Whenever I tell people that I’ve written a book on Indian thought, the conversation often turns to reincarnation. “How wonderful,” said a neighbour, “if people never really die.” I replied: “Actually, reincarnation, even into a higher station, is a kind of punishment. The aim is not to come back. The aim, you might say, is to have a proper death.”

Even Hindus and Buddhists sometimes forget this, and hope, modestly, to be reincarnated into a slightly easier life. The principal bears explaining, and one way to do that is through the prism of Buddhist thought.

The Buddha was struck by human suffering and spent years trying to understand its causes and the means to overcome them.

An early insight that led to his enlightenment is the Doctrine of Dependent Origination, according to which life is a continuous process of change, with every instance of change having manifold causes and effects. This means that all things are conditioned by other things, so that all things are interconnected.

Suffering arises from a craving for permanence;........

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