The BUddhist Concept
Published under Metaphysics on December 25, 2007There are some rather conflicting beliefs in the Buddhist religion, of which I do not proclaim myself to be an expert on, however, there was something I had read recently that greatly interested me.
Their concept of no soul. In fact, not only that but their concept that is a river is not a river, just a group of water molecules traveling in the same direction. From what I understand there are 2 schools of thought on this. The first is that there is no soul, therefore, no soul to be born again and no soul to have existed in the past, and then there is the school of thought that there is a soul, but at the same time, there is no afterlife, that the mind once it dies, will be reformed into a new mind, and live on.
Now, this got me thinking to their theory of the Buddha, that Buddha means enlightened soul, and that through a ton of preparatory lives, the Buddha will come to exist. So then I have to ask myself, is perhaps there a part of a person that lives on and reincarnates, and a part of us that dies, and even more so, is there a part of our mind that is stripped from us and becomes a part of the Buddha that will come to exist, as though the new soul is only comprised of many molecules of soul, and once we die, those are split up, some to the new life, some to the ascended life, and some cease to exist. Could it be that when we die, we go to many places, not just one place? Could we be like a River splitting into many streams?
This was good food for thought, but back to the no soul theory, this relates to an experiment that was told to me orally and apparently, reference of the experiment wasn’t apparent, but still it was an interesting experiment to hear about. The idea was cloning, and if there was no soul in existence, then cloning would be easy as 1, 2, 3, but when they tried to do this with rats, they found the rats to be highly neurotic, and void of responsibility and the need to know right v.s. wrong. Similarly, a Japanese Buddhist teacher D.T. Suzuki explains, “Without self, there will be no individual, without an individual there will be no responsibility, without the idea of responsibility, morality ceases to exist . . . . . and human community becomes impossible. We must in some way have a self.”
I agree, but the Buddhists argue so much about the nature of this self, and whether the self is ego, or if it’s soul, or if it’s just characteristics, or impressions upon impressions of light and energy.
Well, let’s suppose this. That each soul is born a soul, and it’s bereft of personality, individuality, and character. As a new soul it is literally a clean slate of impressionable energy. It has no knowledge of society, of physical life, and little limitations in the regard to ability. It does not know itself at all other than to know it’s a soul without a body.
Now, put this soul into any body and you have a plethora of things that will happen. Each and every soul is different, it thinks differently, acts different, and is otherwise an individual in itself. But, if you put an individual energy into a body, can you really expect it to begin to act like everyone else around it? If this was the way it was from the beginning you wouldn’t have basic or developmental psychology. You simply wouldn’t be able to track the brain and understand another because in all honesty, every one soul is different from every other soul.
Now, insert an ego, something that is mechanically born into the brain that tells the soul how to act within the body. The soul is pure, unconditioned, but perfect before it enters the body. This is upon its first appearance within a body, as all new souls are created pure. Well, pure soul will do what it feels right if created within a body without an ego. So the ego is really a friend and an enemy because it tells the soul what limitations are upon it. If the new soul was born in the body it would have no fear, it would attempt to touch fire thinking it wouldn’t burn, it would sink into deep waters not feeling concerned with drowning. In all actuality, a soul without an ego is really a ticking time bomb. The soul doesn’t know limitations, therefore, the ego fills them in, don’t touch this, swim and don’t sink, this is hot, this is cold and so on and so forth.
We got into this argument that one needs to escape their ego to truly recognize their soul, and that our ego does not see things as they are, but as they want them to be. Well, I’m not saying that the ego was born with the intelligence of the soul since it probably wasn’t, but the ego keeps the soul in check with reality, and that’s important.
So then really, this idea of the self, the confusion about individual, and whether it is impressions, or characteristic is really quite simple. Everyone has a soul that guides them, but as we are born, the ego begins to teach and many will listen to the concrete viewings of the ego rather than the abstract musings of the soul.
Then we get into what lives on. The ego dies with the body, that is a simple fact, it’s literally the wiring of the brain, it’s literally a mechanical machine within the body. The soul however, the soul lives on, but the soul isn’t the individual.
Okay, now you’re thinking, what!? I’m confused.
Well, in all actuality, if you’re born within a human body, taught how to be human, how to feel emotion, how to treat others, both through your ego and through others in your human life, you will gain a human personality. Is your soul human? No, it’s something else that’s in your human body and only when your human body ceases will you learn what your soul really is.
However, we reach a metaphysical issue, because if you can only learn about your soul once the body dies, then how does one ever progress? The answer is simple, since metaphysically one can leave their body and connect to their soul, they can begin to learn about their soul in this life. I do not find it possible to learn everything about the soul, but it is possible to learn about past lives the soul has had with a physical ego, of which all physical egos differ, and it is possible for one to learn about the soul when there was not a physical ego attached to it. This is a lot harder, and a lot more abstract, but provided that unbiased opinion can be reached it’s not so hard. The problem is the interpretation. Interpretation can’t be done by the human ego, it has to be eliminated so that one can truly listen to themselves, to learn truly about their soul.
Blessings,
Rhiannon