The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is basically the greatest thing on the internet (if, like me, you’re interested in that stuff). It’s extensive, it’s very, very thorough, it’s written by experts and peer-reviewed, and it’s frequently updated. Also, it’s totally free. What more could you ask for?
This article explains what the Buddhist “no self” thing is all about. It’s an idea that is frequently referenced, but rarely developed in any detail. I find it appealing both because, in attempting to define just what personal identity is, I keep running into contradictions, and also because Buddhism identifies the delusion of a permanent self as a principal cause of suffering, and promises that if you can rid yourself of this concept, you’ll be well on your way to eliminating suffering. Sounds like a sweet deal!
What exactly the no-self doctrine is, is apparently a complex question, since like any philosophical tradition, there are thousands of years of texts and textual critiques and meta-texts to wade through. The essence seems to be this: the mind is simply a stream of momentary mental events (called dharma, a word confusingly also used for the entirety of the Buddha’s teachings). There is no “I”, ego, self or person that underlies or anchors or experiences this stream of mental events. The “I” or self is simply a conventional way of referring either to the entirety of mental events, or to enduring patterns and habits we can discern in the stream; or it is simply a delusion, a fantasy we construct to make sense of the confusing stream of thoughts and perceptions, and to explain the gap between the internal and external worlds. Although the conventional view need not necessarily be eliminated entirely from discourse, the delusion of selfhood isn’t harmless, either:
In espousing the doctrine of no-self with its aggregated view of persons, the Buddha claims to be offering a solution to the problem of human suffering. Not only is the idea of a permanent self a conceptual fiction, but adopting such a view leads to grasping after notions such as ‘I,’ ‘me,’ and ‘mine’ with deleterious effects for our psychological well being: attachment to such a fictional ‘I’ is the root cause of a range of negative emotions, including selfishness, craving, hatred, conceit, and ill-will. These negative emotions, in turn, fuel the general feeling of unsatisfactoriness that pervades the unenlightened human condition, and ultimately are responsible for all the troubles that ordinarily afflict our world. The no-self doctrine offers not merely an enlightened metaphysical perspective on the ultimate nature of things, but also an effective remedy for eradicating ignorance and achieving nirvāṇa, the summum bonum of the Buddhist path and the antithesis of cyclical existence (with the caveat that Mahāyāna Buddhist traditions generally place less emphasis on nirvāṇa, focusing instead on the enlightened and compassionate attitude of the Buddhist saint or ‘bodhisattva’).
One comforting thing about the no-self view is that there is no ego to be hurt, nor is there a self to be blighted. If I fail miserably at something, if I feel I’m hopeless, there’s no reason to feel as though this is some inherent feature of myself that is doomed to stay that way forever; the “I” that is hopeless will be gone tomorrow, anyway. And even if the next “I” is equally hopeless, there’s always the “I” after that.
I also like the simile of the raft:
A common stylistic feature of the Buddhist canonical literature is the use of similes and parables, of which perhaps the best known is the simile of the raft. In the Middle Length Discourses, the Buddha is seen explaining to an old man that his body of teachings is like a raft: it serves the purpose of crossing over (viz., from the shore of afflictions to that of nirvāṇa) and should be abandoned once the crossing has been effected.
In other words, unlike other major religious/philosophical traditions, Buddhism is not its own final goal: there is no notion of a “good Buddhist” so much as there’s the notion of Buddhism as a way to attain a certain mental state, enlightenment; if one has achieved enlightenment, one can abandon Buddhism, and, presumably, if one has some other way of getting to the other shore, then one may not even need Buddhism to start with. That’s an attitude that this godless materialist finds very appealing.
Oct 4, 2010