Also, remember that rebirth could be a metaphor for psychological rebirth.
Pain is a destructor of identity. When you form a belief that gives you identity and such belief is destroyed, you suffer. Hence you are reborn again, and again.
I think enlightenment is the end of all identities and point of views.
At the psychological levels there is a tendency to "solidify" things that are not really there. For example, the existence of some sort of independent self or "I" outside of the flow of causality. If you want to stop suffering, you can start contemplating anatta.
Contemplation practice:
Today I had a "non-dual" experience in which I began to contemplate, albeit in a materialistic way, the concept of emptiness (sunyata) or, similarly, the lack of inherent existence in things. I started from the smallest units—atoms—forming molecules, forming tissues, forming neurons, forming...
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Self-narrative:
Some time ago, I wrote here about the fragility of identity: There is no "Whitepill" to be found here. Everything that I wrote about above? Bullshit. If so, it should make you all be more pessimistic because our lives are constanly hanging from a thread stretched over the abyss although I...
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