If Buddhist don't believe in an eternal soul or Atman then

The subtle body. Another level of anatta.

>>2986882
What are these things?

>>2986940
>Anatta
Non-self. According to Buddhism, all physical and mental phenomena are non-self.
>Subtle body
Or Sambhogakaya is the level of manifestation where you experience the rewards and punishments of karma after death, analogous to the soul in Greek and Christian thought. It is still a temporary state subject to Samsara.

>>2986867
Why does the Dalai Lama desire a free Tibet?

>>2987176
Good question. Isn´t everything a delusion of samsara? He should be thankful that the Chinese government liberated them of a homeland to cling to.

>>2986867
They do believe in an atman, they just refer to it as Buddha-nature, aka consciousness. From a Hindu perspective this consciousness is itself Brahman and identical to the soul.

>>2986867

Ship of Theseus. Mental aggregates work the same as physical constructs. No I, me, or mine in either case, just phenomena in flux. Thoughts exist, thinkers don't. Bodies exist, selves don't. No contradiction with concepts of rebirth or other worlds. It's just that none of what gets reborn is truly "you" or "yours."

>>2987470
how is that coherent?
in the case of any artificial or natural object (like a ship or a body) there is an "it" corresponding to the "I" (or "he" or "she") in the case of a person
if the "it" is allowed to be identifiable and persist over time (and also a composite thing), doesn't the argument against the "I" just evaporate?

>>2987508
No because it doesn't persist

Oh shit does this mean I'll be conscious of the amitabha teaching me or will it be as if I had just rebirthed there?
I always assumed that he'd just whisk me away at death.

>>2987515
are you saying bodies, thoughts, etc. persist but persons don't?

>>2987508

>persist over time

That's the point, there isn't persistence. The nature of things is transience and impermanence. Physical and mental structures rise and fall and none of it is really "you" or "yours." It's like a big ocean where waves and bubbles form and go all like "wow, here I am, I want A and don't want B, things are comfortable this way, they'll probably stay this way forever, oh fuck what's going on, I'm dying, this is terrible, ARGARARAGAHGGHHH-" and this happens billions of times all over constantly for time immemorial and the Buddha's all like "hey dummies, stop forming senses of self, that's not appropriate or conducive to mental well being for a bunch of temporary phenomena like waves and bubbles."

>>2987555

Bodies and thoughts don't persist.

>>2987508
Your thoughts don't persist over time. They perishes almost instantly and the next line of thought arises.

Imagine playing the word association game. That's what the Buddhist idea of thought/consciousness is like. They call it "stream of thought/consciousness". In that they don't persist, yet give rise to another thought that is neither same nor completely different. They're linked/chained together to give rise to one another.

The same could be said of what happens in our body. The body cells constantly replace dead ones and create new ones. Some may last bit longer than others, but at the end, they all perish.

The Buddhist argument against self is more an argument against the idea of self, not necessarily self. They acknowledge a false sense of self exist that we believe to be true based on our assumptions about the reality of the world. That false assumption is basically we believe things to be permanent and persistent. Our reality has no such thing.

The Buddhist posit three marks of existence for which all conditioned beings exhibit. Anatta (no self), Dukka (suffering) and Anicca (impermanance). Its not hard to see such as true.

>>2989812
>Its not hard to see such as true.

Which doesn't mean it IS true. It's not hard to see how we have a Self, after all.

>>2986867
Pure Land Buddhism is just Buddhism caked with bloated mysticism. Disregard it.

my understanding is that nirvana is the same atheistic death

it means 'to blow out/extinguish', like a candle

the real issue is if there is no self, or persistent entity at all, then how does reincarnation work?

please don't give me some white buddhism bullshit answer that reincarnation is akshuallly referring to the constant arising of experience etc

no it literally means becoming a goat or servant in your next life, literally.

>>2986867
Good goys everywhere

>>2991099
>the real issue is if there is no self, or persistent entity at all, then how does reincarnation work?

The same way your body is re-used by other organisms after you die, so, too will your sublime body.

>>2991099

>no it literally means becoming a goat or servant in your next life, literally.

No, there isn't any self so that's not what it means. The goat or the servant is connected to the person who died before it in a way like how a candle lit by another candle has a connection. When someone dies the physical and mental components in use go on to influence another life's emergence. This doesn't mean a self continued from one life to another. The connection between the dying aggregates and the birthing aggregates is similar to the connection between a person's physical and mental aggregates from age 20 to age 30. There isn't any real self that's getting carried over in either case, just tendencies, tendencies in physical form and tendencies in mental form. If you think this is a contradiction with the rebirth case, then you're not yet fully appreciating the reality of no self in the age 20 to age 30 case. If you fully appreciate the lack of self in the age 20 to age 30 case, then not only will you not find contradiction with the rebirth case, but you will in fact understand it couldn't ever be another way but that way that it is with no self.

The 20 to 30 age example makes it a little clearer because it's more extreme, but really the same can be said about now vs. 5 minutes earlier too. There's an intense, deeply held conviction these two forms are sharing in a self and that one is the other and vice versa, but in reality there are only thoughts bubbling up and dying down which get woven into an illusory narrative about who "you" are and why "you" "decided" to "have" these thoughts.

>>2991099
>my understanding is that nirvana is the same atheistic death
not quite
in atheistic death there is nothing after, while the "extinguishing" in buddhism brings you to eternal bliss

>>2991099

>my understanding is that nirvana is the same atheistic death

The Buddha spends like a million paragraphs in the pali canon emphasizing how both eternalism (you get an afterlife) and annihilation (you cease to exist after death) are wrong views.

>>2989851
>Which doesn't mean it IS true.
The point isn't whether or not Buddhism is true.

Its whether or not their argument and reasoning is valid. To me these arguments are pretty valid.


>It's not hard to see how we have a Self, after all.
That is what we normally assume, so this doesn't add anything. Unless you want to present a good case argument for the existence of self persistence and such, and then it might be reasonable. Otherwise, we don't need to "see" that our selves have existence when its our default mode of thinking.