Rebirth and the Western Buddhist - Khamkoo

16 Rebirth and the Western Buddhist
world-view, with each being evolving through a limitless
variety of states over countless aeons, into the impoverished
mental frame of those who deny it.
Since amateur writers on Buddhism never tire 14 of
making the absurd claim that the teaching of rebirth is
somehow contradicted by the principle of Selflessness
(nairiitmya), we should point out that this is a thorough
misconception. In the main, as Har Dayal points out, 15
"This difficulty has arisen from the regrettable mistake of
translating iitman by the English word 'soul.'" Since
"soul" means, among other things, "the spiritual part of
man regarded as surviving after death and as susceptible
of happiness or misery in a future state," 16 it is hard to
see how it could ever have been considered a possible
translation for the changeless, partless and independently
self-existent iitman that the Buddhists deny. Such an
iitman would be incapable of acting as a soul. 17 The
principle of Selflessness negates certain deluded views
of how such a soul, or anything else included in or
imputed upon the aggregates, exists, but certainly does
not deny that they exist at all. The nihilistic misinterpretation
of Selflessness is the most dangerous of wrong
views: "It were better, Kasyapa, to abide in a personalityview
as big as Mount Sumeru, than the emptiness-view
of the nihilist." 18 Exactly as my personal continuum
follows on from year to year in this life, each moment of
my body and mind arising in dependence on the preceding
moment, so it follows on from life to life, always
changing.