Self in Buddhism

8/13/2019 Self in Buddhism

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The self in Buddhism

Victoria Lavorerio

The imaginative pressure to think of yourself as very small is very easy to find. When I

raise my arm, well what is it? There must be some part of my brain that is sort of

sending out the signal and then my arm is obeying me, and then when I think about the

reason store is over there somewhere, and I ask my reason store to send me some good

reason. So the imagery keeps shrinking me back to a singularity; a point, a sort of

Cartesian point at the intersection of two lines and thats where I am. Thats the deadly

error, to retreat into the punctuate self. Youve got to make yourself big; really big..1

Daniel C. Dennett

Introduction

The essence of self is a matter that has occupied both eastern and western thought

throughout history. The experience of a particular and limited unity that underlies all of

our representations and which is the cause of our voluntary actions is immediate and

11 Daniel C. Dennet, pg. 90 Conversations about Consciousness, de Susan Blackmore.


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unavoidable to common sense. The central question is what exactly is that self and in

this matter, the two cultures have remarkably divided their paths.

Whenever I refer to Buddhism I will be considering what is known as early Buddhism:

the historical Budas and his immediate pupils teachings as the main source for this

work are the Sutras attributed to Buda himself. I will be taking the doctrine of Skandhas

as the ontologic starting point of my investigation; if these ultimate components of the

universe are then proven to be unexisting, the nihilist conclusions about the self, far from

being refuted, would be even easier to find.

Western modern thought, however, draws a much different picture; its universe is in

comparison very vast. Nevertheless, we still find us once and again in trouble when

trying to identify what exactly is the self. Even those who identify it with the brain, an

organ whose existence would be irrational to doubt, still try to specify just which part (or

parts) of the brain could be attributed the role of being (whatever it is that we normally

call) the self. That is, of course, after assuming that the zones of the brain that deal with

the involuntary functions of our internal organs would not be legitimate candidates for

being the self. In most cases, however, the difficulty of determining the ontological

nature of the self hasnt reached such extreme theses as the Buddhist no-self doctrine.

I.

That is, if we regard abstraction as necessarily implying some sort of

continuity (whether of the object or of the subject), the concept of discontinuity

is self-contradictory when taken to an extreme. This insight is especially

pertinent in the case of the soul, which is here both subject and object. We could


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not possibly claim to know for a fact that the soul is discontinuous (i.e. a

succession of discrete momentary souls), because such a statement claims for

the soul to the ability to transcenddiscontinuity sufficiently to see that the soul

is discontinuous. That is to say, to make such a claim, the soul (as subject) must

bepresent in the time straddling two or more of its alleged merely momentary

instances or segments (i.e. the soul as object). This is clearly a self-

contradiction. Thus, the Buddhist argument in favor of the thesis that the soul is

non-existent does not survive serious logical scrutiny.2

This argument gravitates around what is claimed to be the nature of the concept of

discontinuity, but beyond this angle of attack in particular, the whole argument is based

on the idea that a soul reflects on itself, in this case as a discontinuous being. That is why

it is said that the soul is at the same time subject and object: the object because the

content of the reflection is its own nature and the subject because it is the agent of such a

reflection. Not much later, the author comes to the conclusion that, no matter the content

of the reflection, the very fact that it exists implies that there must be something that acts

as the subject performing the action.

A non-self can neither be deluded nor realize its delusion. Any occurrence of

cognition, valuation or volition implies a self.3

If this sounds familiar is because it might be an old story after all, an instance of the

Cartesian Cogito. If I think therefore I am, then there could never be an action without

a subject performing it. At this moment in his meditations Descartes can easily do

without matter, but what he cannot accept is what becomes his Arquimedian point, his

firm ground: a thought without a thinker. The minimum necessary unit of the Cartesian

2Avi Sion,Logical and Spiritual Reflections, cap.11: The Buddhist no-soul theory.3dem


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self is the gravity center of all thought; the experience of thinking is intuitively

undeniable as is the idea of us generating it. In the Buddhist ontology, however, the

picture differs greatly.

