Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (The Mountain)

"In the new-bom infant, the character of the stock lies latent, and the Ego is little more than a bundle of potentialites. But, very early, these become actualites; from childhood to age they manifest themselves in dulness or brightness, weakness or strength, viciousness or uprightness; and with each feature modified by confluence with another character, if by nothing else, the character passes on to its incarnation in new bodies. The Indian philosophers called character, as thus defined, "karma".
The Tibetan Book of the Dead

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"In recollection all former births passed before His
eyes. Born in such a place, of such a name, and
downwards to His present birth, so through
hundreds, thousands, myriads, all His births and
deaths he knew."

Ashvaghdoshas' Life of the Buddha
(Samuel Beal's Translation)

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It may be argued that nobody can talk about death with authority who has not died; and since nobody, apparently, has ever returned from death, how can anybody know what death is or what happens after it?
The Tibetan will answer: "There is not one person, indeed, not one living being, that has not returned from death. In fact, we all have died many deaths, before we came into this incarnation. And what we call birth is merely the reverse side of death, like one of the two sides of a coin, or like, a door which we call "entrance" from outside and "exit" from inside a room."

Introductory foreword to The Tibetan Book of the Dead
by Lama Anagarika Govinda

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We may cautiously accept the idea of karma only if we are understand it as psychic heredity in the very widest sense of the word. Psychic heredity does exist that is to say, there is inheritance of psychic characteristics such as predisposition to disease, traits of character, special gifts, and so forth. It does no violence to the psychic nature of these complex facts if natural science reduces them to what appear to be physical aspects (nuclear structures in cells, and so on). They are essential phenomena of life which express themselves, in the main, psychically, just as there are other inherited characteristics which express themselves, in the main, physiologically, on the physical level. Among these inherited psychic factors there is a special class which is not confined either to family or to race. These are the universal dispositions of the mind, and they are to be understood as analogous to Plato's forms (eidola), in accordance with which the mind organizes its contents. One could also describe these forms as categories analogous to the logical categories which are always and everywhere present as the basic postulates of reason.

Psychological Commentary on The Tibetan Book of the Dead
by C.G. Jung

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Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, directed by Kim Ki-duk. A 2003 South Korean film about a Buddhist monastery that floats on a lake in a pristine forest. The story is about the life of a Buddhist monk as he passes through the seasons of his life, from childhood to old age.

The traditional song used near the end of the film, while the adult monk is climbing the mountain, is called "Jeongseon Arirang", sung by Kim Young-im.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring,_Summer,_Fall,_Winter..._and_Spring

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• Buddhism
• The Tibetan Book of the Dead
• Analytical Psychology
• Carl Gustav Jung