user20711: I am a layperson of protestant Christian background interested in buddhist thought and trying to clarify some of the basic concepts for myself. One of the stumbling blocks is understanding the motivation of a person to renounce the temptations of temporary happiness in this life, if the concept of anatta is true. If sacrificing family, children, wealth etc. only leads to another person being born maybe in some heavenly realm or in better circumstances of this world (with a lot of more things to renounce) without your consciousness, your memories, your "soul", what is the point? And do not use the easy explanation that the worldly happines pales in comparison of enlightment. A person not experiencing the enlightment in his/her lifetime would not know.

(Edit to add)
Thank you for the explanation. I just have one comment. I am not saying that I am not interested in enlightment, I am just confused about its attainability. I have understood - to put it bluntly - that the highway to enlightment is meditative life in a monastic community and the best that most laypeople can hope is a better rebirth.
And that brings back my original question. Suppose that you are a layperson struggling with the limitations of everyday life. You resign to the fact that you cannot escape the committments that have been heaped upon you, you cannot invest much of your time to meditation and contemplation, and that at prsent the enlightment is an unreachable ideal. You do, however, your best to to pursue right conduct and hope that your chances are better in the next rebirth.
However, the individual who is then reborn carrying the consequences of your karma, does not identify with you, does not have memories of your life, is not able to make logical conclusions of the consequences of your present actions, you in fact are a total stranger to him. In what sense are you then reborn.
Or, in another way round. Suppose that I am tempted to actions that would ensure my temporary happiness but would load me with negative karma and would lead to a bad rebirth. If the person that is reborn carrying the negative consequences of my actions does not really identify him/herself with me and is for all practical purposes stranger to me, why should I care for a bad rebirth?
Please, be patient. I am not making these questions for being flippant, but these are really difficult points in the buddhist doctrine for me to understand.
(Edit to add)
Thank you again for your answers. However, I think they somewhat miss my point. That is probably due to the fact that English is not my native tongue and expressing rather abstract ideas is a challenge for me. But I try to clarify my problem using myself as an example.
I have had a relatively happy life and was born in good circumstances in an affluent country and got a good education. If the doctrine of rebirth is true, someone in the past accumulated some good karma that I inherited in my birth. I, however, do not have any information of that individual, I do not know his/her life, do not share  his/her memories and experiences, and certainly do not have any feeling that I personally have lived his/her life and carry still in my present existence its consequnces. And the same holds true regarding the individual who will be born after my death experiencing the consequences of the karma I have accumulated. I do not have any real connection to that future person. And if after maybe one hundred future rebirths this chain of beings finally ends with an individual, who reaches the enlightment and enters the nirvana, it is certainly not me who finally obtains this achievment. So, it might be my duty to live in a way that some total stranger after my death might fare somewhat better than I. And if I am tempted to behave badly (and escape the temporal punishments) I might feel that there will be a future rebirth and a person suffering from my actions, but he/she does not know me, is not able to pinpoint the guilt to me and certainly does not feel that he/she is actually me and rightly suffering because because thr bad things I have done.
Once again, this problem is related to the concept of the lack of a "soul" or "real self" that journeys through this samsara to enlightment, maybe through a thousand of rebirths. According to my understanding this "anatta" leads to a situation where the consequences of my actions are just heaped to some total stranger that is borne after my death, and it does not sound just. Of course it still might be true, but it sounds to me almost as dismal a doctrin as the Calvinistic predestination.

user16635: Anatta is a difficult and often misunderstood concept. When Buddhists talk about no-self, they mean it in the context of self-conceptualization: a mental object that is identified as the 'self'. In other words, we construct a mental object that we identify as ourself, and fall into the trap of thinking that mental construct is the reality, not a creation. 'Being attached' to some outcome or thing merely means that we have incorporated that outcome or thing into that mental definition of ourself, such that (say) we feel frustration if we don't have it in reality, anger if we're prevented form getting it, joy if we achieve it, sadness if we lose it...
