The Wheel of Forms
Birth is not the beginning of life -
only of an individual awareness.
Changing into another state is not death -
only the ending of this awareness.
What is it that dies?
A log of wood dies to become a few planks.
The planks die to become a chair.
The chair dies to become a piece of firewood,
and the firewood dies to become ash.
You give different names to the different shapes the wood takes, but the basic substance is there always.
You will find that there is no death at all, in the true sense of the word,
but everything goes on living, transmuting and becoming perfect according to primitive laws.