What are the beliefs surrounding the soul in Buddhism?

Answer 1

There is nothing close to a soul in Buddhism. The Buddha denies the existence of any permanent entity either physical or mental. We call this theory about self as Anatmavada.

I would add a clarification to the above. The word permanent implies unchanging. What Buddhism denies is an eternally unchanging self or soul. Awareness continues, but just ask yourself, what in your experience remains unchanged? Not even yourself. You might say you are the same person that was born, but clearly you are not. You are not the same person from one instant to the next. You are constantly changing, hence, not permanent.

The basic tenets of Buddhism are that there is suffering caused by attachment to things that will change, there is impermanence because things do change and there is non-self (as I described in the paragraph above). You could add a fourth; there is transcendence of all those conditions by the deathless part of you. That transcendence is called Nirvana.

Answer 2

Buddhists do not believe in a soul in the sense of an immortal essence. In the Buddhist belief of reincarnation it is not a soul that continues after death but our consciousness.