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Does Buddhism deny the vernacular common idea of Soul?
Jeffrey
Veteran
in Philosophy
So my soul might have to do with my conscience? People in the west must be pointing to something in reality? Otherwise why wouldn't they have realized there is no soul after all of these years? Could Sila (morality) be an emmanation of the soul?
I haven't fleshed this out much. Couldn't Soul have to do with sharing?
I haven't fleshed this out much. Couldn't Soul have to do with sharing?
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The Zen Buddhist answer is
Anatta!
:buck:
S - same
O - it
U - mine
L - deal wid it
Coincidentally, I just finished reading a book about sociopaths. It is estimated that about 4% of the population are sociopaths. A sociopath is essentially someone that does not possess a conscience. They have no real sense of responsibility for others, which is what morality and love is all about. People are just things to be used.
Now there's the apparent fact that there are sociopathic Buddhist teachers ( http://www.shimanoarchive.com/index.html ), people who have proved realization of annata. So where does that leave us but with the tragic conclusion that you are right?
To put it bluntly, they fit right in to a religion of that doesn't believe in a soul.
@Dakini
Perhaps this is up with how many angles can dance on the head of a pin
or the reason I'm not a Tibetan Buddhist but...
where do you get that the true self or Buddha nature is in anyway more particular to an individual than to everything else?
&
I don't also get how this has anything to do with empathy or morality?
but rather a stream of experiencing.
I relate to back to art and the process of making art as it imitates and reflects what reality is to us.
When we make art without self-conscious it is totally done without remainder. There is no time, there is no artist, there is no art, its the universe doing the art as the art.
So life or the soul is like that. An action that we try to capture but we only find shadows, glances, scents, and we gather those scents and create gestalts that don't really exist.
So when we find that lack or what anatta points to we only find flux and a flux so fluxing that there isn't anything to be fluxing, but it just like a fractal. Total movement, total absence.
So that is what the soul is, it is a stream, an action. This is what karma is. Karma is action. Action that is never segregated from all time and space, all things interpenetrating, total absence of identity, yet maintained through the dynamic interweaving of apparent causes and conditions.
But in both cases the soul as an entity or the soul as an action are merely symbolic metaphors, conventions. We don't deny conventions because to do so would be to err in side with Nihilism. And we don't say that there is actually something real or unreal there because then that would be to err on the side of Eternalism.
The middle way, which isn't really a middle way because its not like one can land anywhere other than what we want, what we conceive of. To conceive is directly linked to the perception.
TLDR:
Buddhism denies the inherent self,
Buddhism denies the lack of inherent self as well.
The Middle Way is the dependent self, as a flux, a dynamic wave of change, that has no landing whatsoever.
Try to abandon your non-hate of double negatives as well.
:rolleyes:
I think a number of (vague) ideas are covered by the word “soul”.
Buddhist denial of “soul” must be understood as a reaction to the Hindu notion of atman (a divine true self which is identical to the Self or the Absolute).
And then parts of Buddhist doctrine appear to take the denial back when they teach “the identity of relative and absolute” or “Buddha-nature”; whatever those teachings mean.
I can still use the word soul and refer to my deepest emotions. Or it may just refer to the ungraspable level of what I really am; what life rally is. We can say there is no soul or we can say there is nothing else than soul. We could be pointing at the same truth and use contradicting words for it.
' The idea of Tathagata - Gharba ' ( Badly translated as Buddha Nature ) must be seperated from western ideas of ' soul'. It is actually the union of Emptiness and Wisdom. '
Thrangu Rinpoche.
What is it that the far superior "eastern" believes is empty and wise?
For the Sioux, one’s personal spiritual goal is to achieve the awareness of the unity of the four souls. One must transcend the notion of the separation of the souls to discover the wholeness of all things. Morality is based on the acceptance, and actions in accordance of this notion.
