The Egg: What If Everyone You Meet Is You? Andy Weir's Story and the Buddha on Rebirth

Key takeaways

• In Andy Weir's 2009 short story "The Egg", a man who dies in a car crash learns that every person who has ever lived or will live is him, and that the universe is an egg in which he grows until he hatches. Whatever you do to others, you really do to yourself.
• The Buddha taught that the round of birth and death has no beginning we can find: the mothers in our past outnumber the grass and sticks of the land, our tears are more than the water of the four oceans, and it is not easy to find a being who has not been our mother, father, brother, sister, son or daughter.
• The Upanishads come even closer to The Egg: a father dissolves salt in water to show his son that one true self (ātman) is in everything, "you are that" (tat tvam asi). Schopenhauer saw compassion as the moment the line between me and you seems to dissolve.
• The Buddha disagrees with The Egg on three points: there is no soul that travels from life to life (rebirth is like a flame passed on, "neither the same nor another"), no guide planning it all, and the goal is not to hatch into a god but to stop the cycle (nibbāna).
• We cannot prove rebirth, but the Buddha's reason for kindness needs no belief: everyone trembles, fears and loves themselves just as you do. Seeing yourself in others does not mean letting people hurt you. Try a 3-second pause, a silent wish of well-being for strangers, and imagining the other side's morning.