The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) / quote 222 of 254
Buildings around the same emptiness
Akong offers a better explanation of what might survive death by use of an analogy. Ultimate reality is like an empty space. Individuals are like buildings occupying a part of this space. The end of a life is like the demolishing of a building, but then we build another – our next life – around the same emptiness. And if you do that, you have the same land and same atmosphere, which is why the karma follows you. The habits you follow in one life follow you to the next. The analogy neatly draws out a fundamental distinction between the Buddhist view of the self and the dominant one in the western tradition. For in a sense, I think of myself as the building, not the space. The building is what gives shape and coherence to a particular life: personality, memory, body and the largely conscious connections of experience.