The Root Cause of Samsara: Why Beings Suffer Across Lifetimes

After death, the manas and the tathagatagarbha do not perish; together they carry karma to enter the womb and give birth to the next life's another you. The manas continues unbroken from the previous life to the next, so there is something coherent across lifetimes—that is you. Due to not understanding cause and effect in the previous life, you acted recklessly without regard for your future self, creating karmic suffering that causes your present self to endure continuous hardships. If you continue to act arbitrarily in this life, still ignorant of cause and effect, your future lives will remain filled with distress. Suffering eternally belongs to yourself, not others. Life after life you create karma, lifetime after lifetime you regret, yet you fail to learn from experience.