It's an open question what might be left when all attachments are finally stripped away. Some Mahayana sects talk about the difference between 'big mind' and 'little mind', where the latter is the identified self and the former is... that. But the former isn't 'personal' in quite the way we normally think of selves, and it's hard to get a grip on it without experiencing it. At any rate, Buddhism mainly aims at the realization that these cognitive structures (those that make up that mental self-object) aren't exactly true or real. They may be functional and pragmatic within a social context — it would be extremely hard to navigate a social world in which no one had a name or title or role — but such selves should be held lightly, as useful fictions.
The concerns about death and rebirth (and I hope you'll excuse my somewhat mystical perspective) come from a solidified understanding of the self. People believe that some particular aspect of that self-object is 'real', and it's that aspect of themselves that persists on into the next life, (hopefully) learning and advancing over the course of lives. I'll make no judgement on that one way or another, except to note that it can sometimes lead to a personalized notion of karma, in which karma takes on the anthropomorphic role of punishing wrongdoing and rewarding goodness. Karma is not personal; karma is cause and effect. Every step we take in the world — every act, every word, even our mere presence — has an impact on the world and the people around us. It's like dropping a stone in a pool of water: the stone (the act or word) might disappear immediately, but it creates a wave that propagates, and what is a propagating wave but a movement that recreates itself over and over.
One doesn't need to go beyond death to see rebirth. People who suffer cruelty become hard and cruel; people who are given love give love. Not always (because the interactions of karma in the world are more complicated than that), but often enough that we can see how our attitudes — our inner mental constructs — are adopted by others. However, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that someone down the road (past our death) might suffer from the same attachments, attitudes, and fixations that plague us, precisely because we put those attachments, attitudes, and fixations into motion in the world. Is it us, is that reincarnation? Well... it's certainly the reinvention of the fabrication we call ourselves; whether it's more than that is beyond my pay grade.
We can think of Buddhist practice as prophylactic. While it's not wrong to think about prophylaxis is selfish terms — as something that serves and protects the individual — the real goal of prophylaxis is to prevent a disease from spreading to and through others.

20711: <p>I am a layperson of protestant Christian background interested in buddhist thought and trying to clarify some of the basic concepts for myself. One of the stumbling blocks is understanding the motivation of a person to renounce the temptations of temporary happiness in this life, if the concept of anatta is true. If sacrificing family, children, wealth etc. only leads to another person being born maybe in some heavenly realm or in better circumstances of this world (with a lot of more things to renounce) without your consciousness, your memories, your &quot;soul&quot;, what is the point? And do not use the easy explanation that the worldly happines pales in comparison of enlightment. A person not experiencing the enlightment in his/her lifetime would not know.</p>
<hr />
<p>(Edit to add)</p>
<p>Thank you for the explanation. I just have one comment. I am not saying that I am not interested in enlightment, I am just confused about its attainability. I have understood - to put it bluntly - that the highway to enlightment is meditative life in a monastic community and the best that most laypeople can hope is a better rebirth.</p>
<p>And that brings back my original question. Suppose that you are a layperson struggling with the limitations of everyday life. You resign to the fact that you cannot escape the committments that have been heaped upon you, you cannot invest much of your time to meditation and contemplation, and that at prsent the enlightment is an unreachable ideal. You do, however, your best to to pursue right conduct and hope that your chances are better in the next rebirth.</p>
<p>However, the individual who is then reborn carrying the consequences of your karma, does not identify with you, does not have memories of your life, is not able to make logical conclusions of the consequences of your present actions, you in fact are a total stranger to him. In what sense are you then reborn.</p>
<p>Or, in another way round. Suppose that I am tempted to actions that would ensure my temporary happiness but would load me with negative karma and would lead to a bad rebirth. If the person that is reborn carrying the negative consequences of my actions does not really identify him/herself with me and is for all practical purposes stranger to me, why should I care for a bad rebirth?</p>
<p>Please, be patient. I am not making these questions for being flippant, but these are really difficult points in the buddhist doctrine for me to understand.</p>
<p>(Edit to add)</p>
<p>Thank you again for your answers. However, I think they somewhat miss my point. That is probably due to the fact that English is not my native tongue and expressing rather abstract ideas is a challenge for me. But I try to clarify my problem using myself as an example.</p>
