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By V.Jayaram
There are three different views of the ego or
self. The first is the belief in self as the soul-entity. The second is the view
of self based on conceit and pride. The third is the self as a conventional
term for the first person singular as distinct from other persons.
The self or "I" implicit in "I walk" has nothing to do with illusion
or conceit. It is a term of common usage that is to be found in
the sayings of the Buddha and arahants. — Discourse on the Ariyavasa
Sutta
Buddhism differs from other conventional religions in respect
of its firm stand on the concept of soul or atman. Unlike other
major world religions, Buddhism does not believe in the existence
of an eternal and fixed entity called soul. From a Buddhist view,
there is nothing permanent or fixed in our existence. Everything
is subject to decay and destruction. Therefore, the Buddhists argue
that it is safer to look for solutions in the current reality of
the present moment, rather than in some metaphysical notion of some
inexplicable state that cannot be experienced through our minds
and bodies. Speculating upon it is a mere intellectual effort and
waste of time.
The Buddha taught the existence of neither Soul nor God.
According to early Buddhism there is no such thing as eternal soul
in man. The world is empty of self. So does a being. It is not possible
to believe that a soul, that is permanent and stable can exist in
a being, because all beings are subject to continuous change, death
and decay. They are "becoming" continuously. In a
sermon delivered to his first five disciples, the Buddha
provided a clear reasoning in favor of his No-self argument and
advised them to renounce all sense of ownership and
possessiveness to end attachment, suffering and the process of becoming. "O
monks, the well-instructed noble disciple, seeing thus, gets
wearied of form, gets wearied of feeling, gets wearied of
perception, gets wearied of mental formations, gets wearied of
consciousness. Being wearied he becomes passion-free. In his
freedom from passion, he is emancipated. Being emancipated,
there is the knowledge that he is emancipated. He knows: 'birth
is exhausted, lived is the holy life, what had to be done is
done, there is nothing more of this becoming.'" (Samyutta-Nikaya
22.59)
According to early Buddhism, if you study the individual components
of a being and if you separate each of them, you will realize that
nothing exists beyond them that is permanent and stable. The human
personality is an aggregate of several individual components. If
you separate the components, can you say that the individual still
exists? The notion of self is therefore an illusion and also an
obstacle to the realization of Truth.
Thus early Buddhists believed that man should not identify himself
with any name or form (nama and rupa), but should become aware of
the process of continuous change and of "becoming". Through this
process he can gradually get rid of sorrow that arises out of the
notion of fixation and clinging to things. "It is like the identity
of a river which flows continuously and maintains a semblance of
an entity, though not a single drop of yesterday's water remains
at the same place today. When a man realizes that he has been changing
continuously every moment, he grieves neither for what he has lost
nor for what he has not gained.
It is interesting how Buddhism reconciles itself to a concept
like "anatta", without refuting the fact of reincarnation of soul
and the evolutionary nature of soul as integral parts of our journey
into expanded awareness. According to Buddhism, existence is ephemeral
and there is nothing permanent about it. The constantly changing
and evolving nature of things brings in suffering and out of this
suffering emerges the need to escape from suffering and find an
everlasting solution to the problem of suffering.
The solution to suffering, however, does not lie in the perpetuation
of self or awareness of self, but in its dissolution and transition
into an inexplicable state of nirvana or non existence or non movement.
It is on this primary premise that Buddhism holds its ground, differs
radically from Hinduism and many other religions and presents to
its practitioners an immense opportunity to explore Truth in a different
way. In the words of Sister Khema1:
"Non-self is experienced through the aspect of
impermanence, through the aspect of unsatisfactoriness, and
through the aspect of emptiness. Empty of what? The word
"emptiness" is so often misunderstood because when one only
thinks of it as a concept, one says "what do you mean by empty?"
Everything is there: there are the people, and there are their
insides, guts and their bones and blood and everything is full
of stuff — and the mind is not empty either. It's got ideas,
thoughts and feelings. And even when it doesn't have those, what
do you mean by emptiness? The only thing that is empty is the
emptiness of an entity.
"There is no specific entity in anything. That is
emptiness. That is the nothingness. That nothingness is also
experienced in meditation. It is empty, it is devoid of a
specific person, devoid of a specific thing, devoid of anything
which makes it permanent, devoid of anything which even makes it
important. The whole thing is in flux. So the emptiness is that.
And the emptiness is to be seen everywhere; to be seen in
oneself. And that is what is called anatta, non-self. Empty of
an entity. There is nobody there. It is all imagination. At
first that feels very insecure."
The Buddhist view of self is not the same as the Hindu view of self.
According to Hinduism, the self exists in various planes and the
highest self is permanent and indestructible. Buddhism believes
in the existence of ordinary self, but does not concur with the
Hindu view that the self is indestructible or immortal. The ordinary
soul may outlast a life time and take birth in another form or another
life, but is is still the same ordinary self, made up of several
components and subject to pain and suffering, illusion and ignorance.
The Buddhist view of self is that it is made up of five distinct
parts or khandas, namely: feeling, corporeality, consciousness,
perception and mental formations. None of these are permanent as
they are subject to change and decay. These khandas do not continue
into the next birth as the individual consciousness remains in a
state of flux and change throughout ones existence. The Buddha taught
his followers to constantly detach themselves from the illusion
of the involvement of self in their perceptions and experiences
to attain truth and emancipation from suffering.
