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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
The Buddha taught the existence of neither Soul nor God.
According to early Buddhism there is no such element 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.
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.
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.
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