239. Q. Upon what is the doctrine of re-births founded?

A. Upon the perception that perfect justice, equilibrium and adjustment are inherent in the universal system of Nature. Buddhists do not believe that one life--even though it were extended to one hundred or five hundred years--is long enough for the reward or punishment of a man's deeds. The great circle of re-births will be more or less quickly run through according to the preponderating purity or impurity of the several lives of the individual.

240. Q. Is this new aggregation of Skandhas--this new personality--the same being as that in the previous birth, whose Tanha has brought it into existence?

A. In one sense it is a new being; in another it is not. In Pali it is--"nacha so nacha anno," which means not the same nor yet another. During this

life the Skandhas are constantly changing; [**] and while the man A. B., of forty, is identical, as regards. personality, with the youth A. B., of eighteen, yet, by the continual waste and reparation of his body, and change of mind and character, he is a different being. Nevertheless, the man in his old age justly reaps the reward or suffering consequent upon his thoughts and actions at every previous stage of his life. So the new being of a re-birth, being the same individuality as before, with but a changed form, or new aggregation of Skandhas, justly reaps the consequences of his actions and thoughts in the previous existence.

241. Q. But the aged man remembers the incidents of his youth, despite his being physically and mentally changed. Why, then, is not the recollection of past lives brought over by us from our last birth into. the present birth?

A. Because memory is included within the Skandhas; and the Skandhas having changed with the new reincarnation, a new Memory, the record of that particular existence, develops. Yet the record or reflection of all the past earth-lives must survive; for,

when Prince Siddhartha became Buddha, the full sequence of his previous births was seen by him. If their several incidents had left no trace behind, this could not have been so, as there would have been nothing for him to see. And any one who attains to the fourth state of Dhyana (psychical insight) can thus retrospectively trace the line of his lives.

242. Q, What is the ultimate point towards which fend all these series of changes in form?

A. Nirvana.

243. Q. Does Buddhism teach that we should do good with the view of reaching Nirvana?

A. No; that would he as absolute selfishness as though the reward hoped for had been money, a throne, or any other sensual enjoyment. Nirvana cannot be so reached, and the unwise speculator is foredoomed to disappointment.

244. Q. Please make it a little clearer.