The soul and the self

[helpfuldemon]

Is there a mature being within us?  Was it there at birth, or did it manifest at some age?  What is self?

 

What is self other than our collective experience?  We begin life with our bodies, our capacity to experience, and then we go through life experiencing.  So, we are essentially limbs, senses, memory, language- placed in an environment with other ideas and people, and we rise in age and experience interacting with these tools.  So, is there an inner soul that is separate, that somehow aids us in navigating life?  Do these two bridge ever?  Is one eternal and the other transient?  Where do these souls come from if not harvested from the person we become post soul infusion?  

 

How do you become self, and how do you lose self?  Does empathy aid us in becoming or losing self?  If I become empathic, do I lose myself or do I become more aware of my self?  If I lose myself in empathy, do I not become others?  When does no-self manifest?  Do we need to return to the tools of body and senses and strip or explain our experiences so that we are masters of our reality?  Can we ever shed these things completely?  Is there a fundamental One Reality that makes perfect sense from all angels?  Is it necessary to discover this One Reality in order to organize ourselves into a perfect oneness of self?  Can we ever escape our past deeds?  

 

At death, if I master my experiences, where do I move on to?  Is there a tunnel that I travel to find a more advanced, future place, or do I return here in a more perfected soul, given another chance to live and act?

[Maddie]

3 minutes ago, helpfuldemon said:

Is there a mature being within us?  Was it there at birth, or did it manifest at some age?  What is self?

 

What is self other than our collective experience?  We begin life with our bodies, our capacity to experience, and then we go through life experiencing.  So, we are essentially limbs, senses, memory, language- placed in an environment with other ideas and people, and we rise in age and experience interacting with these tools.  So, is there an inner soul that is separate, that somehow aids us in navigating life?  Do these two bridge ever?  Is one eternal and the other transient?  Where do these souls come from if not harvested from the person we become post soul infusion?  

 

How do you become self, and how do you lose self?  Does empathy aid us in becoming or losing self?  If I become empathic, do I lose myself or do I become more aware of my self?  If I lose myself in empathy, do I not become others?  When does no-self manifest?  Do we need to return to the tools of body and senses and strip or explain our experiences so that we are masters of our reality?  Can we ever shed these things completely?  Is there a fundamental One Reality that makes perfect sense from all angels?  Is it necessary to discover this One Reality in order to organize ourselves into a perfect oneness of self?  Can we ever escape our past deeds?  

 

At death, if I master my experiences, where do I move on to?  Is there a tunnel that I travel to find a more advanced, future place, or do I return here in a more perfected soul, given another chance to live and act?

 

The Buddha seemed to prefer to answer the question, what the soul is not.

[helpfuldemon]

I believe there is a thing inside of us that connects us to all of our memories, our choices, our thoughts, our experiences, our bodies, our senses- I believe this thing is connected to an infinite stream of reality.  I think the self or soul is all of our choices and things we denounce, and memories, and senses, and that we travel in this infinance with our selves in worlds copied from all of reality.

[Maddie]

22 minutes ago, helpfuldemon said:

I believe there is a thing inside of us that connects us to all of our memories, our choices, our thoughts, our experiences, our bodies, our senses- I believe this thing is connected to an infinite stream of reality.  I think the self or soul is all of our choices and things we denounce, and memories, and senses, and that we travel in this infinance with our selves in worlds copied from all of reality.

 

Actually all the things you listed were things that the Buddha said are not self.

 

Memories, choices, thoughts, are within the domain of the Sankhara skanda, or volition

 

Senses are a skanda as well.

[helpfuldemon]

The Buddha is whack!  All of those things make up who we are!  Whats left?  

[Maddie]

1 minute ago, helpfuldemon said:

The Buddha is whack!  All of those things make up who we are!  Whats left?  

 

Let's just take one, memories. People have false memories all the time, would a false memory be self? People forget things all the time too, does part of self disappear when memories are forgotten? Memories are unreliable as well. Ask any police officer about interviewing eye witnesses at an accident and how many different stories they get? Are incorrect memories self?

[helpfuldemon]

I see it this way:  This thing I mentioned earlier, it records everything.  The Soul is like a photograph or a story, a movie perhaps, and in it is all that I carry- false memories or real ones.  These are all things that make up me.

[Maddie]

6 minutes ago, helpfuldemon said:

I see it this way:  This thing I mentioned earlier, it records everything.  The Soul is like a photograph or a story, a movie perhaps, and in it is all that I carry- false memories or real ones.  These are all things that make up me.

 

Then your original post was more of a statement than a question.

