Death

What we ordinarily mean by death is the cessation of the body's vital functions. When the physical body loses its vitality it can no longer support the current of consciousness, the mental side of the process. But as long as there is a clinging to life, a desire to go on existing, the current of consciousness does not come to a stop with the body's loss of life. Rather, when death takes place, when the body dies away, the mental current, driven by the thirst for more existence, will spring up again with the support of a new physical body, one which has just come into being through the meeting of sperm and egg. Thus, rebirth takes place immediately after death. The stream of memory may be interrupted and the sense of identity transferred to the new situation, but the entire accumulation of experience and deposition has been transmitted to the newborn being, and the cycle of becoming begins to revolve for still another term.

---What Buddhists Believe, by K. Sri Dhammananda---