said, "Yeah, she's gone now"...
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