What there are, what exists, are the five Skandhas, the ultimate elements of the universe:

the matter (rpa); feeling, sensation of pleasure, pain and indifference; perception,

mental events whereby one grasps the sensible characteristic of a perceptible object;

volition, mental forces responsible for bodily and mental activity; consciousness,

awareness of physical and mental states4. If there is, for example, an act of cognition

what there is, in fact, is an event of the volition Skandha and as it exists independently of

a creator, then arguments against the no-soul Buddhist thesis through the Cartesian

Cogito are not legitimate. If following Descartes we say that where there is a thought

there is a thinker, the Buddhist would respond where there is a thought, there is a

thought.

II.

If all that exists are the five Skandhas, then for the self to exist it must be one of them.

As argues Mark Siderites in hisBuddhism as Philosophy(chapterEmpty Persons), there

is in this argument a hidden premise that can be thought of as an exhaustiveness claim:

the five Skandhas exhaust the possibilities concerning what there is in the world. Let us

turn now to the Anattalakkhana Sutta, where Buddha presents the Anatta or no-soul

doctrine.

4Siderits, Marc. Buddhism as philosophy: an introduction. Pg. 37.


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"The body, monks, is not self. If the body were the self, this body would not

lend itself to dis-ease. It would be possible (to say) with regard to the body, 'Let

my body be thus. Let my body not be thus.' But precisely because the body is

not self, the body lends itself to dis-ease. And it is not possible (to say) with

regard to the body, 'Let my body be thus. Let my body not be thus.'

This argument has the form of a reductio ad absurdum: the hypothesis is denied in order

to prove that the conclusions that come from it are absurd or simply untrue:

[((pq) q) p].

In this case, the conclusion is in itself a denial: The body is not self, so the

argumentation starts off with the opposite claim The body is self (p). (pq)

would be ifthe body were the self, then (a) it would not lend itself to dis-ease and (b) it

would be possible to say 'Let my body be thus. Let my body not be thus.' For this

argument to be valid it is necessary to q to be the case, that the body does lend itself to

dis-ease and that its really not possible to say 'Let my body be thus. Let my body not be

thus.' None of these claims included in q are logically impossible, but they are just

empirically not true. Only by admitting this last remark is the argument valid. In this

stage of reflection I care less to determine wether q is true than to analyze whyq;

how we ended up with these claims about the self. To say that something is not a selfjust because it fails to have certain attributes, we need to have a previous idea of what

wouldconstitute a self; we have clues to guide us in our quest for the self. And which

are these exactly? The argument tells us that the self, whatever it might be, does not lend

it self to dis-ease and is not subject to our control.


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"- How do you construe thus, monks -- Is the body constant or inconstant?

Inconstant, lord. And is that which is inconstant easeful or stressful? Stressful,

lord. And is it fitting to regard what is inconstant, stressful, subject to change as:

'This is mine. This is my self. This is what I am'? No, lord."

Just as it happens with the argument we just saw, the conclusion depends on a previous

common sense observation: the self is constant, easeful and not subject to change. We

can therefore rule out the body as being the self as it lacks these features. The Sutra

continues subjecting the other four Skandhas (the phenomenical ones) to the very same

test that the body failed. The results repeat themselves as none of the Skandhas is a

genuine candidate for being the self. Giving that, as expressed by the exhaustiveness

clause, there is nothing to a person than the Skandhas, we reach the conclusion that there

is no entity that might be properly considered a self, soul or mind. What should, in

change, be considered a self has two characteristics that all of the Skandhas lack:

continuance and being subject to our control. Whatever is understood by continuance

might become clearer with by reading the next fragment:

For all modes, conceptions and tendencies of thought are not mind. And yet

they are called 'mind'. Why? It is impossible to retain a past thought, to seize a

future thought, and even to hold onto a present thought."5

III.

If the body were the self, () It would be possible (to say) with regard to the body, 'Let

my body be thus. Let my body not be thus.'

5The Diamond Perfection of Wisdom Sutra, #18.


