Non-self, bundles, non-ownership, selflessness

Buddhism rejects the self and accepts a notion of non-self. It preceded bundle theory and no-ownership theory, which is in some way a formulation of this.

Hume pushed the bundle theory but could not understand what is there if it were only experiences. What he seem to left out is memory.

The self is just a collection of this matter-related memories. In this way, it does not go against the principles of one being “created” by the environment. A person is not independent of the place and time he or she is at or in. She or he is a product of it.

Property is theft, said Proudhon. Self-property is to steal and rob from the world of what you could contribute to it. That could be rightly called selfishness. To act without being the owner of the spirit is selflessness.

Chicken soup for the non-soul

“So if there is no self, non-self, non-soul or no- soul what is it that gets reborn or reincarnated?”

This is question I often get from Westerners new to Buddhism. How can there be no soul? Who or what is doing these good and bad things?

The Buddha always starts with the idea of impermanence. All real things are impermanent. Real things do no stay the same. This much most people can understand and agree with. Then the Buddha moves on to the idea of unsatisfactoriness. All real things are unsatisfactory. This too most people can agree upon also. But then most people get tripped up by the last statement of the truth of reality. All real and unreal things have no inherent self. Real things are seen to have no coherent core, just as unreal things (ideas and concepts of the of the imagination) do not have any core.

What makes a rock a rock is not anything. There is no “rock-ness” of things. If there is a rock-ness then would that not entail a permanent “something”?

There is also another suggestion here with this formulation – that there is something permanent but without a self. Real things are impermanent and unsatisfactory. But Unreal things are “permanent” and “satisfactory” in some way even though they are without a self. But what can be permanent if it is unreal?

This kind of formulation is not dissimilar to that of God or soul. Since God and soul are permanent and satisfactory. This is the conundrum. So, does God and souls exist or not? According to Buddha they must be unreal but unreal things have no self. But real things have no self either.

The only way forward, I feel, is to deal with these issues separately. Understand the nature of real things before we deal with understanding what the nature of unreal things are.

*Remember that book? Sorry. Clickbait title.

Mind, self, soul

Consider these three definitions from the LDOCE:

mind – your thoughts or your ability to think, feel, and imagine things mental.

self – the type of person you are, your character, your typical behaviour etc.

soul – the part of a person that is not physical, and that contains their character, thoughts, and feelings. Many people believe that a person’s soul continues to exist after they have died.

Often the mind, self and soul are synonymous, but as the definitions show they are not used in the same way. There are no true or perfect synonyms. 

While the definition of the mind does not mention character, the definition of self does not mention thoughts. The former is about ability; the latter about quality.

In the definition of the soul both ability and quality are brought together. It also contains or emphasises two further qualities – that of non-physical and (sometimes the belief in) its continuation beyond physical death

I doubt anyone thinks that thoughts and feeling continues to exist in the mind after his or her death, or that one can be described as being a type of person with a certain character or behaviour after his or her death. It is with the soul only that we continue to think of someone’s continued existence beyond their physical one.

But what is this ‘part of the person that is not physical’ that no one has seen and everyone infers to exist? By what evidence does one have to make this inference? I can infer thought from physical reaction, and character from physical attributes. But one cannot infer the existence of a soul from death, apart from the cessation of thought, feeling and characteristics. What can only be inferred is that death is the cessation of these. Souls, then, are the thoughts and remembrances of the characteristics of those who are living, or have since passed

The brain and its thoughts

Look at this picture.

checkershadow_illusion4med

Clearly, you see that the checker squares labelled A and B are of different shades, right? But check by isolating the squares from the surrounding and you will see that they are in fact the same shade of grey.

What is going on here? From experience you have learned that shadows change the shade of colours they fall upon, and that your mind will compensate for this. Note that it is not your eyes that is “doing” the compensating here, but your mind. Your eyes received the colours and shades as they are, and it is your mind that is doing the adjusting. Remove the surrounding information and you mind will no longer compensate allowing to see the shades as they are.

In Western understanding the mind is not considered a sense faculty. Traditionally there were only thought to be five senses – sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. And the sense corresponding organs were the eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin. The mind was seen as something different, therefore the brain was not seen as a sense organ.

In Buddhism, the mental objects are sensed by the mind, thus the brain is counted as the sixth sense organ. This has two important implications. Firstly, mental objects (thoughts) are placed on par with the objects of colour and form, sound, scent, flavour and texture, and makes the contents of thought as something ordinary. Secondly, it removes the mind as the seat of some kind of self by default of the ordinariness of what happens in the mind.

In this way we are able to deal with our thoughts and not be ruled by them. Essentially this is what the Buddha’s teaching is all about – taking control of yourself as a physical being – by showing us that the thoughts are really just the real world things that we can control.

Perhaps the self is an illusion as well, much like this image.

Question: Why have I only been in this perspective since I was born?

This answer is from a Buddhist and Kantian perspective. 

The “me” isn’t really a me but personality generating machine that believes in a me. I do mean machine because our body is what makes the perspective and not something else. 

If we were independent of the machinery that houses us then we would be ghosts in shells. The fact that few have claimed to see shell-less ghosts means likely we need the body to be who we are.

Is The Buddha a god?

The Buddha was born a prince. His mother died soon after giving birth to him. So there is no claim of divinity of any kind. He was an ordinary man with ordinary problems just like you and me. And therefore he is not a god. Nor should he be worshipped as such.

Buddhist iconography was something which arose after his death. And temples are not places of worship. Both of these are created to help us understand his teaching, the dharma, which is we alone can liberate ourselves from unhappiness through attention to the nature of one’s body and mind.

This then means that Buddhism is not about faith but practice. The practice espoused was to look after the mind as much as we look after our body. This Buddhists do through meditation. Meditation does not have any special powers as such but only allows one to focus the mind to see clearly what the mind and body are. Some kind of basic understanding is necessary of course, but essentially it is that everything is impermanent, without self and suffering. Nothing including Buddhism lasts forever. That includes the self which many people cling on to. The self is an illusion. And that is perhaps the greatest of all roots of our suffering. Understand that this is what existence is then we can proceed to find the happiness which does not diminish.