Cycle of Birth and Death 1
If we were to explain the genius of a three year old enthralling the audience with a stellar performance or a four year old yielding the cricket bat with ease, we would be stumped. Where does this immense talent come from? Did he learn in the womb? So soon!!!
Without doubt this amazing talent that we see in this birth has been acquired in the previous birth. The only thing that we carry forward through all the births is the subtle body consisting of the mind and the intellect. All sort of knowledge is stored away in this subtle body and it moves on from one gross body to the other through a cycle of births and deaths.
Life is series of causes and their effects. The cause is the past actions and the effect is the present life that we are experiencing. Let us begin with birth. This event happens in order to enable us to live out some of the desires that we have accumulated over the lifetimes. These accumulated desires are called Sanchita Vasanas. The set of vasanas we are born with in this lifetime are called Prarabdha Vasanas. As we exhaust the Prarabdha Vasanas, we have the choice (Purushartha) to either pick up more desires through extroverted living or reduce the Sanchita Vasanas by introverted living. When we accumulate more desires, we are paving a way for more lifetimes, more births. Like Adi Sankaracharya says in the Bhaja Govindam,
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How does a person who is caught up in the snares of the senses, turn inward? This happens when a person is pushed to the corner of the wall, experiences immense pain, starts questioning and asks the vital question WHY ME??
There is another category of people in this world. They have reached the saturation point with respect to enjoying the senses. They wonder why the much attractive sense object or being is no longer able to give them the happiness that they used to derive from it. This turns them introvert, leads them to seek within!
The knocks and shocks of life push the person to this state and then the questioning leads him inward.
