The Soul

The concept of the soul has occupied spiritual discourse for millennia. In many religious and philosophical traditions, the soul is viewed as the eternal essence of a person — that which persists beyond birth and death, separate from the body and mind.

However, from the perspective of certain contemplative traditions — particularly in Buddhism — the notion of a permanent, independent soul is itself a construct born of ignorance. The doctrine of anattā (non-self) points directly to the absence of any enduring core within the flux of experience. What we call “self” or “soul” is seen as a process — a dynamic interplay of mental and physical phenomena arising and passing moment by moment.

This does not imply nihilism or the denial of experience, but rather reveals the fluid, interdependent nature of existence. Consciousness, identity, and personality arise through conditions; they are functional but ultimately empty of inherent, separate existence.

In other mystical traditions, the soul is understood less as a fixed entity and more as a metaphor for the deepest dimension of being — that which awakens to its own groundless nature. Here, the “soul” points not to a thing, but to the realisation of the unconditioned, beyond all duality and conceptual grasping.

Thus, while the language of soul can still hold poetic or devotional value, awakening ultimately reveals that freedom does not lie in discovering a hidden essence, but in seeing that there was never anything separate to begin with. The mystery is not in finding the soul, but in realising its absence — and discovering the vast openness that remains.

“The self is like an echo — apparent, but without substance.”
— Buddhist Teaching