if the world population is increasing, where are coming from all the new souls that reincarnate into humans? from other planets?from other living beings that were not humans in their last life?
Buddhism does not have the concept of "souls" in the sense of something permanent. However, you are right that the "new" humans were just some other life form before.
Why must there be a finite number of "human souls" to begin with? The population of the human species has been increasing for tens of thousands of years, where did all those souls come from if it started with just a select few?
i know it is not soul, but i do not know the word for that part of us that is located in the heart and moves from incarnation to incarnation without the attributes of our egos in our different lifes..i feel that the universe is so big that some of the wrongly called new souls could come from worlds we are not even aware of.these worlds could be also spiritual worlds more immaterial than our.. everything is evoluting..
I don't believe in souls, but I don't see why you can't have more than one soul coming from one person. If a mother and father have three children, obviously it makes sense to have their souls duplicated and transferred into the children. This could explain why children are similar to parents, if the whole thing wasn't a bunch of nonsense.
Soul is an aggregate and integrated aspect of any lifeform. To say that some humans have souls is highly laughable (I know my boss is an asshole, which is a type of person without much soul to even have ever brought up in their name). Other people, we say, of what great souls they are, and for instance, we listen to soul music because it touches a part of us which feels whole and joy. But since you ask - in the course of the thousands of years of homosapienns, it's scientific fact, that right now there are as many humans alive as did exist through all of previous human history. Now talk about karma for a moment. Humans especially have slaughtered wholesale exquisite beings, in fact I think more than half of the diversity of Planet Mommy. Also, there is an oceanic die off which is rivalling that of the great dinosaurs die-off in scope. Yep, going on today, right under our awareness. Enjoy your fish because it will go extinct. Unless you're a fan of catfish and tilapia. A soul is an aggregate of many things just as our digestive tract contains an unknown quantity or chemicals, bacteria, enzymes, hormones, and ladidadidas. My personal notion of soul is that it's yet another way of discrimination, and thus division and hatred. I need not mention any religion, because maybe with exception of The jains, each one has murdered for some specious and indefinable 'thought.' I would go so far as to daresay that soul is what you do not feel when you are in a disintegrated environment. Perhaps a toxic environment, maybe even one from toxic dumping. Or toxic religious background. But the development of a being through loving kindness is the best step towards soul activation. Soul, or aggregated individual. Removing the factors that delimit intelligence, which numbers are legions.
i agree that some people have less of a soul than others. 'soul' seems to be preserved within people that don't take everything for granted.
OP, un-enlightened souls sit in the 'bardo realm'? (limbo) for undetermined lengths of time before being re-incarnated yeah? so how can anyone comprehend how many souls might be in existance? i'm not at all buddist but even so this question seems really quite absurd...
There is always the Time, Space and Dimensional Worlds that we know little to nought about to consider when it comes to limitless soul entities - meThinks
In what form? Cellullar/elemental? or something else? Also, are there any suttas that point to the buddha holding this view?
Sentient beings are generally recognized in six realms: devas, asuras, humans, animals, hungry ghosts and hell beings. I don't have a specific scriptural reference. The Shurangama Sutra is said to document the various realms. I have not read it, so I can't verify that.
As said post above, there are 6 realms in which the soul has to kind of categorize itself in. In these 6 realms is where the soul may end up. So we do not really know how many souls have been in circulation, as opposed to new souls entering this world (if even plausible in buddhism) Overall i believe many are entering and exiting the 6 realms and well the ones that can; end up here with the rest of us. Its a cycle, like the ying-yang concept. One enters the room, while another exits the room. We are all on our own journey to enlightenment and are like small dots on the timeline of the ongoing cycle.
According to Thich Nhat Hanh, as a Buddhist, he does not use the word "reincarnation", but "rebirth," and even that is problematic because according to the Buddha, "birth" does not exist either. Think about the flower. It was here before in the form of soil, rain, sun, and air. If a person looks, he or she will see all of these elements in the flower because the flower is not made of flowers; it is made of non-flower elements. What makes the flower is that all of its constituents have always been here, and since conditions are right, it is capable of manifesting itself as a flower. What is birth and death? They could be considered things. They could be considered ideas or notions. Do either of these qualify them as reality?
yes but there is a part of us that gathers these air, sun, minerals, etc..to become something living.. and then again and again..maybe it is true it has to do more with permanent recycling..
There are the five skandhas (form, sensation, perception, mental impulses, consciousness). There is nothing else.
In Buddhism, one and many are the same thing, they are both generated by discrimination. --------------------------------------------- Lord of Lanka, beings are appearances, they are like figures painted on the wall, they have no sensibility [or consciousness]. Lord of Lanka, all that is in the world is devoid of work and action because all things have no reality, and there is nothing heard, nothing hearing. Lord of Lanka, all that is in the world is like an image magically transformed. This is not comprehended by the philosophers and the ignorant. Lord of Lanka, he who thus sees things, is the one who sees truthfully. Those who see things otherwise walk in discrimination; as they depend on discrimination, they cling to dualism.----From Lankavatara Sutra translated by D.T. Suzuki ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, the question Where the new souls come from is just like to ask: Where did the people in my dream come from? Answer: They came from nowhere, they are all illusions.
