ompletely what the human being is to do. The human being always remains a free agent, always at liberty to do something to change his or her destiny.
3) While this assumes the importance of causal connections in life, it does not require the notion of a lump of mental substance that is passed from life to life--this is a reference to the earlier Hindu conception of the soul as spiritual substance. All that can be found passed from life to life are impressions, ideas, feelings, "streams of consciousness," "present moments," and no underlying spiritual substrata.
Smith also offers an analogy to show the ingredients of Buddha's combined views of reincarnation and karma. He says that in the realm of ideas the thoughts that fill the mind are not there by accident but have definite histories:
Apart from the conditioning impact which the minds of my teachers, my parents, and the molders of Western civilization have exerted upon me, they could not possibly have come into being (Smith 172).
However, this does not mean that we have to
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