There seems to be some similarities to both Eastern and Westen thought, even if it is a little metaphoric. According to the Sioux, there is a soul, but it is everything, encompasses everything - so in a double negative way (I think), anatta is feasible (which I think, as @Dakini mentioned - relates to the hot potato issue in Buddhism).
The worldly wish to believe that our identity continues beyond death has meant that some Buddhists co opt the concept of Buddhanature as evidence of that possibility.
The expression of true self, as buddhanature, that continues unaffected by death, is mistakenly interpreted as that which is unique to our particular Skandha collection, or in other words a soul representative of this present unique identity.
I find that identifying buddhanature as our potential Buddhahood which universaly manifests free of our temporarily obscuring identities, as a clearer representation of anatta and gives less wiggle room for the delusive hope of ego everlasting..
This is where I give Theravadins credit for simplistic clearity.
As a student of Zen, I am not even sure where the Mahayana teachings of buddhanature truely balance on the scale of what is helpful and what is a hindrance on the path towards the cessation of suffering.
My other question about "what has this to do with empathy or morality" was just about why a belief in a soul or not, in itself, would have any affect of one's empathy or morality.
Whereas...
(IMO) You were saying that the transcendence of self is the manifestation of morality/ empathy / compassion, which is true, but has little to do with the belief or disbelief in a soul.
Perhaps the problem of trying to guess how many angles can dance on the head of a pin is trying to determine the difference between a legitimate dance and it's lesser toe mash.
The idea that an individual possesses a ' portion ' of Buddhanature is Eternalism.
And as such was identified by the Buddha as one of the two major blocks to understanding his Dharma The other being Annihilationism.
An understanding of the concept of Buddha Nature requires a far more subtle approach.
As Thrangu Rinpoch says it is the union of prajna..arising wisdom, and shunyata...voidness.
This happens by transcending the idea of an individual attaining something.
Sila 'morality ' is not a cause per se. It is an outcome of psychological integration.
To really understand all of this needs states of absorption. It cannot be understood by comparing in to any pre-existing model we carry.
As you rightly pointed out, eternalism (a permanent individual) is wrong view but so is annihilism (absolute destruction of the individual). The truth is somewhere in the middle and negates neither one or the other.
I've seen you talk of Thrangu Rinpoche saying Buddhanature is the union of arising wisdom and emptiness before but these are mere qualities. So what is it that is empty and wise?
Buddha nature is just what it sounds like... The potential for waking up.
No, I am not saying Buddha nature can be considered the soul because it is only a quality.
However, a soul could be considered (for some) to be that which is empty and wise.
Wouldn't Buddha Nature simply be the potential for waking up?
This is why some scholars dismiss the last teachings of the Buddha as later additions, and influences from Hinduism. I think it's for every Buddhist to decide for themselves whether they want to take those teachings at face value, or not.
Compassion arises from within so I ask again, if we cannot call it a soul, what is it that awakens?
The reason that Prajna and Shunyata are always taught in tandem is to obviate the natural tendency that we have to see that which arises as having an owner.
Prajna arises. Or more accurately Prajna is already the case.
But Prajna has no home..a realised person has no more Prajna than anyone else.
Prajna arises with, or within, Shunyata.
Form is Emptiness
Emptiness is Form.
Therefore there is no subject/object.
'Nothing to attain and no one to attain it.'
Emptiness does not mean nothingness and if emptiness was not a quality than nothing is empty.
However, "nothing" is just another illusion.
( Do American learner drivers have 'L' plates ? )
Traditionally, the soul is considered the principle of life and a living intellectual essence which has a beginning, and because it has an origin it is not eternal or immortal. It arises simultaneously with the forming of the organic and sensory body which it gives to it the power of life and reception of sense-perceptions as long as the nature of which can receive these maintains its existence. All living things are referred to as a soul.
Having no color, shape, texture, weight, size, dimension, and spatial limitations it is not anything that can be comprehended by sense perception, and this leads some to conclude that it is nothing at all despite its immaterially. However, it can only be known through the higher faculty of the soul called the intellect or nous, and not by sight for instance.