Therefore, we have concluded our analysis of
the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, and proceed to such an important Buddhist
doctrine of the doctrine of non-existence of an individual substantial simple
and eternal 'self', or plainly soul (Atman) which in Sanskrit is usually called
anatmavada. This Buddhist doctrine distinguishes Buddhism from the majority of
the non-Indic religions as well as other Indian religions (Hinduism, Jainism)
which recognize the doctrine of ‘self’ (Atman) and a soul (jiva).[1]
"You, monks, should not thus cultivate the notion
(samjna) of impermanence, suffering and non-Self, the notion of impurity and so
forth, deeming them to be the true meaning [of the Dharma], as those people
[searching in a pool for a radiant gem but foolishly grabbing hold of useless
pebbles, mistaken for priceless treasure] did, each thinking that bits of
brick, stones, grass and gravel were the jewel. You should train yourselves
well in efficacious means. In every situation, constantly meditate upon
[bhavana] the idea [samjna] of the Self, the idea of the Eternal, Bliss, and
the Pure ... Those who, desirous of attaining Reality [tattva], meditatatively
cultivate these ideas, namely, the ideas of the Self [atman], the Eternal,
Bliss, and the Pure, will skillfully bring forth the jewel, just like that wise
person [who obtained the genuine, priceless gem, rather than worthless detritus
misperceived as the real thing.]"[2]
"... one who knows himself (atmanam) as
nondual, he wisely knows both Buddha and Dharma. And why? He develops a
personality (atmabhava) which consists of all dharmas [phenomena] for all
dharmas are fixed on the self in their own-being (atma-svabhava-niyata). One
who wisely knows the nondual dharma, wisely knows also the Buddhadharmas. From
the comprehension of the nondual dharma follows the comprehension of the
Buddhadharmas and from the comprehension of the self, the comprehension of
everything that belongs to the triple world. 'The comprehension of self', that
is the Beyond of all dharmas ..."[3]
"The Tathagata also teaches, for
the sake of all beings, that there is, in truth, the Self in all
phenomena"[4]
Why Buddhism denies the existence of an eternal
'self'? In answering this question, we are immediately confronted with the
difference between from the Indian and European thinking. As it is well known,
Kant considered the immortality of the soul to be one of the postulates of
morality (Kant). Buddhism, on the other hand, argues that a sense of 'self' and
the attachment to this self is the source of all other affections, passions and
instincts - all of which forms the ‘clesha’, the darkened affectivity that spans
a living being into the quagmire of samsaric existence.
Which 'self' exactly is denied by Buddhists? Buddhism
does not say anything about the Atman, described in the Upanishads, which is
the absolute subject, or certain higher transpersonal Self - same for all
beings and eventually identical to the Absolute (Brahman). This Atman is
neither accepted nor denied by Buddhism. There is nothing about it at least in
early texts. It denies specifically the individual 'self' as the essence of the
personality, simple and eternal substance identical to itself. Buddhism does
not find it in our experience and views it as an illusory product of mental
construction. Thus, basically, Buddhism denies what in the Brahmin and Jain
traditions is called jiva (soul) or pudgala (personality).[5]
But if such an entity as a soul does not exist, then
what is personality? Buddhists answer that personality is just a name for the
groups of psychophysical elements connected in a specific order. In the famous
Buddhist philosophical work 'The Questions of King Milinda' (Milinda Pañha), a
Buddhist monk Nagasena talks about it with the Greek and Indian King Milinda. The
King argues that if Buddhists believe that there is no soul and self, without the
elements of human psychophysical structure as well as the complex of all these
elements is not a personality (living being), then the king turned his question
for the monk again: is there no personality (human) not at all (?) Objecting to
the king, Nagasena points at a chariot and starts to ask the king what it is:
are wheels a chariot? Or, perhaps, the carcass is the chariot? Or some other
details are a chariot? To all these questions, the king gives a negative
answer. Then Nagasena asks the king, is a chariot not all of the parts
together? Milinda gives a negative answer again, and it gives Nagasena the
ability to say that in this case it turns out that there are no chariots at
all. Then he clearly explained that chariot is only the name designed to denote
the set of all these parts and components. This response enables Nagasena to
say that in the same way personality is only a name to represent a unity of the
five groups of elements of experience ordered in a particular way.[6]
In Buddhist tradition those groups of elements are
called pañcaskandhī, where skandha means a pile, those are:
·
a group of form
(rupa) - which is all that we could be attribute to the field of the sensible
and material;
·
a group of
sensation (vedanā) - feeling of pleasant, unpleasant or neutral;
·
a group of
perception (saṃjñā) - round / square, white / black, etc., as well as the formation
of ideas and concepts;
·
a group of
mental formations (samskāra) - volitions and motivating impulses, this group of
elements is responsible for the formation of karma;
·
consciousness as
such (vijñāna). (Boisvert 669)
The Buddha clearly when a monk asked
about the aggregates:
"Whatever
form is past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant or subtle;
common or sublime; far or near: That is called the form.
"Whatever
feeling is past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant or subtle;
common or sublime; far or near: That is called the feeling aggregate.
