The Buddhist Notion of No-Self

Posted by Jenna Hetry on February 25th, 2020

The statement of the principle of identity, which is inseparable from the world, and the absence of such opposites as subject and object or spirit and matter form the basis of Buddhism. In Buddhism, a person individually and independently does not exist. There is an integration of the individual and cosmic, psychological and ontological. The theory of non-existence of the soul (Anatmavada, Anatta-vada) is one of the basic doctrines of the Buddhist philosophy, which consists in denying the existence of the absolutely imperishable self, the higher self or Atman. It has been one of the main points of disagreement with the representatives of other religions and has been contested in numerous philosophical debates. Buddhism, in general, denies the personality, the self (Atma or Purusha) and emphasizes the no-self (anatman). It says that there is no self in anything. Thus, self is just a fiction of the mind. Whatever is showed as self, the Buddhists claim it to be only a certain impression, thought, or feeling. This paper argues that the Buddhist notion of no-self involves the human as the integrity of successive states, but not the personality. Therefore, the argument against it, based on the unity of the individual in his rebirths and different developmental stages can not be justified.

No-Self

According to the Buddhist concepts, the law of variability is universal. Neither man nor any other creature, animate or inanimate, can be excluded from its scope. Most people believe in the fact that there is a certain substance in the person, called the soul (atman) lives. It continues to exist, despite all the changes, which the body undergoes, before the birth and after the death, moving from one body to another.

In order to clarify the meaning of anatman or no-self, the following example can be used. A person sees a pen. A dog sees a toy. Then the pen is put on a table, and left in an empty room, in which there is neither a man nor a dog. There is nothing on the table. Thus, if to leave the pen, but withdraw the person and the dog from the room, then the subject in the form of a pen or a toy does not exist. It does not mean that the subject is absent physically. It means that it has not been identified yet. In accordance with this theory of conditioned existence and the general variability, Buddha denies the existence of the self (anatman).

Argument against No-Self

In this case, it may be argued that the integrity of the individual in all his rebirths, or even in different developmental stages such as childhood, adolescence, and old age becomes impossible. If such entity as the soul does not exist, then the identity of a human can not be explained. Moreover, if the unity is absent the phenomenon of memory can not be clarified either. Thus, the notion of no-self is doubted since there is the integrity of a human during different stages of his life and even during different lives. If Buddhists believe that there is no soul and that neither the elements of human psychophysical structure nor their combination forms a person, then according to the Buddhists, it means that there is no person at all.

The Buddhist Reply

In the famous Buddhist philosophical monument Questions of Milinda (Milinda panha) Buddhist monk Nagasena talks about this issue to the Greco-Indian king Milinda. While objecting to the king, Nagasena points to the chariot and begins to ask him about the essence of this chariot. He raises a question of what defines the chariot: the wheels, the carcass, the shafts, or maybe any other details? The king gives a negative answer to all these questions. Then Nagasena asks the king, whether the chariot is all these items together. Milinda gives a negative response again. It gives Nagasena an opportunity to say that it proves that there is no chariot at all. Then the king objected by saying that only the name of the chariot is designed for denoting the set of all these parts and components. This response enables Nagasena to say that just as in the case with a person it is only the name that represents a particular way of orderly unity of the five groups of experience elements. Thus, Buddhists reply that person is just a name for psychophysical elements, connected in a specific order.

Denying the integrity of the identical substance in a man, the Buddha did not deny the unity of the flow of successive states, which form the life. According to his teaching, life is a continuous series of states. Each of them depends on the previous conditions, and, in turn, generates the next state. The integrity of the evolution of life is, therefore, based on the causal link, covering all stages of its development.

Integrity is often explained by an example of the lamp burning all night. Its light at the particular moment depends on the conditions of that time, which may be different at another point, if the circumstances change. Yet, there is a continuous series of different lights. Just as a single flame can ignite another one, though different from it, but connected with it by a causal link, in the same way the final stage of one life can be the cause of the next one. Therefore, the new birth is not the relocation, that is, the transition of the same soul into another body, but the birth of the next life in the present.

Thus, the concept of the soul is replaced here by the concept of a continuous stream of consciousness. Since this state of consciousness inherits its own characteristics from the previous state, the past exists in the present. Memory, as a result, can be explained without the assumption of having the self. The theory of non-existence of the soul plays a very important role in understanding the teachings of the Buddha. He constantly convinces his disciples to reject misconceptions about themselves.

The Buddha drew attention to the fact that those, who suffer from the illusion of their selves, do not know their own nature. They strongly protest against the statement that they love the soul. In fact, they want to make it happy and reach salvation. The Buddha compares it with the love for the most beautiful girl in the country, who, however, has never been seen and known, as well as the construction of the ladder for lifting to the palace, which people have never seen. Rejecting the idea of the unchangeable self and the idea of its destruction, the Buddha continues to use words "I" (Aham), "you" (seams), and "self" (atta), but at the same time, he notes that it is nothing more than a convenient means of communication, which in reality does not match to anything.

The man is only a code name for different gathered constituents: the whole material body (kaya), an intangible mind (manas or chitta) and formless consciousness (vijnana), just as the chariot is a set of wheels, axles, a shaft, and so on. Human existence depends on this set, and when it stops to function, a person ceases to exist. The soul, or self, means nothing else than this collection. From a psychological point of view, a person, who perceives the outside and the inside dimensions, can be viewed as a set of five types of variable elements. They consist of the various aspects that people realize, within the body: a form; feelings of pleasure, pain and indifference; perception, including understanding and the name; predisposition or tendency, generated by impressions of past experience; and consciousness of the self. In the Buddhist tradition, they are called the five skandhas. Thus, Buddhism considers the identity of the name only, indicating a structurally ordered set of five groups of insubstantial and instant elementary psychophysical states.

A person in Buddhism does not have the constant structural components (character, temperament, intelligence, motivation, etc.), unambiguous qualities, and characteristics that are attributed to him in Western psychology. In Buddhist psychology, personality is not real in the sense that there are five groups of skandhas, which exist in the individual stream as a momentary state, and encourage a person to seek an extension of this existence to initiate a new birth in samsara. A person, who is in samsara, has nothing permanent. Moreover, a person as such is not actually in samsara.

In view of this Buddhist concept, there is a good reason to believe that there is no self. Everything in the world consists of certain elements. Thus, a man is only a connection of skandhas, which are a chain of causal-related elements and nothing more. People always consider themselves to be something special, but human beings just do not know the truth. Moreover, people do not seek true knowledge since it may destroy their perception of the personality and show its true nature. This happens due to the men’s understanding of themselves as personalities, which is inevitably coupled with a thirst for existence, and the will for life. However, the desire for existing enables a person to go from revival to revival, spinning in a whirlwind of samsara. Realization of no-self may involve liberation from suffering which lies in the elimination of the will to live, and all other kinds of aspirations.

The doctrine of the atman determines the lack of a separate, permanent, and unchanging soul, as well as the absence of the self in any phenomenon of life. Buddhism emphasizes that what is perceived as an individual self is an illusion, created by skandhas. This self implies suffering and experiencing misery. Life is a continuous series of states. Each of them depends on the previous conditions, and, in turn, generates the next state. The integrity of the evolution of life is based, therefore, on the causal link, which covers all stages of its development.

The essay was written by the professional writer from pre written essays empire service - Jenna Hetry.