﻿ How is
the self or rather the lack thereof conceptualized in Buddhism? Do I,
thus my identity, truly exists? Stay tuned if you want to find out.
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Hello everyone. I'm Angela and welcome back to my channel. In this video I tackle the concept
of no self in Buddhism Anattā in Pali or Anātman in Sanskrit literally means no ātman. Ātman,
in Sanskrit, can mean three main things; the universal self, which coincides with Brahman,
the individual self, the individual soul, and it can be used as a reflective pronoun.
So in Buddhism ātman is seen as the true self, the one which lies beyond all the conditioned
states that are present in our existence hence the question is there really a self, is there
I beyond all the outside elements which shape its boundaries? Let's see when I get asked; who am I?
What do I reply? I may think of my name which is something I was given and not really essential to
my perception of being me. Is it my age then? My height? My physical appearance? My thoughts? My
emotions? Are these the things which determine my perception of being myself and not something
or someone else? None of them, a Buddhist would say. If you cut your hair or your nails would
your sense of identity be diminished? You can surely go through changes and metamorphosis over
the ages but as your perception of being you fades at any of those stages? No, it doesn't.
You may interact with the world and other people in a different fashion but that underlying
persistent perception, feeling of being you and not something or someone else still persists.
Your emotions change, your physical sensations too, your thoughts will evolve continuously
and yet a change of heart or a change of mind will not affect your inner awareness of being
you despite the fact that anywhere you try to patch where your identity really lies,
you can never find its core nor its residency. On this matter, Hume says something similar to what
we find in Buddhism when it comes to the self. In a “Treatise of Human Nature,” Hume writes;
“When I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular
perception or other of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure.
I never can catch myself at any time without a perception,
and never can observe anything but the perception.
When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself
and may truly be said not to exist. And were all my perceptions removed by death, and could
I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate after the dissolution of my body, I should
be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is further requisite to make me a perfect nonentity.
I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind,
that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each
other with an inconceivable rapidity and are in a perpetual flux and movement.”
Is our identity an illusion then? It's more complex than that. It's not a true or false
kind of answer. In fact, when they say in Buddhism that there is no self they
are not saying that there is nothing but rather that no one core of your identity
can be found because the self, the I, is not solid single separate and permanent.
For Buddhists nothing can exist independently from everything else and all things can only
exist in a state of interconnectedness with each other as a consequence separation is an
experience we have on this plane of reality but not what truly exists. To explain this,
in Buddhism they often use the example of language. Our discursive understanding of
reality works through the rules of language which necessitate to distinguish between the actor, the
action and the acted or the object of the action. So we say the sun is shining and hence creating,
through our language, the subject, the entity sun. But is there really a difference between
the Sun and its shining? Are they not all aspects of the same phenomenon. As Lichtenberg writes;
“We only know the existence of our sensations, ideas and thoughts alone.
It would be better to say it thinks just as once as it's storming.
To say cogito is already too much as soon as it is translated in I think.
To assume the I, to postulate it, is a practical necessity.”
So basically since our minds work through the rules of language because we can only understand
and articulate what we see and what we perceive in a linguistic fashion. we tend to use the rules
of language, of course, in our discourses, in the discourses which construct the reality,
we experience but these rules belong to language and not necessarily, not to reality a Buddhist
would say. It is just our way, our only way to receive reality through certain filters which,
in this case, would be the filters and rules provided by our language. Using
a different comparison from the Buddhist tradition we find one in the Milindapañha
where the chariot is used as an example of how the chariot, per se as a separate identity,
does not exist. Chariot is just a word to refer to a set of elements which are
not the chariot in and of themselves, nor is the chariot any of them individually.
Is it the axle that is the chariot? Certainly not.
Is it the wheels, or the framework, or ropes, or the yoke, or the spokes of the wheel,
or the goad that are the chariot? And to all these he still answered no.
Then is it all these parts of it that are the chariot?
No, sir. But is there anything
outside them that is the chariot? And still he answered no.
Then thus asked, as I may, I can discover no chariot. Chariot is a mere empty sound.
It is, therefore, only in an interconnected state that separation may arise as a fleeting
phenomenon, always subject to change and decay. Since many have interpreted this core concept in
Buddhism in a nihilistic fashion, concluding that nothing really exists in Buddhism and everything
is just an illusion. I find it essential to highlight that this is not the case at
all. The absence of an inherent existence does not mean non-existence. If I say that there is
no elephant in the room, I'm not saying that there is nothing in the room - emptiness does
not equal nothingness. If they say that there is no separate and permanent self,
it doesn't mean that there is nothing. But just that nowhere the identity in a self-contained
and unconditioned State can be found. What is there is a flux of thoughts, emotions,
and sensations in a continuous change which emerge as yourself in an interrelated fashion,
giving the illusory perception of a consistent unity due to what they call, in Buddhism,
as the five Skandhas, the five aggregates. These five aggregates are those who give us the illusion
that we are a single consistent entity whereas we are, in fact, part of an interconnected network of
entities which co-arise altogether. So this illusion of separation is given to us by;
Rūpa: which is body and matter, the five senses and their objects, the four elements.
Vedanā: the sensations pleasant and unpleasant
which are produced by the contact between senses and their objects.
Sañña: which is the labelling faculty that allows us to perceive the entirety of things. So,
for example, it is the faculty that allows us to put the labels on a single object. Then we have
Sankhāra: which are the volitions and intentions. And
Viññana or Vishñana which is consciousness, awareness.
So to sum it up, in Buddhism, there is no self which is separate, single, solid,
and permanent. What is there is a flux of thoughts, emotions, and sensations which
are in a continuous change. And since they are in a continuous change and can only exist in a
connected State with everything else, they are conditioned and therefore they do not
exist on their own. Thus your identity arises as one element in this network and can only
exist in this network in this interconnected State, not in a separate self-contained state.
So this is it for today's video. Hope you liked it. Let me know what you think in the
comment section down below and whether everything was clear. If you liked this
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so that you won't miss anything out and most of all stay tuned for all the academic fun.
Bye for now.
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