an ordinary life, a surrender in the face of the impossible. Because the world is ultimately impermanent, because the existence of an individual ego is an illusion, and because action in the world leads inevitably to suffering, life trapped within the bounds of a socially determined personality is really deathin-life. In dying to that personality, according to the Buddha and according to Buddhist doctrine, the individual discovers the creative power that comes from being unattached to the life of the individual and the body in which it dwells.
In many respects, the release from the sufferings of the world constitutes a form of death. At one level, the doctrine of reincarnation, which Buddhism shares with other Indian religions, supposes that the soul is trapped on the Wheel of Birth and Death by the mechanism of action and reaction (karma): Actions in one life determine the conditions of rebirth in subsequent lives. At another level, the cycle of birth and death recapitulates Itself endlessly during life within a given body: Each person potentially experiences a cycle consisting of awakening followed by the clinging and longing that lead to death-like ignorance (Kalu 53-55, Evans-Wentz xiii-xvii, and Matthews, 15-18).
...