A viewer named Travel Sketch left an important question beneath “Becoming a Buddha, Part 1,” the first video on this channel. The viewer agreed that everything is impermanent and without self, and that all phenomena should be understood through dependent origination, so rebirth should be rejected. But if a person simply ends at death, how does that view differ from the annihilationists of the Buddha’s time? The viewer also asked how one could speak to a person contemplating suicide because life feels unbearable. Surely we cannot say that there is no rebirth and death will end everything.
This brief comment reaches two essential problems. If there is no rebirth, may we live for one great score and pursue pleasure alone? Without the hope or fear of an afterlife, how do we hold someone who is suffering? I believe there is no rebirth, but I do not think that position becomes ancient annihilationism or nihilism. Let us examine the difference together.
Ancient annihilationism denied more than an afterlife
During Gautama Siddhartha’s life there were several thinkers remembered as the six heterodox teachers. Some materialists viewed a person as a combination of elements such as earth, water, fire, and air. At death the elements returned to their sources and nothing remained. Describing the world through elements 2,500 years ago was itself a considerably developed form of thought. A modern listener may think of atoms and molecules, and eventually the much more difficult language of quantum physics.
If we take only the claim that mental activity arises with the body and there is no separate soul, it has something in common with what I say. The problem was the further claim that events happen by accident and that no law of cause and effect operates. If harmful action brings no consequence, one might as well live extravagantly and pursue pleasure before death. That is how the view became hedonistic.
Buddhism does not see the world that way. When a fire is lit, smoke arises. When an object is pushed, it falls. When one person strikes another, the other person’s mind and the relationship change. Things do not simply appear without reasons. Everything arises depending on causes and conditions, affects other things, and continuously changes. This is dependent origination. Rejecting a soul after death is entirely different from rejecting causality and relationship in the real world.
Must we believe in an afterlife in order to be good?
Suppose there is no heaven or hell after my death, and no intermediate being that remains for forty-nine days before rebirth. Does that make people evil? Reverse the question: do all believers in an afterlife refrain from wrongdoing? Reality says no. People who believe in heaven and hell still commit wrongs, while people uncertain about any afterlife also live kindly. Moral conduct is not determined by this one belief.
Good action becomes strange if it is understood only as a transaction for reward after death. My parents gave birth to me and did their best to raise me. If I care for them when they grow old, is it only to receive a favorable next birth? No. I do it naturally through love and gratitude.
When a dog living with a family attacks someone who threatens that family, it does not calculate a reward in the afterlife. Humans, dogs, wolves, and many other social mammals have dispositions to live together and protect one another. Someone who continually damages a community loses trust and is less likely to receive help. A person who has helped others is more likely to be helped when hardship comes. The causality expressed by “we reap what we sow” already operates in this life and within relationships.
If I help a suffering person while calculating, “This will get me into heaven,” the calculation is far from genuine compassion. Love and good action are not tickets purchased for the next world. The very moment a loving heart arises can be heaven.
The absence of an afterlife makes the present more precious
If we fully accept that there is no afterlife, we do not become careless. We value this moment more deeply. While pushing death far away and entrusting it to heaven or rebirth, we may spend today as if it had little worth. Once we know that this moment will never return, there is less reason to fill it with suffering over trivial attachments.
Some people change after surviving an accident that nearly killed them. When the fact that one lived by the difference of a single step enters the body, the thin shell of “I must become this” can crack. The clear realization that death can come at any moment makes needless attachments fall away. This is also why one contemplates death through practices such as cemetery or skeleton contemplation and why one observes impermanence.
A small fall in a stock price during the morning can ruin someone’s entire day. The number has already changed and the event has passed, yet the person sacrifices the present moment in which a simple bowl of noodles could be enjoyed in peace. Comparisons work the same way: another person drives a better car while I take the subway; someone else is handsome and successful while I am not. When death and the present are seen directly, I can ask whether such thoughts deserve the power to torment my entire life.
Belief in rebirth has also justified suffering in this world
Rebirth and karma have not always made people good. Within the Indian caste system, rulers could tell those below them, “Endure the station into which you were born, and you will be born into a better place next time.” Present suffering could be blamed on wrongdoing in a previous life, while resistance could be threatened with a worse future birth. An afterlife then became an instrument for maintaining inequality.