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Next, I will present Sideritss interpretation of this argument. The fact that one even

considers saying let my body be thus sheds a light in the reality that one isnt always

satisfied with certain parts of oneself and that to a certain degree is capable of modifying

them. If that wasnt the case, expressing the desire of doing so wouldnt even make

sense. That is to say that there is an action performed by a part of me towards another; if

there is something as a selfit must carry out an executive function6.At this point Siderites

takes into consideration, not only the exhaustiveness claim, which, as we already saw

states that there is nothing to a person than the five Skandhas, but he also presents the

antireflexivity principle: an entity cannot act on itself7. The author claims that this

principle is widely accepted throughout Hindu philosophy and presents illustrative

examples like a knife can cut other thing but not itself. I am not going to dwell in this

principle now so I can continue with the reconstruction of the argument. If one of the

Skandhas, consciousness for instance, were in charge of the executive function, that

being acting upon the other Skandhas that constitute me by, lets say, repressing my

desire to eat dessert, then the consciousness by means of the antireflexivity principle

could not act upon itself. Given that one of the many duties of the self is that of

assessing and seeking to change other parts of me, the conclusion would be that there is

nothing that constitutes the self as nothing is immune to being dislike.

Assuming that the antireflexivity principle is accurate I still find it strange that assessingand disliking are considered actions, or at least actions that concern this kind of

principle. I dont find it irrational (though untrue) that the consciousness, perhaps the

most promising candidate to being the self among the Skandhas, can modify the others

but not itself. When I mentioned that the possibility of change was necessary to the

existence of the desire of change I meant something much more general; I know I cannot

6Buddhism as Philosophy, Marc Siderits. Pg. 46.7dem.


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change my height, but I can change my weight. So wanting to change the former by

analogy to the latter is not completely irrational, even if the possibility of change has no

real relation. Claiming that seeking to change completely depends on the possibility of

change seems to me not entirely grounded.

Let us return to our start point. The control argument, I must admit, has always puzzled

me. It claims that it would be possible to say with regard to the self let it be thus, let it

not be thus. I dont think it would be misleading to interpret it as that for something to

be the self it must have the ability to modify itself. That would mean that it has the

remarkable feature of defying the antireflexivity principle, whose legitimacy Siderites at

no point questions. The same cannot be said of the exhaustiveness claim which he

systematically doubts. From my point of view the first Buddhisms ontology consists

exclusively on the five Skandhas, if that is accurate we are better off assuming it as our

start point, a rule in the game we are playing. The antireflexivity principle, on the other

hand, goes through what is on my view the core of this discussion.

A knife cannot cut itself; a finger cannot point at itself, that much is true. But if we turn

to the case of the doctor that treats himself, which Siderites places as a failed candidate

to a counterexample, the principle in question becomes far from patent. A podiatrist that

treats his own toe seems to be acting upon himself therefore breaking the antireflexivity

principle. The Buddhist, however, will tell you otherwise; it is not the toe that treats the

toe, but other parts of the doctor. It is easy, yet fascinating to observe how the language

translates or generates these different interpretations: is the doctor treating himself or is

he treating his toe? It seems that if we lean towards the latter we would almost be bound

to say whenever we see the podiatrist here comes the doctor and his toe. If you make


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yourself really small you can externalize virtually everything.8 It seems as though

whenever we talk about any action we create a dichotomy between the subject and the

object of the action, even if up to that point we considered them the same entity, like the

doctor and his toe. This is testimony only to the fact that our language has a deep

influence in our thinking; reaching metaphysical conclusions form this kind of examples

is too much of a stretch. When we engage in soliloquy for instance we often chat with

ourselves using the second person (sometimes even out loud) and yet we dont think

because of that that we are talking to someone else.

The antireflexivity principle presented as an entity cannot act upon itself far from

showing an essential characteristic of entities, it offers a criterion to decide what

qualifies as having ontological status and what doesnt: an entity is that that doesnt act

upon itself. The world is a complex of interrelated Skandhas and where it seems to be

an entity acting upon itself, what there actually is is the interaction of two different

entities. But the heart pumps the very same blood it is going to need as the lungs need

the oxygen they introduce into the body. In this picture it isnt hard to see how we could

undercome to ontological nihilism. I dont see any reason that would compel or persuade

us into accepting the antireflexivity principle. Instead I come to the consideration that

once we take it, the other metaphysical beliefs fall into place.

But anyway, I still dont understand why Siderites take this complicated and

overelaborate interpretation of the control argument. When Buddha talks about the

actions of assessing or modifying the Skandhas it seems to be less about them executing

actions upon themselves than them as not subject to our will. The mere idea of an

8Daniel C. Dennet, pg. 90 Conversations about Consciousness.


