Is death final?
In Buddhism death is not final as it is believed to be in Western culture. Moreover, it is an evil heresy (ppakam ditthigatam) for a Buddhist to believe such. There is postmortem survival in other words.
That which animates the psychophysical body, that is, gives it life is not a biological, anatomical thingnor can it die. Neither can it be discovered by analysis of the five psychophysical constituents (skandha).
Our limited sensory consciousness (the fifth psychophysical constituent) is by ignorance bound to the psychophysical organism, more precisely, it is bound to the senses including their respective fields and objects. Consciousness, in other words, has no ability to behold the deathless element (amritadhatu) which is its very substance.
Taking a slightly different turn, Western Buddhists believe that because the Buddha denied the self or atman, that postmortem survival is illogical. If there is no self there is no survival. This view, however, does not chime with either the Nikayas or the Mahayana canon. Both canons give no warrant for either the belief that the Buddha denied the self or the Buddha did not accept postmortem survival. Westerners have generally misread what the Buddha taught who are too eager to make of him a materialist.
Postmortem survival comes under the rubric of mind. Mind is what enters upon samsara (S. i. 37) such that it is never freed of repeated births and deaths. Mind or consciousness, from ignorance, locks onto the psychophysical constituent of form (which includes all the senses), owing to desire which, as a consequence, entangles it in the world of samsara, again and again. On the other hand, it is mind or consciousness that can also become liberated (cittam vimuttam) from samsara.
If we use the analogy of water in which we think of ourselves as being pure water and samsara as being agitated water, we constantly move from one agitated state to the next because, first of all, we are wat! er but s econdly, because we believe that pure water is in some way or measure agitated; never non-agitated (this condition is one of profound ignorance or avidya). From this we are justified in saying that postmortem survival is always certain. The only thing, however, uncertain is whether or not we attain deathless nirvana or fall back into samsara.
