Soul: Confused, or Deliberately Confused?
Below are definitions of ‘SOUL’, and in their range of descriptions, they present two opposing aspects at the same time: identity-personality and spirit–essential-nature.
Identity-personality is a created reality, limited to the body and mind.
Spirit–essential-nature is an absolute reality, beyond the body and mind.
How did this confusion come about?
Was this a mistake by the authors?
Was it intended by religions?
Do we have a soul or are we the soul?
There is nothing wrong with the word SOUL itself: it is just a sound. The Sanskrit sound would be DHARMAKAYA – pure essential nature. But there is confusion. Buddhism says there is no SOUL. Abrahamic religions say there is.
Abrahamic religions: immortal souls capable of union with the divine – God.
Buddhism: sentient beings capable of realising their divine nature.
There may be no confusion at all, but people seem to think that their SOUL is something different from them. If this is the case, it is the same as Buddhism – the thinker feels there is more to them than this discursive mind.
The difference seems to be that in Abrahamic religions, the soul may find union with God-the -creator. In Buddhism, this is the unity of our absolute essential nature and our relative thinking nature, which is the creator.
Believing in God, we have to have faith in God-the-creator: faith implies needing no proof.
Buddhism is a way to realise our true nature, which we can know for ourselves, using logic, observable proof, inference and trust.
Much will depend on our capacity to understand what ‘Soul’ means. And here we have a dilemma in knowing the difference between what we are told, what we believe, and what we can recognise for ourselves. We can rely on dogma, or on actual experience which is not a projection. This applies both to Abrahamic religions, and Buddhism.
If a system makes you feel guilty and defensive, and you are lack compassion, then perhaps it is something acquired. If a system makes you feel free, open and generous, then perhaps it is something lived.
If we go to teachings and acquire information, and, upon being questioned about this, feel uncomfortable and defensive, perhaps we have not understood the teachings and therefore feel vulnerable and competitive. It’s only when we take the teaching apart, inside out, that we can truly understand them, and therefore have empathy and compassion for others.
The soul has to be beyond confusion.
Dharmakaya is beyond confusion.
When we are beyond confusion, we have arrived.
The creator of confusion is the thinking mind.
If God is the creator, why create confusion?
If we are the creators, the confusion is understandable.
Our true nature has never been confused.
The confusion comes from our awareness
believing something outside our pure awareness
To be more real.
Oxford Dictionary:
soul
noun
the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal.
• a person’s moral or emotional nature or sense of identity: in the depths of her soul, she knew he would betray her.
Wikipedia:
The soul, in many mythological, religious, philosophical, and psychological traditions, is the incorporeal and, in many conceptions, immortal essence of a person, living thing, or object. According to some religions (including the Abrahamic religions in most of their forms), souls—or at least immortal souls capable of union with the divine—belong only to human beings. For example, the Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas attributed “soul” (anima) to all organisms but taught that only human souls are immortal. Other religions (most notably Jainism) teach that all biological organisms have souls, and others that non-biological entities (such as rivers and mountains) possess souls. This latter belief is called animism. Anima mundi and the Dharmic Ātman are concepts of a “world soul.”
Soul can function as a synonym for spirit, mind, psyche or self.
BUDDHA IN THE MUD is a blog - a living book based on the Dzogchen teachings. Our teacher is life, and life is karma. We are all Buddhas in the mud of concepts. 