by Jack Carroll

In October 1990, a discussion on soc.religion.eastern about body, soul, and reincarnation prompted Jack Carroll of the City University of New York to post a careful correction. Several people had been using the word "soul" to explain Buddhist teachings — particularly those of the Bardo Thodrol — and Carroll stepped in to address what he saw as a fundamental misunderstanding.

What follows is a concise and authoritative explanation of the Buddhist doctrine of anatta (no-self): why an eternal, individual soul is considered one of the Incorrect Views (miccha ditthi) in Buddhism; how karma and rebirth work without a migrating personal entity; and what consciousness actually is from a Theravada perspective. Carroll draws on the Samyutta Nikaya, the Visuddhi Magga, and the Digha Nikaya.

This post was written in the early years of public Internet access, when practitioners across traditions were encountering each other online for the first time. The clarity of Carroll's explanation — written without footnotes, to people who were genuinely curious — captures something of the best of that era.

There was a posting recently which was looking for a discussion of the soul concept. Some people responded to it with explanations of the Bardo Thodrol (Tibetan Book of the Dead).

I feel that the postings referring to the Bardo Thodrol were possibly very misleading, and unintentionally, very inaccurate in one respect. In these postings the word "soul" was used in explaining Buddhist teachings. This was probably simply a slip into Western terminology, however it could lead to a very gross misunderstanding of Buddhist teaching. The term "soul" is not appropriate to any of the Buddhist traditions to the best of my knowledge.

What follows is my understanding of Buddhism in this respect:

The concept of an eternal soul, self, or spirit separate from the psychophysical human organism, and having some existence apart from that organism is rejected by Buddhism. Such a belief is one of the classic Incorrect Views (miccha ditthi) and is called Eternalism in Buddhist teaching.

The Buddha has said the following: "Only through ignorance and delusion do men indulge in the dream that their souls are separate and self-existing entities. Their heart still clings to Self. They are anxious about heaven and they seek the pleasure of Self in heaven. Thus they cannot see the bliss of righteousness and the immortality of truth."

The Buddhist belief is that if an individual has made karma (kamma), that karma will produce the appropriate fruit/result (vipaka) sometime in the future. That 'sometime' may not be before the death of this particular psychophysical organism. It says in the Samyutta Nikaya, "According to the seed that's sown, so is the fruit reaped from it." And in another place: "I am the owner of my karma, heir to my karma, born of my karma, related to my karma, abide supported by my karma." Karma, I should point out, is the term for volitional action. All karma produces fruit/results that accords with itself.

Man is what he does. The Visuddhi Magga (a very old commentary on Buddhist scripture and views) put it this way, "There is no doer but the deed, there is no experiencer but the experience. Constituent parts alone roll on. This is the true and correct view."

If a person has made karma and not all of that karma has produced fruit in his lifetime, then at the moment of death consciousness (cuti citta) of this psychophysical organism the unexhausted karma conditions a relinking consciousness (patisandhi-vinnana). The relinking consciousness arises in a fertilized ovum in those circumstances appropriate for the ripening of that karma which has not yet borne fruit, produced its results.

Consciousness is not an ongoing single entity — it is many, many moments, each one of them "the" consciousness at that instant. Consciousness is a process, not an entity. Everything, including the human consciousness, works on the triple principal of arising (uppada), remaining (thiti) and decay (bhanga).

In the Digha Nikaya (Maha Tanha-Sankhaya Sutta) it is emphatic that consciousness (vinnana) does not travel from one existence to the next. It is as if the cuti citta were a dying flame that kindles the relinking consciousness in the material of a fertilized egg.

Colophon

Written by Jack Carroll, City University of New York. Posted to soc.religion.eastern on October 16, 1990, in response to a discussion of soul and reincarnation.

Preserved from the Usenet UTZOO archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: [email protected]

🌲