Acharya Prashant explains that whatever you have become, you perform actions as a result of that state. Every action is performed with the expectation of a result. The action is now, and the result is in the future. You perform an action precisely so that a result may come. Until the result arrives, you have to keep moving forward. This very act of moving forward is what is called taking the next birth. You were supposed to end at this very moment, and this ending is called liberation (Mukti). However, you have accepted to bind yourself in the cycle of time because there is still a hope of getting something; there are unfulfilled desires. This constant creation of a future for oneself is called rebirth (punarjanma). The wise have said that it is unfulfilled desire that takes birth; otherwise, why would there be birth at all? Unfulfilled desire creates time; it demands time, saying, 'I need tomorrow, I will get something tomorrow.' But nothing is ever obtained tomorrow. Then, in some other form, it wants something else. First, there was birth, and when you became something else, that was rebirth. This cycle continues. In that rebirth, you play the same game of wanting something, which requires you to live until tomorrow. When you get what you wanted, you are met with disappointment, and then you want something else. The moment you want something else, it is called rebirth. Until this hope that something can be achieved within time by creating a future is broken, you will remain trapped in the cycle of life and death. Rebirth is not necessarily related to the death of the body. The next birth is in the very next moment; we are constantly being reborn. Are you the same as you were in the previous moment? What you will be in the next moment, you are not in this moment. This itself is rebirth. Everything in the mind is changing, but the one hope that doesn't change is that by changing, something will be gained. This is what it means to be trapped in the cycle of life and death. The superficial changes are all rebirths. The entity that is repeatedly being reborn is the ego-tendency (aham-vritti), which holds the false delusion that by changing, something will be gained. It repeatedly takes on different forms and identities. The fundamental tendency, the ego, does not change. When this false hope is brokenтАФthe hope of obtaining from time and the world what cannot be obtainedтАФthat is liberation. Those who understand that death is happening continuously also understand that rebirth is happening continuously. This is the teaching of the scriptures.