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executive function seems to imply the existence of an agent, which I dont see the

Buddhist philosophy to agree on and which at the end Siderites fails to find.

I think we find a more plausible interpretation once we turn our attention to the object

instead of the agent; whether the Skandhas are subject to our will or not. The idea of the

self is closely connected to the notion of my own: And is it fitting to regard what is

inconstant, stressful, subject to change as: 'This is mine. This is my self. This is what I

am'?". If there is a self, it is constituted by Skandhas then we could claim this is my

body, this is my perception, this is my consciousness, etc. and if I own them, wouldnt I

be able to control them? Dont we do so to a certain point? Is control necessary to

property claims? Lets suppose it isnt. In that case I am made of a body I cannot modify

in a substantial way. But I can lose weight, get a nose job or even cause my body illness

and death with dangerous or unhealthy practices. We shouldnt forget, however, that the

Skandha rpa is not the body that remains for the five months or so it takes me to get

thinner or the ten years it takes me to fill my lungs with cigarette smoke. No, the rpa is

the material my body as a complex system of interacting parts is composed of, and

that I cant control. But the Skandhas interact with each other casually; the ones from

today determine the ones from tomorrow. That way we can take back some control, not

through the power over what is ours, but through the knowledge of the causal relations

between the Skandhas. This turns the problem of free will and determinism into a verycomplex matter and whose solution seems really hard in a picture like this. However,

that is a different enquiry altogether. For our present concern, we are made from stuff

that interacts with each other casually and, unable to stop the boat, we might tack it

towards some chosen course. This is not a very promising picture and is clearly quite far

from what we might judge as subject enough to our will to be called my own.


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The Buddhist Reductionist claims that person is a mere convenient

designator for a complex causal series of impermanent, impersonal

psychophysical elements.9

IV.

In this stage of my enquiry I wonder, is there a hidden premise or implicit supposition I

am not taking into consideration and that might prevent this pantheism (at best) or

nihilism (at worst) to arise? I dont think so. If we get back to Descartes we see that the

criterion he uses to identify the first truth, the judgment whose certainty he cannot doubt

(his own existence), is that of deep personal conviction, the idea that manifests itself

clear and distinctively. In Descartess case he has a metaphysical anchor, God, who

gives him some guarantee that what he believes and what is true are sometimes the

same. But even in an atheist tradition this idea persists, what is systematically

compelling to the common sense must be so because it is true.

In the Buddhist philosophy, however, this isnt so. In order to resolve some tensions in

Buddhas teachings, Siderites mentions, the scholars resourced to differentiate two kinds

of truth: conventional and ultimate. To introduce this matter, he quotes a Buddhist work

called The question of King Milinda (Milindapaha). Here the Buddhist master

Ngasena questions the identity of a flame. It seems as it illuminates the room during the

whole night, but it is not the same flame that radiates light all through the night from

beginning to end. The flame is not one and the same but a causally linked succession of

momentary flames. And yet we say flame and we refer to it as if it were the same; it

9M. Siderits, Personal identity and Buddhist philosophy. Pg. 24


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is conventionally true that is the same. Names have only a practical role, taken literally

they lead to mistakes; names are useful conventional designators.

Subhuti, suppose there is a person whose body is like Mount Sumeru.

What do you think? This body would be made great, no?" Subhuti

replied: "Incredibly great, World Honored One. What is the reason? The

Buddha has said that a non-body is called a great body."10

In Western thought there is a metaphor similar to that of the flame. The following

fragments are attributed to the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus.

They do not step into the same rivers. It is other and still other waters that are

flowing.

You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters and yet others go

ever flowing on. They go forward and back again.11

The constant change that undergoes an entity is grounds enough to say it is a different

river every time. It is possible that the ambiguities in the equality terms we often use are

the source of serious confusions. The river is the samenumerically but not qualitatively.

Whereas Heraclitus seems to imply that the qualitative changes of the river make for

numerical differences, this is many different rivers.

Though the notion of identity is so simple, confusion over it is not uncommon.

