I’ll Be Back
The same is true regarding reincarnation. If the soul, or atman, that migrates from life to life isn’t me, then what’s the point? If my soul has to suffer a horrible incarnation in the next life to atone for some terrible crime I committed in this life and that soul isn’t me, then the entire system is unjust. If I look at a destitute person living on the sidewalk and say that this is his just reward for some past-life transgression, the long-dead transgressor and the currently living homeless person must be one and the same, or the system is capricious and evil.
Holy rascals don’t have any more insight into what happens when we die than anyone else. What makes you a holy rascal isn’t that you know something others don’t, but that you ask questions others won’t.
Chuang Tzu asked: “Am I a man dreaming I’m a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming I’m a man?”
Actually it was a hookah-smoking caterpillar dreaming them both. RR