ATMA ( SOUL )

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Roop Choudhary

@JMGlover

Inactive

Posted: 16 years ago

Atma is that part of living being that is eternal and beyond physical discription. It is the true self , the eternal soul that dwells within but has no personal characteristics. Atma is the birthless , deathless reality, that is ,once the innermost being of each person and the inmost being of all that , which exists.atma, more fully, is that which pervades all ; which is the subject and which knows experiances and illuminates the subjects and which remains always the same. According to the Vedanta philosophy, the atma is of the same nature as the universal soul (bramhan) and as such seeks union with it in mystical liberation( moksha ).

HOW IS IT

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rajnish kumar

@_rajnish_

Inactive

Posted: 16 years ago

good info... thanks😊

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Huduga

@Huduga

Inactive

Posted: 16 years ago

Very nice post :-)

what can i say abt it. when i heard it first time as a kid. i cudn't understand it clearly.

still now, i understand it a little. but i believe in it.
i want to know more and more and more. 😊

rups, u amazed me by posting this.
i wish, i get more topics like this here.

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Janaki

@RamKiSeeta

Achiever

+ 6

Posted: 16 years ago

Thank you! Very nice post!!!😊

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bhopalyellow

@bhopalyellow

Navigator

Posted: 16 years ago

nice thought rips👏👏👏.....hope to get some more from u......😊😊😊

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akhl

@akhl

Dazzler

Posted: 16 years ago

Thanks Rups.

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Scriptures talk about two kinds of atma - jivatma or individual soul and parmatma or supreme soul. The supreme soul is also called as Brahman. There is one Brahman and lots of individual souls because there are lots of living beings. Each living being has an individual soul of its own. Brahman is single. Brahman pervades the entire universe. Brahman has never taken birth and will never die. Because of various objects, it may appear as if Brahman gets divided. But, in reality, Brahman is never divided into parts. There is not a single point in the universe, which is untouched with Brahman. Brahman is all-knowing, is present everywhere, is eternal and infinite. It is Brahman, who gives power to the senses of perception (sight to eyes, hearing power to ears and so on). But ordinary senses of perception are not sufficient to know Brahman in reality.

Brahman is called as sacchidanand meaning Sat + Chit + Anand. Sat means Existence, Chit means Awareness and Anand means Bliss. Brahman is existent everywhere, has always existed and will always exist. In fact, it is the cause of the existence of everything in the universe. Therefore, Brahman is called as existence. Brahman is called as awareness because it is aware of everything. Moreover, any kind of awareness in any being is provided by Brahman. Brahman is full of bliss. On attaining Brahman, there is no sorrow.

Brahman is called as Satyam, Gyanam, Anantam meaning Truth, Knowledge, Infinite. Brahman is the ultimate truth. One who has known Brahman has nothing else to know. Brahman has the knowledge of everything and all knowledge proceeds from Brahman. Brahman is infinite because it pervades everything.

Brahman is called as satyam, shivam, sundaram meaning Truth, Auspiciousness (in the sense of kalyaan), Beauty. As explained above, Brahman is the ultimate truth. It isauspiciousness because no pain remains on attaining Brahman. It is beauty because nothing worth seeing remains once you have known Brahman.

Like Brahman, individual soul also has never taken birth, will never take birth and will never die. It is not possible to destroy atma. It is not possible even to modify atma.

(Based on Bhagavad Gita, Kena Upanishad and Mundaka Upanishad)

Dvaitins talk about difference between individual soul and Brahman. According to advaitins, individual soul is also essentially Brahman but appears to be different because of ignorance.

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Roop Choudhary

@JMGlover

Inactive

Posted: 16 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Dharma_Wheel.svg

see this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!😊😊😊

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Roop Choudhary

@JMGlover

Inactive

Posted: 16 years ago

The Four Noble Truths (or The Four Truths of the Noble Ones^[1]) (Sanskrit: catvari aryasatyani;Wylie: 'phags pa'i bden pa bzhi; Pali: cattari ariyasaccani) are one of the most fundamental Buddhist teachings. In broad terms, these truths relate to suffering's nature, origin, cessation and the path leading to the cessation. They are among the truths Gautama Buddha is said to have realized during his experience of enlightenment.^[2]

The Four Noble Truths appear many times throughout the most ancient Buddhist texts, the Pali Canon. The early teaching and the traditional understanding in the Theravada is that the four noble truths are an advanced teaching for those who are ready for them. Mahayana Buddhism regards them as a preliminary teaching for people not ready for its own teachings.^[3] They are little known in the Far East.

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Roop Choudhary

@JMGlover

Inactive

Posted: 16 years ago

Why the Buddha is said to have taught in this way is illuminated by the social context of the time in which he lived. The Buddha was a Srama?a, a wandering ascetic whose "aim was to discover the truth and attain happiness."^[5] He is said to have achieved this aim while under a bodhi tree near the River Neranjana; the Four Noble Truths are a formulation of his understanding of the nature of "suffering",^[6] the fundamental cause of all suffering, the escape from suffering, and what effort a person can go to so that they themselves can "attain happiness."^[5]

These truths are not expressed as a hypothesis or tentative idea, rather the Buddha says:

These Four Noble Truths, monks, are actual, unerring, not otherwise. Therefore, they are called noble truths.^[7]

The Buddha says that he taught them...

...because it is beneficial, it belongs to the fundamentals of the holy life, it leads to disenchantment, to dispassion, to cessation of suffering, to peace, to direct knowledge, to enlightenment, to Nirvana. That is why I have declared it.^[8]

This teaching was the basis of the Buddha's first discourse after his enlightenment.^[9] In early Buddhism this is the most advanced teaching in the Buddha's Gradual Training.

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Roop Choudhary

@JMGlover

Inactive

Posted: 16 years ago

#10

Soul, in many religions and philosophies, the immaterial element that, together with the material body, constitutes the human individual. In general, the soul is conceived as an inner, vital, and spiritual principle, the source of all bodily functions and particularly of mental activities. Belief in some kind of soul that can exist apart from the body is found in all known cultures. In many contemporary nonliterate societies, human beings are said to have several souls—sometimes as many as seven—localized in different parts of the body and having diverse functions. Disease is frequently explained as "soul-loss," which can occur, for example, when witches steal the soul or evil spirits capture it.

Eastern Religions
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In the East, belief in a human soul is central to several philosophical and religious systems. Thus, for instance, in early Hinduism the soul or self (atman) was considered the principle that controls all activities and defines one's self-identity and consciousness. The philosophical Hindu writings, the Upanishads, identify the atman with the divine (Brahman), adding an eternal dimension to the soul. Bound up with matter, the human soul is caught in the cycle of reincarnation until it achieves purification and knowledge and merges once again with ultimate reality (see Transmigration). Buddhism is unique in the history of religions because it teaches that the individual soul is an illusion produced by various psychological and physiological influences. Thus, it has no conception of a soul or self that can survive death.

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ATMA ( SOUL )

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