According to Buddhism, our ideas of God and Soul are false and empty. The Buddha’s teaching does not support this ignorance, weakness, fear, and desire, but aims at making man enlightened by removing and destroying them, striking at their very root. Hence he clings to them deeply and fanatically. In his ignorance, weakness, fear, and desire, man needs these two things to console himself. For self-preservation man has conceived the idea of an immortal Soul or Atman, which will live eternally. For self-protection man has created God, on whom he depends for his own protection, safety and security, just as a child depends on its parent. Two ideas are psychologically deep-rooted in man: self-protection and self-preservation.

The scale for this progress is laid out in the document: Meditation from Mystery to Knowing.

This progress may be assessed for an individual, for mankind and also for the universe. NOTE: The evolution may be measured by the progress made from MYSTERY toward KNOWINGNESS. The universe may have evolved by an infinitesimal amount, but that is why that life cycle happened in the first place. What continues after death is the effect that one life was able to bring on the universe in terms of its evolution. This sense of self (soul or atman) actually disintegrates upon death along with the disintegration of the body-mind system. There is a sense of self when a person is alive, but that sense goes away after death. Self operates as the “center of awareness” of the body-mind system, which is part of the universe. There is nothing other than the universe. In short, to this false view can be traced all the evil in the world.īy definition, the universe is all that is. It is the source of all the troubles in the world from personal conflicts to wars between nations. According to the teaching of the Buddha, the idea of self is an imaginary, false belief which has no corresponding reality, and it produces harmful thoughts of ‘me’ and ‘mine’, selfish desire, craving, attachment, hatred, ill-will, conceit, pride, egoism, and other defilements, impurities and problems. However, this evolution requires Man to have the perspective of himself and his role, but Man is confused on the subject of self.īuddhism stands unique in the history of human thought in denying the existence of such a Soul, Self, or Atman. The whole purpose of this exercise is to continue the evolution of the universe to its next stage. Such molecules are then used to assemble new body-mind systems and plugging them back. The body-mind system then disintegrates into molecules that carry the mental programming from the life just lived. Upon death, the body-mind system gets unplugged and the spirit stops flowing through it. The form of Man appears as a body-mind system that is animated by a spirit (something like a machine being animated by electricity).

Such a conception is called the idea of self. This soul or self in man is the thinker of thoughts, feeler of sensations, and receiver of rewards and punishments for all its actions good and bad. According to others, it goes through many lives till it is completely purified and becomes finally united with God or Brahman, Universal Soul or Atman, from which it originally emanated. The article questions this consideration.Īccording to some religions, each individual has such a separate soul which is created by God, and which, finally after death, lives eternally either in hell or heaven, its destiny depending on the judgment of its creator. But these labels imply that there is some entity in man which is being considered permanent, everlasting and absolute. Nor does it say that Soul, Self, Ego or Atman are the same thing. Please note that this article does not deny the existence of Soul, Self, Ego or Atman. What in general is suggested by Soul, Self, Ego, or to use the Sanskrit expression Atman, is that in man there is a permanent, everlasting and absolute entity, which is the unchanging substance behind the changing phenomenal world. In color are the comments that have been added. This is Chapter 6 of the Book: What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula.

Atman isoul