Consider some Buddhist arguments against the reality of the personal self—it
may just be one argument. Characterise and evaluate the argument(s).
This essay will provide an outline of Buddhist arguments against the reality of
personal self – from exhaustiveness and impermanence in particular – and argue that
though there are challenges towards these arguments, the Buddhist view is justified.
Before looking at the arguments, we first have to understand what it is meant
when we say there is a ‘self’. During the time of the Buddha, it was common in
Brahman thinking to believe that discovering the self is the road to eternal happiness.
The Buddha, on the other hand, rejects by saying that clinging on to a self will lead to
suffering and sorrow; and most importantly, the self is just an illusion. To understand
what the ‘self’ is, one can simply ask the question ‘what is it when I say “I”, or “me”, or
“mine”?’ One possible answer could be what we call a substance self. A substance self
is a being that is ontologically distinct and has an identity that does not change until it
ceases to exist. What makes it different from other substances is that it has the
capacities to experience, feel, desire, think, and so on. This self is in control of
exercising these capacities and that the self is able to be aware of itself as a self. To
sum up, there is something in the self that gives the self its identity, and it is persistent
throughout.
The Buddha rejects the self on two grounds, the first one is the argument from
exhaustiveness. Since the self is part of the person, the next step is to see what
constitutes a person. The Buddha believes that a person is made up of five
psycho-physical aggregates (the five skandhas): Rupa, our material form or physical
body parts; the other four, the nama, are Vedana, our sensations and feelings
(pleasant, unpleasant, neutral); samjna, perception or cognition, judgements about the
world; samskara, mental formations (desires, wishes, and volitions); and vijnana,
consciousness, awareness of physical and mental states. If we as persons are only the
five skandhas combined, then we cannot pinpoint where the self is; do we say we are
not ourselves when we lose an arm? No, so losing parts of our body does not mean we
lose our self. Likewise losing some of our cognitive senses does not mean we lose our
self; a blind or deaf person would claim that she has a self. Buddhists argue that
language deceives us into seeing the illusion of ‘self’. Since we often use words to
label objects we see, there are referents that a word picks out; but we seldom question
what the word actually picks put. When does a table stops being a table? If it loses a
leg is it a table? If the colour changes is it still a table? If I use it for climbing up to reach
the ceiling instead of putting food on it is it still a table? Like the person, the thing we
call a table is merely the sum of different components, we cannot really mark a point
and say this is when it stops being a table. Although this point alone cannot conclude
that there is no self, it is a key foundation to build another argument on.
The second argument against the self is from impermanence. This argument ties
with the five aggregates. Buddhists believe that everything in the world is subject to
change, that everything is impermanent; this includes the five skandhas as well. The
Buddha argues that if the five skandhas are impermanent, there cannot be a self. The
argument can be constructed as follows ():
P1) If self exists, then it is permanent.
P2) The five skandhas exhaust human reality.
P3) The five skandhas are impermanent.
C) Therefore, there is no self.
The argument so far is easy to follow, the two objects, which are supposed to be the
same, are of opposing nature, thus we have to give up one for the other. The argument
is logically valid and good, the question now is whether we can accept these premises.
To debunk the no-self notion, one simply has to find the one thing that is permanent,
one thing that, when a person is stripped down to one thing remaining and is able to
survive. It seems reasonable to start with rupa, our physically body. Some might argue
that the body is permanent; if we ignore the teachings of karma and rebirth, the body is
permanent in the sense that it exists for an entire lifetime. However, if one looks closer,
one will notice that the physical body has undergone numerous changes throughout its
existence: growing bigger, a new set of teeth, change of hair colour etc. Of course, we
only need to look for one thing in our body that is essential, and we can survive with
some of our body parts removed, e.g. arms, legs, even internal organs like a liver or a
kidney; but what about the heart, surely the heart is the essential organ for our survival?
With today’s technology, we learn that one can survive with a heart transplant, or even
an artificial heart; though it is still a heart in the body, one has to deny that this heart is
originally, or has always been, the person’s heart i.e. my heart. If the self is my heart,
then replacing it with a new one would surely mean the end of my existence. Moreover,
it is known that the atoms in our body die and renewed constantly so that by seven
years all the atoms would have been replaced by new ones. Therefore, there is nothing
in our physical body that is permanent. What about the mind? From the moment we
are born, we are conscious of ourselves until death; the same goes with our senses.
