Where do beings come from and where are they going?
The Buddha stated, “— a first beginning of beings who, if obstructed by ignorance and fettered by craving, is not to be perceived.” According to Buddhism, people are born from the matrix of action. Parents merely provide new existence with a material layer. At the moment of conception, it is karma that conditions the initial consciousness that vitalizes the fetus. It is this invisible karmic energy generated from the past life that produces the mental phenomena of the present life. Thus, the birth of a being corresponds to the death of a being in a past life; just as, in conventional terms, the rising of the sun in one place means the setting of the sun in another place. A being is merely the outward manifestation of its invisible karmic energy. When the being dies, the karmic force remains undisturbed by the disintegration of the physical body, and the passing away of the present consciousness leads to the arising of a fresh one in another birth. It is thus an endless and beginningl
