Simple question,
Do souls have gender?
If you have an educated view, I welcome your knowledge.
If you have two cents that you pulled out of your thought stream, I welcome your input.
A human being, like any other object, is multi-layered from grossest outer physical body to the subtlest soul at the core. All bodies are made out of permutations of 5 basic elements and absence of any one or more elements make that object relatively more subtle. The grossest object has earth, water, fire, air and ākāśa. When earth is absent from this, that object is more subtle as it has no odor; when water is also missing, the subtler object also loses taste; with fire absent, loses color also; with air element also absent, even touch is gone.
Soul is beyond ākāśa (which is only sound) with no form that senses can perceive. So, there is no question of the soul having any kind of a physical body that can possess gender. This is one way of looking at it.
Interesting question. Nice one for insight meditation!
I felt lost thinking about so I went bit “lower” and asked myself if my emotions have gender. Or thoughts. Its much clearer here. And answer I got is: rather no. Especially with thoughts its clear - when I try to “assess” whether they have gender I can more clearly see how subconsciously I’m projecting gender aspects and try to fit them to the thoughts structure. But they are resistant to this procedure (e.g. how thought “My had has five fingers” has any sex??!). Soul is more subtle so its easier to project and get confused…
Just my two cents…
The consensus seems to be no so far which sounds likely to me. Would the soul, not possessing any gender requirement, attempt to reincarnate as a preferred gender?
Ok, so I saw a Buddha documentary yesterday that said when Siddhartha experienced his past lives he was various male and female creatures.
I guess that settles that.