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Two Beliefs That Seem Not to Go Together

Reincarnation cartoon — The Asheville Past Lives Project

Buddhists believe in the following two propositions although, to non-Buddhists, they seem an odd fit.

1) I have no self or soul, no substantial thing that is "I" or "Me," and the idea that there is an I is an illusion.

2) I'll probably be reincarnated.

The obvious response to this conjunction has to be: if there is no you, that what or who is to be reincarnated when "you" are?

The Buddhist response, as I understand it, is that the illusion of me is a distinctive one, and this this illusion that there is a substantive me is what is reincarnated.

A guest lecturer at a college course I took way back in the 1970s explained it this way. I may hold a lit match in my hand and transfer the flame from that match to something else -- another match, let us say.

At SOME point both matches may be lit. Right after that, I may blow out the older match.

It certainly appears that something substantial, a thing, the flame, moved from one match to the other, and survives in the second though it has been extinguished in the first.

Science tells us this is an illusion. There is no substance.The flame is the light and heat given off in the process of combustion.

Still, the illusion moves, and on a granular perceptual level we can and do say that there is STILL a flame, which has moved from one match to the other, even though we know that there is no thing that has moved from one match to the other, simply a cause-effect relationship. Such it is with the alleged soul.

The analogy does nothing to tell us whether either of the two above numbered beliefs is correct. But it does succeed in removing the sense that they can't both be, that they contradict one another.
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