For our senses, it is obvious that they are restless for the single reason that we are
unable to not make contact with the world; when we sit we make contact with the chair,
we see that the chair is red, it is hard etc. The Buddha replies that the enduring mind is
an illusion; the mind is a series of distinct events, each lasting just a moment. It can be
likened to filmmaking. Film is an illusion that what we see on screen is one moving
image; but in truth, every second contains 24 still images and when quickly moved
from one to another, gives the optical illusion of a continuous motion. Consider our
mind, what we feel and what we sense depends on what we make contact with. It is
true that there is no way we do not make contact with the world, but what contact we
make determines what feelings or senses we trigger. If I watch a horror film I feel
scared; if I watch a comedy I feel happy. Our namas are a series of moments in
succession, just like a playlist of songs, yet we do not call the list itself a song.
Therefore, it seems the impermanence argument remains intact after all.
Although now the argument seems good and sound, there still remains the
question: if there is no self, what is the thing that remains after rebirth? If one is in an
eternal cycle of birth and death living numerous lives through time, what is the thing
that urges us to say it is a rebirth but not simply an entirely separate entity being born?
Is the self not the one thing that links all the different lives together? Furthermore, when
we say ‘I have reached enlightenment’, what then is the ‘I’ referring to if not the self? If
logically speaking we are obliged to accept the argument from exhaustiveness and
impermanence, it seems to be the case that we should reconsider what ‘no-self’ in
Anatta means? It could be possible that while the Buddha rejects one definition of ‘self’,
affirms or acknowledges another form of ‘self’. In other words, the self that the Buddha
rejects is not the same as the self in rebirths. In one passage, a wanderer named
Vacchagotta asked whether there is a self or not; the Buddha refused to answer later
explaining that any answer would have confused him. The Buddha interpreted the self
the wanderer was referring to as either existing after death or one that ceases to exist
after death, hence both presupposing that there is a self; the answer the Buddha has in
mind would be put out of context if he answered ‘no’, since the two options the
wanderer gave seem to be of the same nature – that the self is a substance self. Thus
it is the substance self, the self that has an identity, is permanent, and is in control of
the person, that the Buddha rejects; what remains to be answered is what is the
alternative that can explain the link between rebirths until nirvana. One way to look is:
what does not remain after rebirth? For starter, the identity of the two lives are arguably
different; it will seem odd to assume that one person has the same identity as another
person, since they are different people. Secondly, there is no self that is in control. We
might say that we are in control of our actions but what we mean here is something that
controls the life previous, the life now, and the life in the future; it is not the case that the
person in my previous life is in control of this one. Finally, it is impermanent, perhaps
only in the sense that it expires when one reaches nirvana; at this point, the only thing
certain is that there is a continuity across all rebirths.
We can now exclude physical continuity, and I argue that being in control of a
person is a type of physical continuity because this capacity ceases when the current
life end; so we should now consider mental continuity. One can find clues from the
Buddha’s own enlightenment. When the Buddha was enlightened he attain three kinds
of knowledge, the first one being the specific knowledge of his own past lives. I argue
that it is this mental continuity of memory connection that is constantly in operation
throughout all rebirths; something that no one is aware of until one reaches nirvana.
With this idea, one can further speculate that this continuity is not one big stream of
memory but a series of memories of events that joint together to form what gels all
rebirths together, indifferent to a person’s awareness. Thus, the self is not a substance
but an impersonal, intangible energy of causal continuity, one event leading to another,
merely motion in a particular order or structure. If this is the case, one may infer that a
particular person’s continuity is just one line of many causal continuity in the world, and
that the world essentially is merely processes of causation in motion, that all things are
interrelated in the sense that everything’s arising is dependent on other things;
everything in the end is just a big flow of this energy that moves around the world so
that in a way everything becomes one thing, and this one thing is everything, like cogs
in a watch. To sum up the idea so far, as proven, the self cannot be a substance self;
but there has to be some continuity that links all rebirths together; if not physical then
surely mental continuity; the Buddha revealed that upon enlightenment he learned of
all his past lives; this memory looks to be the continuity; if the continuity is all memories
of events, then this continuity is a succession of events, meaning that this is in fact a
causal continuity; if the essence of all lives are just causal continuity coming into
contact of one another, then all things must be just causal continuity; therefore, the
essence of the world is causation, one