Where do atheists think dead souls are?

[HarryStotle]

You do not relinquish your self. You realise that what you thought was your self actually wasn’t ever any such thing.

So you relinquish your thoughts about your “self” which doesn’t, in any case, exist, but you do not actually relinquish your true self, which does?

Does your actual and true self, actually think thoughts?

If so, how do you know which thoughts about your “self” are to be relinquished and which are actually true?

How do you know when your true self is thinking thoughts or your false self is? Which thoughts belong to which self?

Presumably those which are true belong to the true self and those which are false to the false self?

 

[rossum]

So, the point of “enlightenment” is merely to die so as not to have to repeat a non-enlightened life over and over again?

It is an effect of enlightenment, not the point. Do you like dying? How many times do you want to die? How many oceans of tears do you want to cry? It seems to me to be a worthwhile result.

Nothing gained? Just a reconciliation to the basic fact that there is nothing, in the end, to be gained? That is enlightenment?

All descriptions of nirvana are incorrect. It is an error to fix on what you think nirvana will be. Having expectations of something of which you are ignorant is very often disappointing when those expectations are not met. The higher meditative states give a small idea of nirvana, but even those are not completely accurate.

How do we know that “much” suffering is only caused by the mismatch between what we think and the way the world is?

Physical pain is a result of our physical body; it is present, but how we react to is up to us. If you can bear to watch the film of a Vietnamese Buddhist monk burning himself to death, that is a good example.

Mental pain can be eliminated by eliminating the mismatch.

Maybe much of our suffering is caused by the way the world actually is?

And each of us creates the world in which we live by our previous actions.

Why will to reduce suffering since being bothered at all by any suffering would indicate holding onto a “false self” which isn’t the attainment of nirvana, in the first place?

Indeed. There is hope for you yet.

So you relinquish your thoughts about your “self” which doesn’t, in any case, exist, but you do not actually relinquish your true self, which does?

No. Adding adjectives to the word does not make it more real. A “true self” is still just as illusory.

“All the elements of reality are soulless.”
When one realises this by wisdom,
then one does not heed ill.
This is the Path of Purity.

– Dhammapada 20:7

Buddhism is very different from the Abrahamic religions. Many assumptions from Christianity do not carry over into Buddhism. The existence of a real soul/self is one of those assumptions which do not transfer.

 

[HarryStotle]

It is an effect of enlightenment, not the point. Do you like dying? How many times do you want to die? How many oceans of tears do you want to cry? It seems to me to be a worthwhile result.

Dying is a “worthwhile result?” How would you know that, a priori?

Merely because you don’t want to shed any tears?

Seems to me it is a more courageous and virtuous outlook to not be worried about shedding tears or suffering but to live life fully despite even thinking about suffering.

That would seem a more worthwhile existence than avoiding suffering to attain nirvana.

How many oceans of tears do you want to cry?

I dunno, maybe lots.

Doesn’t your “want to cry” imply an avoidance relationship to suffering? Doesn’t that very question belie the very antithesis of detachment or enlightenment?

 

[Damian]

Science is just the current best philosophical process for coming to tentative justified conclusion about our experienced reality. Our knowledge about reality is progressing, but the philosophical process of science hasn’t changed in centuries. Our equipment has changed, our knowledge has increased, but the philosophy hasn’t.
Person A may have a justified reason, to them alone for concluding the chair is there because just maybe they have access to a reality that no one else does. But then, if Person A can not actually demonstrate their statement to anyone else, no one else is justified in holding that conclusion themselves. It’s just hearsay.
Person A and Person D both are making truth claims about reality because they are referencing an object in reality as there or not there. So both have a burden of proof to their claim. The other two, Person B and Person C do not since they are not making a claim about reality. They are only making a statement about someone else’s claim. B and C are taking a position about the believably of the A and B’s statement, not the object that A and B are talking about.
There is a difference between “I don’t believe X.” and “X is false.” The second one has a burden of proof, the first does not.
However, you can have an internally logically correct statement and still not be correct when referencing reality. Comic books are all internally logically correct to follow once you presuppose the magic in those stories. Same with religious texts. However, once you use your logical arguments to reference reality in any way, then its a scientific question or statement and falls under what is justified to conclude based on the philosophy of science.
So the excuse of “This is not a scientific claim, it’s a metaphysical claim… followed by a claim that references reality.” Sorry but that’s a scientific claim when you reference your nouns in your logical argument to reality. Otherwise you can use the exact same arguments for every comic book character to be part of reality as well.

 

[rossum]

Dying is a “worthwhile result?”

You have misread my post. My apologies for not expressing myself more clearly.

Enlightenment reduces the number of deaths in your future to one: the death at the end of your current life. After that you are not reborn and so never die again. Birth is the cause of death. To avoid dying you need to avoid being (re)born.

If you are not enlightened then you will be reborn and die again for as many times as it takes you to attain enlightenment. It is the unenlightened who have to cry the ocean of tears.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Dying is a “worthwhile result?”

You have misread my post. My apologies for not expressing myself more clearly.

Enlightenment reduces the number of deaths in your future to one: the death at the end of your current life. After that you are not reborn and so never die again. Birth is the cause of death. To avoid dying you need to avoid being (re)born.

If you are not enlightened then you will be reborn and die again for as many times as it takes you to attain enlightenment. It is the unenlightened who have to cry the ocean of tears.

So enlightenment is simply non-existence. I see.

 

[rossum]

So enlightenment is simply non-existence. I see.

Here is Thomas Merton:

[At Polonnaruwa] I am able to approach the Buddhas barefoot and undisturbed, my feet in wet grass, wet sand. Then the silence of the extraordinary faces. The great smiles. Huge and yet subtle. Filled with every possibility, questioning nothing, knowing everything, rejecting nothing, the peace not of emotional resignation but of sunyata, that has seen through every question without trying to discredit anyone or anything – without refutation – without establishing some argument. For the doctrinaire, the mind that needs well established positions, such peace, such silence, can be frightening.

I was knocked over with a rush of relief and thankfulness at the obvious clarity of the figures, the clarity and fluidity of shape and line, the design of the monumental bodies composed into the rock shape and landscape, figure rock and tree. And the sweep of bare rock slopping away on the other side of the hollow, where you can go back and see different aspects of the figures. Looking at these figures I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-tied vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident and obvious. The queer evidence of the reclining figure, the smile, the sad smile of Ananda standing with arms folded (much more “imperative” than Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa because completely simple and straightforward).

The thing about all this is that there is no puzzle, no problem and really no “mystery.” All problems are resolved and everything is clear, simply because what matters is clear. The rock, all matter, all life is charged with dharmakaya … everything is emptiness and everything is compassion. I don’t know when in my life I have ever had such a sense of beauty and spiritual validity running together in one aesthetic illumination. … I mean, I know and have seen what I was obscurely looking for. I don’t know what else remains, but I have now seen and have pierced through the surface and have got beyond the shadow and the disguise. …

It says everything, it needs nothing. And because it needs nothing it can afford to be silent, unnoticed, undiscovered. It does not need to be discovered. It is we who need to discover it.

From: The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton

No, enlightenment is not non-existence. The enlightened Buddha continued in existence for forty-five years after his enlightenment before he died.