If you’re practicing for the good that it leads you to do in this lifetime, all well and good. But also be prepared for the fact that it will actually carry over to what you become in the next lifetime around.

Question: My friends ask me why it matters which being I will reincarnate as, because it, she, or he will not remember that it, she, or he was me in the former life? Indeed, I have no memories of my former lives. Maybe they were much better, but I do not suffer from it as I do not know. This system sounds like you work really hard all your life for someone else to get the results from all your good actions. What should I tell them? P.S. Personally, I meditate and practice virtue for the benefits it brings me in this very life.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Are you the same person that you were when you were a child? Yes and no. However, many things that you did when you were a child, like going to school, are definitely benefiting you now. At the time you were a child you felt that “I am me.” Now you feel, “I am me,” even though you now look and act and think like a very different person.

The same sort of principle applies whether it’s in the same lifetime or going over to another lifetime. You will still feel like you. You don’t feel like you’re somebody else. So it’s not as if you’re doing good for somebody else. You’re doing it for what you become. If you’re practicing for the good that it leads you to do in this lifetime, all well and good. But also be prepared for the fact that it will actually carry over to what you become in the next lifetime around.

~ "Facing Aging, Illness, & Death: The Central Teaching of the Buddha"

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