[helpfuldemon]

Some thoughtful soul sent me some information, and the gist I got from it is, that the self is the thing which is "I", and nothing else.

[helpfuldemon]

Stripping yourself of the self leaves someone else the winner.  Happiness is getting what you want.  Unless you are in a community of the selfless, where the community self wins, and all people that agree with that self are happy.

[Nungali]

10 hours ago, helpfuldemon said:

The Buddha is whack!  All of those things make up who we are!  Whats left?  

 

 

Thats it   ....... keep going  .

[Maddie]

8 hours ago, helpfuldemon said:

Stripping yourself of the self leaves someone else the winner.  Happiness is getting what you want.  Unless you are in a community of the selfless, where the community self wins, and all people that agree with that self are happy.

 

Stripping yourself of a false notion of self takes you beyond the level of winners and losers and causes one to realize that's just a game of the ego.

[rocala]

This article from Tricycle may be of interest. https://tricycle.org/magazine/no-self-or-true-self/

Here is an extract:

When Christian texts speak of losing the self in God, when Taoists and Hindus speak of merging with a True Self beyond all identity, when Buddhists speak of emptiness and of no self, what do they mean? Emptiness does not mean that things don’t exist, nor does “no self” mean that we don’t exist. Emptiness refers to the underlying nonseparation of life and the fertile ground of energy that gives rise to all forms of life. Our world and sense of self is a play of patterns.

Any identity we can grasp is transient, tentative. This is difficult to understand from words such as selflessness or emptiness of self. In fact, my own teacher Achaan Chah said, “If you try to understand it intellectually, your head will probably explode.”

[Boundlesscostfairy]

Everything.. Every unit is its own soul..

[Boundlesscostfairy]

Does "you are everything" have any logical basis?

 

I am you and you are me..?

 

Where are we disconnected from others...other souls other than ours? Without us controlling them?

[Maddie]

2 hours ago, Boundlesscostfairy said:

Does "you are everything" have any logical basis?

 

I am you and you are me..?

 

I can't think of any logical basis.

[Apech]

On 12/21/2020 at 11:43 AM, Boundlesscostfairy said:

Does "you are everything" have any logical basis?

 

I am you and you are me..?

 

Where are we disconnected from others...other souls other than ours? Without us controlling them?

 

You are not me, I'm fairly certain.

[Apech]

On 12/20/2020 at 9:56 AM, rocala said:

This article from Tricycle may be of interest. https://tricycle.org/magazine/no-self-or-true-self/

Here is an extract:

When Christian texts speak of losing the self in God, when Taoists and Hindus speak of merging with a True Self beyond all identity, when Buddhists speak of emptiness and of no self, what do they mean? Emptiness does not mean that things don’t exist, nor does “no self” mean that we don’t exist. Emptiness refers to the underlying nonseparation of life and the fertile ground of energy that gives rise to all forms of life. Our world and sense of self is a play of patterns.

Any identity we can grasp is transient, tentative. This is difficult to understand from words such as selflessness or emptiness of self. In fact, my own teacher Achaan Chah said, “If you try to understand it intellectually, your head will probably explode.”

 

There are a lot of very well qualified people who write mish-mash like this - sometimes it's quite astounding.

 

 

[Maddie]

25 minutes ago, Apech said:

 

There are a lot of very well qualified people who write mish-mash like this - sometimes it's quite astounding.

 

 

 

Yes I think if someone is going to make a claim then they have to give a logical reason to support that claim.

This kind of stuff reminds me of the people I went to Acupuncture school with which is a very interesting crowd but we would have parties on the weekends around campfires and they would just say stuff like I am you and you are me and I am everything and nothing in the cosmic consciousness of the cosmos moves through me and I threw it, and afterwards everyone would say how cool that was while I be sitting there thinking okay what did they actually just say? LOL

[rocala]

4 hours ago, Apech said:

 

There are a lot of very well qualified people who write mish-mash like this - sometimes it's quite astounding.

 

 

Well Kornfield is certainly well qualified, but I guess not to every ones taste.

[Apech]

2 hours ago, rocala said:

Well Kornfield is certainly well qualified, but I guess not to every ones taste.

 

 

Ok the guys been a monk - I looked him up - and is quite famous - so no disrespect - but what he writes is kinda strange.

[Maddie]

6 hours ago, Apech said:

 

 

Ok the guys been a monk - I looked him up - and is quite famous - so no disrespect - but what he writes is kinda strange.

 

The Buddha said not to believe what someone says based on their reputation but if what they say makes sense.