REALITY  OF  LIFE  :  IN  SINGLE  OR MULTIPLE  SPANS

Life of man basically consists of his body of flesh and blood [rûpa] , with its built-in sentiency [with the capacity for perception, apperception and mental constructs or thought building] and his personal  consciousness [which is said to continue from life to life] or viññâna. This second group, together with viññâna, goes under the collective name nâma. The resultant totality is called the Five Aggregates or  Pañcakkhandha and includes within it  rûpa and the four subdivisions of  nâma referred to above. They are 1. vedanâ  or cognitive awareness = perception, 2. saññâ   or apperception, 3. sankhâra or mental cnstructs and 4. viññâna or personal consciousness, together with its samsaric  component  [samvattanika-viññâna].

This group of Five Aggregates becomes a living reality when it is linked up, through our sense faculties, with the world around us. This stimulates us into activity of body and mind all the time. The activated process of response  within humans goes under the name of Pañcupâdânakkhandha or Five Aggregates of Grasping. This  co-ordinated process  of  activity in its totality, with diverse relationships with the world, is what we briefly call life. This is perhaps why the Buddha  chooses  to  call our  fathom-sized body [byâma-matta  kalebara] the world [loka], resetting as it were, our  meaningfully relevant world, within ourselves.

Whichever  way  it  works, to our development or to our detriment, socially or spiritually, it is our responses to the world we live in which gives dynamism to our lives. In Buddhist teachings, this very process of living is contained within what is called upâdâna or grasping [i.e. grasping at or rejecting of objects of sensory stimulation in the world]. This is what contributes to the continuity and continuance of life [upâdâna-paccayâ  bhavo], both here and hereafter. This undeniably and emphatically establishes the fact of birth again after death, i.e. punabbhava or  rebirth [.. mîyati  ca   cavati  ca  uppajjati  ca  in succession.  See D.N.II.30;  S.N.II.5].
 
We  would  consider  any  attempt  to  explain  these  three  words  mîyati  [= dies], cavati  [=  passes away]  and  uppajjati  [=  is born]  as   processes  taking  place  within or  during a single  life  time  of  a  person to be  approximating to a veiled rejection of the basic Buddhist  teaching  of  samsâra  which  gives  the life of  humans  a vast dimension extending through infinite time and space  [anamatagg' âyam  bhikkhave samsâro pubbâ koti na paññâyati . S.N.II.178 = Infinite, O monks, is this life process. Its first beginnings are not discernible] .

006. Being unable to make correct assessments with regard to what in the world are truly worthy and wholesome
[ sâra ], one never acquires or ever come to possess what is wholly and truly substantial. This is the outcome of  their deluded mind [micchâ-sankappa ]. Those who act conversely arrive at what is truly worthy.[Dhammapada  vv. 11 & 12 ].