According to the historical Buddha, there is no "soul" or "self" in the sense of a permanent, intrinsic, autonomous "I" inhabiting our bodies. What we imagine to be "I" is an effect created by our brains and senses that is re-created anew every moment.
Christianity invented the Soul because of their death anxiety.
"Today is a good day to die!" ….is the healthy attitude of an intelligent clued up sane person who is living life to the fullest in every moment.
Christianity is terrified of death and dying….hence all their BS about souls and eternal life spent with their holy father in heaven and all the other nonsense claptrap they come up with that just ain’t true.
There is no Soul - it’s another Christian mythological belief.
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Iwannaplato
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Re: There is no Soul - it’s another Christian mythological belief.
An intelligent clued up sane person who believes in the Buddhist idea of anatta would not believe death was a meaningful concept. There would be no self to die today or any other.Dontaskme wrote: ↑Fri Jul 29, 2022 6:49 pm According to the historical Buddha, there is no "soul" or "self" in the sense of a permanent, intrinsic, autonomous "I" inhabiting our bodies. What we imagine to be "I" is an effect created by our brains and senses that is re-created anew every moment.
Christianity invented the Soul because of their death anxiety.
"Today is a good day to die!" ….is the healthy attitude of an intelligent clued up sane person who is living life to the fullest in every moment.
Christianity is terrified of death and dying….hence all their BS about souls and eternal life spent with their holy father in heaven and all the other nonsense claptrap they come up with that just ain’t true.
Today is a good day to die comes from a Native American and didn't mean something Buddhist-ish.
And in fact the group of NAs it came from tended to believe in reincarnation.
Re: There is no Soul - it’s another Christian mythological belief.
Yes, it’s the correct view, except we cannot die on a tomorrow that never comes, except in this artificial conception. In the dream of separation.
Ask yourself: when will I die ? …..you do not know….Silence is your answer.
No one chooses to be born. No one chooses to die. Life is one with itself.
The imagined “I” or self is an illusion, which does not live or die…for this “I” is already being lived.
“I” do not live. The “I” is being lived.
Re: There is no Soul - it’s another Christian mythological belief.
I've taken that into account, and I don't see it as a problem.
Re: There is no Soul - it’s another Christian mythological belief.
Re: There is no Soul - it’s another Christian mythological belief.
It's a second hand idea shoe-horned onto Christianity from Greek myth; the idea of the Psyche.
Re: There is no Soul - it’s another Christian mythological belief.
Yes Sculptor, I totally agree with you.
I personally inquired into the nature of selfhood, listening to the words of many spiritual gurus because I was always troubled at the thought of an imposed individual ''I'' that was somehow separated from universe. Insofar as I was conditioned to believe that there was an I here, who was separated by another I there. This ''I'' was a notion that was indoctrinated into me from birth, and it always troubled me, as it felt so wrong, the idea there was an ''I'' inside my head never made any sense to me personally.
It was far easier for me to settle for the wholeness of reality, than to believe it had automonous working separate parts called individual people which after much contemplation turned out to be an illusion.
Religious belief of substance dualism came about when consciousness became so profound and powerful that it artificially separated itself from the rest of nature. But all was not lost, because the same consciousness that branched off from it's roots was able to repair the breach.
Last edited by Dontaskme on Sat Jul 30, 2022 6:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: There is no Soul - it’s another Christian mythological belief.
No thing is ever out of the immediate moment it is certain about to be ever not certain about.
There is nothing in the past that lives, and there is nothing in the future that lives. All that lives is life right here and now living itself in this mysterious and immediate constant state of not-knowing.
Actual knowing, aka knowledge is always on reflection or during projection which are the illusory effects aka hallucinations of a living brain, aka an experience involving the apparent perception of something not present...aka apparitions.
The living physical brain in and of it's doesn't even know it's a brain, it has no concept of it's existence as a separate conceptual organ independant from the headcase that surrounds it.
Just as a tree or a flower springs forth and blooms into being and in the same moment is already slowly disappearing as it is appearing. The human body like a flower is also both dying as it is living.
Both living and dying are the same ONE stateless state, just differing in appearance, in the illusory nature of conceptual knowledge which can only point itself to the illusion of a separate independant autonomy called ''I'' or ''Self''
Re: There is no Soul - it’s another Christian mythological belief.
What "buddha" was actually referring to was what I call the little 'i' and/or 'self'. As there is NO actual one of these.
What some of 'you', human beings, imagine are the different 'i's' or 'selfs' are just an illusion, or illusory, as some say.
The word 'soul' was and is used to refer to a particular part of the human being. Which will become much clearer later on as we progress here.
Sounds rather CONTRADICTORY to me. But each to their own, as some say.
Okay. If this is what you BELIEVE is absolutely and irrefutably true, then who am 'I' to say otherwise?
Re: There is no Soul - it’s another Christian mythological belief.
Well, when every thing that is apparently known and seen to be relative to the observer, when what is observed can only exist in the observer that cannot be observed, then Yes, the apparent contradiction is rather unavoidable.
And you already know that, so no need to sweat the small stuff, parrot face.
Re: There is no Soul - it’s another Christian mythological belief.
Whatever "spirit", "soul", "mind" or "essence" might be all the evidence points to the simple fact that the phenomena that we attribute to the idea is generated by a functioning human body, particularly the brain and associated matter such as the neural matter that extends to the heart and digestive system.Dontaskme wrote: ↑Sat Jul 30, 2022 5:49 amYes Sculptor, I totally agree with you.
I personally inquired into the nature of selfhood, listening to the words of many spiritual gurus because I was always troubled at the thought of an imposed individual ''I'' that was somehow separated from universe. Insofar as I was conditioned to believe that there was an I here, who was separated by another I there. This ''I'' was a notion that was indoctrinated into me from birth, and it always troubled me, as it felt so wrong, the idea there was an ''I'' inside my head never made any sense to me personally.
It was far easier for me to settle for the wholeness of reality, than to believe it had automonous working separate parts called individual people which after much contemplation turned out to be an illusion.
Religious belief of substance dualism came about when consciousness became so profound and powerful that it artificially separated itself from the rest of nature. But all was not lost, because the same consciousness that branched off from it's roots was able to repair the breach.
And there is not one scrap of evidence that the mind can exist without that physical structure, but is wholly dependant on its functioning.
It is worth thinking about that people who have had heart transplants can acquire characteristics from the donor heart. Although, hard to prove, hosts of new hearts have reported liking things that their donors used to like in their lifetimes with enough force to ask their surgeons to know more about the likes and dislikes of their donors.
The human heart carries a significant amount of brain matter. The idea of a "heart felt" emotion is more accurate than we ever knew.
Re: There is no Soul - it’s another Christian mythological belief.
Good observations. This particular one ... that saying about a good day to die ... it may have even come from a movie, about American aboriginals.Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Jul 29, 2022 8:42 pm Today is a good day to die comes from a Native American and didn't mean something Buddhist-ish.
It does sound romantic though, doesn't it. Rather, New Agey.
(I've heard I'm incomprehensible, so speak up if you don't understand.)