One instance is suggested in the fragment from Heraclitus, according to which

you cannot step into the same river twice, because of the flowing of the water.

This difficulty is resolved by looking to the principle of division of reference

10The Diamond Perfection of Wisdom Sutra, #10.11Heraclus, Frg. #20, #21, (Diels-Kranz, I, 150-179)


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belonging to the general term 'river'. One's being counted as stepping into the

same river both times is typical of precisely what distinguishes rivers both from

river stages and from water divided in substanceconserving ways.12

As rivers cannot participate in the phenomenological Skandhas (perception,

consciousness, etc.) they can only consist on rpa. But rivers are something different

from the water that makes them: What distinguishes rivers () from water divided in

substanceconserving ways. And if they cannot be defined by their rpa, what are rivers

for the Buddhist? River is a useful conventional designator for something that doesnt

really exist. The fact that it is just one word misleads us to think of it as one entity when

in (ultimate) reality is a series of causally linked physical elements.

Now, what is the difference between rivers and river stages or divided water? One's

being counted as stepping into the same river both times. What does Quine mean with

same river? A useful designator for a conventional fiction? If that were the case it

wouldnt be much of a claim. We should also rule out material identity as the criterion to

determine that we are talking about the same entity. The thing is that for Quine names are

not just useful designators; river is a general term with a certain division of reference.

This fragment is part of a chapter called The Ontogenesis of Reference, that being how

the ontological status of that our words refer to is created. Language does more than

pointing out fictions, it creates them and by doing so the world around us becomes

intelligible.

Returning now to the flame example exposed by Ngasena, we call flame to the

succession of flames that enlightens us all through the night because it is of no use for us

to name each and every one of them, in fact, our language would be so complicated if we

12W.V.O. Quine, Word and Object, pg. 115.


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didnt make this fictions up that the very possibility of communication depends on these

simplifications. The word flame refers to what lasts all night, from the moment we light

it to the moment it extinguishes even if in reality there is nothing actually there; the claim

that there are many flames in that period wouldnt be true either. But, as justified as our

practices of using words as flames or self are, these will never surpass the field of

conventional truth; ultimate truth lies beyond human abilities or interests. That way,

metaphysics and epistemology keep a safe distance from each other.

It is my humble opinion that the only reason Westerns still believe in the existence of the

self (whatever we might understand by it) is a predominance of epistemic over ontology,

of sense over reference. While in Buddhist philosophy we go from the emptiness of the

entity to the pragmatism of language, in the greater part of Western thought we start off

in the incorporation of language that divides the world turning it intelligible. As puzzling

and baffling all Sutras and their thesis might appear to us at first sight, the world they

depict is not far away from home and if they dont take us through the same path is not

because of the difference in thesis, but because of the importance we give to the observer

in the world.

Bibliography

Buddhism as philosophy; an introduction, Marc Siderites. Ashgate PublishingLtd. London, 2007.

Personal identity and Buddhist philosophy; Empty Persons, Marc Siderites.Ashgate Publishing Ltd. London, 2003.


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Anattalakkhana Sutta, Buda, Biblioteca de Sutras Budistas,es.geocities.com/sutrasbudistas/.

Sutra de la Perfeccin de la Sabidura del Diamante, Buda.http://buddhistinformation.com/Capitulos-intro.htm

Buda, Las Cuatro Nobles Verdades y otras enseanzas budistas. Introduccin,seleccin y explicaciones: Roberto Curto. Ed. Errepar; Buenos Aires, 1999.

Logical and Spiritual Reflections, Avi Sion, www.TheLogician.net, 2008. Meditaciones Metafsicas, Ren Descartes. Traduccin Sergio Albano. Ed.

Gradifco; Bs. As. 2004.

Heraclitus: The Complete Fragments: Translation and Commentary and TheGreek Text. Harris, William, translator (1994). Humanities and the Liberal Arts:

Greek Language and Literature: Text and Commentary. Middlebury College.

Word and Object, W.V.O. Quine. Ed. MIT; Massachusetts, 1960. Conversations about Consciousness, Susan Blackmore. Oxford University Press;

New York, 2006.

Consciousness Explained, Daniel C. Dennet. Back Bay Books, New York, 1991.

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Self in Buddhism