List of related articles
The following articles throw further light on the concept of
anatta.
The Buddha on Self:
According to the Buddha, self is not truth. He declared," Where
self is, truth is not. Where truth is, self is not. Self is
the fleeting error of samsara; it is individual separateness
and that egotism which begets envy and hatred." He defined self
as "that yearning which seeks pleasure and lusts after vanity
where as Truth is the correct comprehension of things, which
is the permanent and everlasting, the real in all existence
and the bliss of righteousness." The very existence of self
is an illusion,. It is the Self, which through its activity,
produces all the wrongs, vice and evil in the world. One can
attain truth only when one accepts the self as an illusion.
Righteousness can be practiced only when the mind is freed from
the influence of egotism. Perfect peace comes only when all
the vanity of the self has disappeared.
More...
No-Self or Not-Self
: One of the first stumbling blocks that Westerners often
encounter when they learn about Buddhism is the teaching on
anatta, often translated as no-self. This teaching is a stumbling
block for two reasons. First, the idea of there being no self
doesn't fit well with other Buddhist teachings, such as the
doctrine of kamma and rebirth: If there's no self, what experiences
the results of kamma and takes rebirth? Second, it doesn't fit
well with our own Judeo-Christian background, which assumes
the existence of an eternal soul or self as a basic presupposition:
If there's no self, what's the purpose of a spiritual life?.
More...
Anicca, Dukha, Anatta:
Investigation of Dhamma for full liberation also must include,
in addition to the Four Noble Truths, a study of the Three Universal
Characteristics or Signata of existence, (ti-lakkhana): anicca
— impermanence, dukkha — suffering, and anatta — essencelessness.
Everything in the universe, mental or physical, inside or outside
of us, real or imaginary, that comes into being due to causes
and conditions, has these three traits as its nature. And since
there is nothing that exists without depending on other things,
there is absolutely nothing which we can determine to be permanent,
full of happiness only, or having any real substance. We must
examine these three truths very carefully to know how thoroughly
and totally they apply in all cases. Once there is this deep
insight into the nature of reality, detachment and thereby liberation
follow.The first of these to be investigated and in some ways
the characteristic that underlies the other two is anicca —
the utterly transitory, ephemeral, unstable nature off all mental
and physical phenomena. More....
Vipasana Meditation:
Anicca, Dukkha, Anatta — Impermanence, suffering and Egolessness
— are the three essential characteristics of things in the Teaching
of the Buddha. If you know Anicca correctly, you will know Dukkha
as its corollary and Anatta as ultimate truth. It takes time
to understand the three together. Impermanence (anicca)
is, of course, the essential fact which must be first experienced
and understood by practice. Mere book-knowledge of the Buddha-Dhamma
will not be enough for the correct understanding of Anicca because
the experiential aspect will be missing. It is only through
experiential understanding of the nature of Anicca as an ever-changing
process within you that you can understand Anicca in the way
the Buddha would like you to understand it. As in the days of
the Buddha, so too now, this understanding of Anicca can be
developed by persons who have no book-knowledge whatsoever of
Buddhism. More...
Meditating on
No-Self: In Buddhism we use the words "self" and "no-self,"
and so it is important to understand just what this "no-self,"
anatta, is all about, even if it is first just an idea, because
the essence of the Buddha's teaching hinges on this concept.
And in this teaching Buddhism is unique. No one, no other spiritual
teacher, has formulated no-self in just this way. And because
it has been formulated by him in this way, there is also the
possibility of speaking about it. Much has been written about
no-self, but in order to know it, one has to experience it.
And that is what the teaching aims at, the experience of no-self.
More...
The Burden of the
Aggregates What is the heavy burden? The khandhas3 are
the heavy burden. Who accepts the heavy burden? Tanha, craving,
accepts the heavy burden. What is meant by throwing down the
burden? Annihilation of tanha is throwing down the burden. Heavy
is the burden of the five khandhas. Acceptance of the burden
is suffering; rejection of the burden is conducive to happiness.
When craving is uprooted from its very foundation, no desires
arise. An old burden having been laid aside, no new burden can
be imposed. Then, one enters Nibbana, the abode of eternal peace.
More...
The Self
in Buddhism and Christianity: All this touches on anatta,
the Buddhist concept of no-self or no-soul. Anatta was seized
on by nineteenth century Christian missionaries to Sri Lanka
as something which proved Buddhism was absolutely nihilistic.
For instance, Rev. Thomas Moscrop, a Methodist missionary, claimed
in 1889 that Buddhism "is too pessimistic, too cold, too antagonistic
to the constitution of human nature to take the world captive"
(The Ceylon Friend, 16 October 1889). But I have not found nihilism
in what Buddhists have said to me about anatta. Some years ago,
one friend said, "If there is no belief in self, there is no
worry; there is no reason to become angry or hurt." To her,
the idea was liberating. It was freedom from being tied to self-promotion
and self-protection.
More...
Suggested Further Reading
1. (Meditating on No-Self A Dhamma Talk Edited for Bodhi
Leaves by Sister Khema)
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