Upon re-reading my previous post I thought that some clarification was needed in the light subsequent posts by others.
The questions that the Lord Buddha refused to answer related to what, if anything, survives after an Enlightened being's physical body dies. So, this is not the same as what happens to an unenlightened being at death or, does an individual have a "soul" or an essence that goes somewhere after death or gets resurrected at some point in the future. These are two separate issues.
The later idea of an individual "soul" (if the above is one's definition of the word "soul") is something the Buddha unequivocally rejected. He taught that there is no "self" in conditioned phenomena. There is the illusion of self that is perpetuated through Ignorance of and Attachment to conditioned phenomena.
Any notion of there being some "individuality" that has reality is contrary to Buddhist teaching. The self, the world and the cosmos are in fact an illusion.
I hope this clarifies what I was referring to previously.