We also say, “What sin did I commit in a former life to suffer like this?” By assigning responsibility to a past life when someone has done nothing wrong now, we lose the opportunity to identify and change present causes. A person bound by an oppressive social structure should not be told to endure it while hoping for the next birth. If a condition places a collar around someone, we should change that condition and help the person leave bondage.
Suffering produced by mistaken attachment and comparison can be released by clearly seeing impermanence and non-self. Suffering caused by poverty, violence, discrimination, or other external conditions requires actual changes in environment and institutions. Because this present life is real and important, Buddhist social engagement has a reason. When the rich grow richer, those who labor struggle to survive, and artificial intelligence and technological change threaten jobs, we must discuss how society should change now.
Under dependent origination, I am not an isolated thing that is cut off
“Everything ends at death” sounds annihilationist when I imagine myself as an independent substance separated from the world. First I construct an isolated me that exists on its own while alive; then I imagine all reality being cut off when that me dies. Buddhist non-self and dependent origination begin elsewhere.
I could neither arise nor continue without parents and family, human ancestors, sunlight and water, trees and food, air and society. Without air I die within minutes. The boundary I once regarded as one independent self already contains the whole world. When this is, that is; when this arises, that arises.
Countless events and conditions from the past converged to produce me now. A single word, glance, or action of mine affects another person and the natural world. I may not know where the effect will travel, but it continues like a butterfly effect. When I die, the world continues, and the consequences of my relationships and deeds move within it.
The Buddha died about 2,500 years ago, yet his words remain and form the foundation for what I am saying now. Can we call the Buddha simply annihilated? Conditions and effects continue even when no identical soul migrates into another body. The death of an ant and the death of a human being are both deaths of life within nature. Yet as a human being, I can be grateful to my parents and ask what I will leave to neighbors, society, descendants, and nature.
When impermanence and non-self enter the body, life changes
The Buddhist aim is to live without being seized by mental suffering at every moment and to see the world as it is. With such vision, we do not merely restrain greedy and harmful behavior by force. The vain attachments supporting it weaken, and the reason to act that way diminishes.
For this to happen, my impermanence and non-self must be accepted in the body rather than memorized as phrases. When I stop avoiding my own death and look directly, the framework that has bound me for years may scatter like dust, allowing peace to enter. If I push the death of a father or grandfather into a story about the next world, perform rites, and then forget, I may miss a decisive moment in which life could change. The encounter with death itself can be an opportunity to awaken.
With a suicidal person, we must address the sources of suffering
What, then, should we say to someone contemplating suicide because life is unbearable? We obviously cannot say, “There is nothing after death, so go ahead.” Precisely because there is no later opportunity to repair this life and this life is precious, we must hold the person. Parents and innumerable conditions participated in this person’s birth, and the person lives an irreplaceable life within relationships.
Yet we should not merely command the person to endure. We must honestly examine whether the pain comes from mental attachment and interpretation, from external violence, poverty, and oppression, or from both. Pain created in the mind can be worked through with Buddhist insight and care. If external circumstances are the cause, we must help remove those circumstances in reality. If I cannot provide that help alone, I should connect the person with people and social systems that can.
Korea had become an economically powerful country while continuing to record a very high suicide rate. This indicates that as wealth increased rapidly, disparity and despair also grew. If Buddhism is to help, it must do more than speak abstractly about a future life. Mentally, it should guide people who needlessly suffer toward happiness in the present. Socially, it should act to assist people isolated by inequality and hardship.
Belief in an afterlife does not determine morality
To say there is no rebirth is not to say that everything is meaningless. It is not a denial of cause and effect, nor does it mean all relationship is severed. On the contrary, seeing dependent origination deeply reveals that I never stand alone and that every action participates in the world. How could someone who sees this live carelessly?
We are not good merely because of reward and punishment after death. We act well because of love and gratitude, our social nature, the reality that we live by depending on one another, and the results produced by present actions. Because there is no next life to repair this one, we must not postpone suffering to another existence. We must change the mind and society now. Belief or disbelief in rebirth and an afterlife does not by itself decide whether a person is good or evil. What matters is whether we see dependent origination in this moment, reduce suffering, and recognize the effects we leave upon one another.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.