What is a soul?

As you predicted.

When you die, you're reborn.

No heaven. No hell.

Rebirth is all.

But Buddhists don't believe in a soul.
Boo.
(Hard to explain what they do believe ...)

What you rerfer as the soul is the subtle mine that leaves our physical form when we die. Awaiting to be born in the next life, that being dependant on the karma we have created in this and previous lives. It is like a bird leaving one nest and flying to another. It is only through the human realm that we can achive enlightenment. This is the Buddhist understanding.

Welllll, maybe ....
I find the Buddhist understanding hard to grasp.
Those that still believe in the classic Buddhist notion of rebirth must have something not so different from the idea of 'soul' in mind ... and yet the sutras state that the is NO soul.
Something, in the classical view, was available for passage through an endless round of new incarnations, but it wasn't a 'soul.'
If you figure it out, Smartalk, let me know ...

Soul is just a word.

Call it spirit.

Call it essence.

Call it life-force.

Call it soul.

If you wanna be pedantic, what do Budhists call it?

I live it. I follow it (selectively and to a degree). Words, names or titles are not particularly necessary.

Nice font colour.

Fkn hard to read, tho.

The soul is the point of observational conscious awareness.

Its not the voice in your head, your identity, nor your drives.

Try this simple experiment...

Next time the voice in your head starts yammering... stop it in mid sentence and Realize... you already know what it was going to say.


You are not the voice in your head... you are the one hearing the voice.

You are the observer...and the voiceless origin of will...

PROVE this statement.

Otherwise its just a delusional mental dodge around death.

It would be unethical for me to call christians on their statements of nonsense and not call buddhists on it simply because I like buddhism better...

Disprove it.

Otherwise it's just a delusional mental dodge around your being reborn inevitability.

listen to any of stevie ray vaughan's blues songs, like Tin Pan Alley, Lenny, Little Wing or others, theres so many. but after listening to some of his stuff, you will know EXACTLY what soul is. that man had enough soul to live for 10,000 years easy

rebirth? as what?

I/we tend to believe as another person (not as an earthworm etc - though, who can say).

It's not that hard to understand.

If you believe you're just flesh, muscle and electrical impulses, that's cool. In our opinion, there's more to us than that. There's a soul (by any other name).

That can no more die than can the TV or Radio signals that are, even now, surrounding you - purely because you turn your TV/Radio off.

Our bodies are merely receivers (TV/Radio sets, if you like). When someone puts an axe through the receiver, the receiver is broken and dies (but the invisible life/signal that that the TV formerly housed simply seeks another receiver).

and we would have no knowledge of our previous lives in our new life? (besides the fact that according to the teachings, we DID have previous lives)

Of course not.

Why should we?

That is both the joy and the pain of it.

If you could take memories you'd only take the good ones.

That would make for imbalance.

But would you want to be born as the manic depressive you had been previously?

You have a fresh start.

When you turn your radio on, you can choose any of thousands of different stations. Does the next carry the baggage of the last?

Of course not. It's fresh. It's almost like it's just been born/discovered.

It does give some credence to those who claim to have been regressed to a previous life, however, but I'm not sure about that stuff, myself. Am yet to be convinced.

so the way its set up theres no way to prove or disprove it? (like most every other theory on life after death)

i could see how that belief could give one hope for future lives (or dread depending on what their next life may hold.) i guess what im really trying to see is why one would choose to believe in this rebirth. i dont mean that in a condemning way im just curious. what makes the belief of rebirth after death seem more plausible to you than any of the other beliefs?

No. Can't do that.

If we could, all wars would cease (except the ones that are waged on a financial as opposed to religious basis......Oh, yeah.....forgot.....that's pretty much all of them, anyway - they just hide behind and justify though their "beliefs").

But of all of the afterlife beliefs, it's probably about the most provable. Sorry we can't give you a categoric.

Beats some daft idea of white-robed angels with wings before gates made of pearls, though.

Rebirth. Continuation. Even a blade of grass that falls and rots down becomes part of the plant it next nourishes. And a blade of grass has no soul to speak of.