The Buddha taught that rebirth is a choice that you make, and it’s a process, a series of processes shaped by your choices. The big processes are craving and clinging.

"When the Buddha talked about rebirth, what distinguished his teaching from everybody else in his time was that he never tried to define what it was that took rebirth. That was how people at the time decided whether rebirth happened or not: They said you are x, and either x was something that was going to die with the body or else it might not die with the body. So they reasoned things out. But the Buddha never tried to define what you are. After all, it’d be something for which you were not responsible — if this were what you already were made of and you willy-nilly would or would not get reborn. Instead, he taught that rebirth is a choice that you make, and it’s a process, a series of processes shaped by your choices.

The big processes are craving and clinging. If you can’t get any control over your craving and clinging, then rebirth is going to be very difficult. It could lead you in all kinds of directions. Because at the moment of death — when the body is weak, the mind is frustrated, the mind is distraught — cravings and clingings can bubble up inside. We latch on and we go. When the mind is distraught like that, it tends not to be very choosy. It just takes whatever comes. And who knows what’s going to come up bubbling up out of your karmic past."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Taking the Long View"

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