Within the Theravāda tradition, rebirth is understood as a central feature of existence, yet it is framed in a way that avoids any notion of a permanent soul. What continues from life to life is described as a causal stream of mental and karmic processes, sometimes likened to one flame lighting another. The “person” who appears in a subsequent life is therefore neither exactly the same as the one who died nor entirely different, but arises dependent on conditions. This perspective is closely tied to the doctrine of anattā, the absence of an enduring self that could transmigrate unchanged from one existence to another.

The driving force behind this continuity is kamma, intentional action, together with craving for existence. Wholesome and unwholesome intentions shape the quality of future experience, determining whether rebirth occurs in human, animal, heavenly, or hell realms, among others. At the moment of death, the final conscious event in one life conditions the arising of the first conscious moment in the next, described in classical Theravāda analysis as a new life-continuum consciousness. This transition is held to be immediate, without an intermediate state between one life and the next.

Rebirth in this sense is not regarded as a blessing to be perpetuated indefinitely, but as the ongoing manifestation of saṃsāra, a beginningless cycle marked by dukkha, or unsatisfactoriness. The spiritual path is therefore oriented not merely toward securing a favorable rebirth, but toward bringing the entire process of rebirth to an end. Through the eradication of greed, hatred, and delusion, and the realization of nibbāna, the stream of conditioned existence ceases. For one who has fully awakened, no further rebirth occurs after the breakup of the body, and with that cessation, the round of suffering is brought to an end.