<p>I have had a relatively happy life and was born in good circumstances in an affluent country and got a good education. If the doctrine of rebirth is true, someone in the past accumulated some good karma that I inherited in my birth. I, however, do not have any information of that individual, I do not know his/her life, do not share  his/her memories and experiences, and certainly do not have any feeling that I personally have lived his/her life and carry still in my present existence its consequnces. And the same holds true regarding the individual who will be born after my death experiencing the consequences of the karma I have accumulated. I do not have any real connection to that future person. And if after maybe one hundred future rebirths this chain of beings finally ends with an individual, who reaches the enlightment and enters the nirvana, it is certainly not me who finally obtains this achievment. So, it might be my duty to live in a way that some total stranger after my death might fare somewhat better than I. And if I am tempted to behave badly (and escape the temporal punishments) I might feel that there will be a future rebirth and a person suffering from my actions, but he/she does not know me, is not able to pinpoint the guilt to me and certainly does not feel that he/she is actually me and rightly suffering because because thr bad things I have done.</p>
<p>Once again, this problem is related to the concept of the lack of a &quot;soul&quot; or &quot;real self&quot; that journeys through this samsara to enlightment, maybe through a thousand of rebirths. According to my understanding this &quot;anatta&quot; leads to a situation where the consequences of my actions are just heaped to some total stranger that is borne after my death, and it does not sound just. Of course it still might be true, but it sounds to me almost as dismal a doctrin as the Calvinistic predestination.</p>
 16635: <p>Anatta is a difficult and often misunderstood concept. When Buddhists talk about no-self, they mean it in the context of self-conceptualization: a mental object that is identified as the 'self'. In other words, we construct a mental object that we identify as ourself, and fall into the trap of thinking that mental construct is the reality, not a creation. 'Being attached' to some outcome or thing merely means that we have incorporated that outcome or thing <em>into</em> that mental definition of ourself, such that (say) we feel frustration if we don't have it in reality, anger if we're prevented form getting it, joy if we achieve it, sadness if we lose it...</p>
<p>It's an open question what might be left when all attachments are finally stripped away. Some Mahayana sects talk about the difference between 'big mind' and 'little mind', where the latter is the identified self and the former is... <em>that</em>. But the former isn't 'personal' in quite the way we normally think of selves, and it's hard to get a grip on it without experiencing it. At any rate, Buddhism mainly aims at the realization that these cognitive structures (those that make up that mental self-object) aren't exactly true or real. They may be functional and pragmatic within a social context — it would be extremely hard to navigate a social world in which no one had a name or title or role — but such selves should be held lightly, as useful fictions.</p>
<p>The concerns about death and rebirth (and I hope you'll excuse my somewhat mystical perspective) come from a solidified understanding of the self. People believe that some particular aspect of that self-object is 'real', and it's that aspect of themselves that persists on into the next life, (hopefully) learning and advancing over the course of lives. I'll make no judgement on that one way or another, except to note that it can sometimes lead to a personalized notion of karma, in which karma takes on the anthropomorphic role of punishing wrongdoing and rewarding goodness. Karma is not personal; karma is cause and effect. Every step we take in the world — every act, every word, even our mere presence — has an impact on the world and the people around us. It's like dropping a stone in a pool of water: the stone (the act or word) might disappear immediately, but it creates a wave that propagates, and what is a propagating wave but a movement that recreates itself over and over.</p>
<p>One doesn't need to go beyond death to see rebirth. People who suffer cruelty become hard and cruel; people who are given love give love. Not always (because the interactions of karma in the world are more complicated than that), but often enough that we can see how our attitudes — our inner mental constructs — are adopted by others. However, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that someone down the road (past our death) might suffer from the same attachments, attitudes, and fixations that plague us, precisely because we put those attachments, attitudes, and fixations into motion in the world. Is it us, is that reincarnation? Well... it's certainly the reinvention of the fabrication we call ourselves; whether it's <em>more</em> than that is beyond my pay grade.</p>
<p>We can think of Buddhist practice as prophylactic. While it's not wrong to think about prophylaxis is selfish terms — as something that serves and protects the individual — the real goal of prophylaxis is to prevent a disease from spreading to and through others.</p>