"Whatever
perception is past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant or
subtle; common or sublime; far or near: That is called the perception
aggregate.
"Whatever
(mental) fabrications are past, future, or present; internal or external;
blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near: Those are called the
fabrications aggregate.
"Whatever
consciousness is past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant or
subtle; common or sublime; far or near: That is called the consciousness
aggregate.
"These
are called the five aggregates.
"And
what are the five clinging-aggregates?
"Whatever form — past, future, or present; internal or external;
blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near — is clingable, offers
sustenance, and is accompanied with mental fermentation: That is called the
form clinging-aggregate.
"Whatever feeling — past, future, or present; internal or
external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near — is clingable,
offers sustenance, and is accompanied with mental fermentation: That is called
the feeling clinging-aggregate.
"Whatever perception — past, future, or present; internal or external;
blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near — is clingable, offers
sustenance, and is accompanied with mental fermentation: That is called the
perception clinging-aggregate.
"Whatever (mental) fabrications — past, future, or present;
internal or external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near — are
clingable, offer sustenance, and are accompanied with mental fermentation:
Those are called the fabrications clinging-aggregate.
"Whatever consciousness — past, future, or present; internal or
external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near — is clingable,
offers sustenance, and is accompanied with mental fermentation: That is called
the consciousness clinging-aggregate.
"They are called the five clinging-aggregates."[7]
It should be brought to attention that the
order of the skandhas is not accidental. It reflects the order of the
perception of an object and its exploration by a consciousness. In the
beginning, there is only a sensual data, then comes a feeling of pleasant or
unpleasant which accompanies it, and the formation of a certain image of the
perceived object and then forming a processing set on the attraction to apprehension
or perception of it. All these processes are accompanied by the participation
of consciousness that exists on each level.
The important nuance in Buddhism is that into the
concept of personality is also included an object field perceived by a living
being. There is no singular man and singular object that he perceives; there is
a kind of a field of experience where a man perceives an object. Here the
object is no longer an external object, staying out of the person, but a part
of a person included in it through the process of perception. This is not an
object itself, but the reflection already perceived by a man and which,
therefore, became a part of his inner world, a part of a human personality.[8] This
is not the world in which we live; this is the world we are living through.
Although Buddhism denies a singular simple soul, it still
recognizes some substances as such as bricks from which personality is
constituted. Those bricks are five skandhas; however, skandhas are not
substances; they are videlicet groups of elements, and their allocation is
rather conditional and formal. What is real, it is the elements of the
skandhas, which are called dharmas. The teaching about dharmas (Abhidharma) is
one of the most complex and also the central themes of Buddhist philosophy.
Dharma is an indivisible element of our psychophysical
experience, or it is an elementary psychophysical condition. Is it possible to
consider dharma a substance? It is not, for two reasons. Firstly, according to
the Indian understanding of the substance and substantiality, for example,
Brahmanical school Nyaya, one of the main ideological opponents of Buddhism
which adhered to the substance is always the carrier of the plurality of
qualities that are associated with it in different connections while in
Buddhism each dharma carries only one quality of its own. Secondly, the Indian
substancialists asserted the principle of difference between the carrier
(substance) and the carried (accidental, qualities) that was expressed in the
formula 'dharma - dharmin bheda' where dharma is a quality that is carried, and
dharmin is its substantial carrier. Buddhism claims that dharma and dharmin are
identical; the carrier and the carried by them are the same quality. There is
also a third fundamental difference: substance of Brahmins, as a rule, is
eternal, while, in Buddhism, dharmas are instantaneous.
Another essential thing about dharmas is that in
majority of Buddhist schools dharmas are considered, on the one hand, as dravya,
which means the elements endowed with ontological status, real elements, and, on
the other hand, as prajnapti, that is as just conceivable, conventional, or units
of language describing the experience. It means that our experience is
constituted by dharmas, but dharmas themselves are also described in terms of
dharmas. Here it is possible to bring a somewhat rough parallel: our speech
consists of words, but the words we describe in words as well.
This specific of understanding the dharmas by
Buddhists brought them close to the resolution of the so-called paradox of
mental processes, which the European psychology began to be realize only in the
XX century: we always describe consciousness not in the immanent terms (terms,
reflecting their own inherent properties), but in terms of the outside world or
another consciousness. By introducing the concept of dharma as both ontologically
relevant element of consciousness and experience in general and as a language
element of a description of consciousness (and experience); the Buddhists, in
essence, found a variant of the language of describing consciousness which is
immanent to consciousness. This is undeniable contribution from Buddhism to the
world philosophy.
Thus, Buddhism looks at personality as merely at a
name established to identify a structurally ordered combination of five groups
of insubstantial and instant elementary of psychophysical states and dharmas.
This is quite a rigorous formulation of the principle of anatmavada ('no-self',
'no-soul'), or more precisely, one of its two aspects – the non-essential
personality (pudgala nairatmya).
In Buddhist
philosophical literature (Abhidharma), there are various lists and
classifications of dharma. For example, school of Sarvastivadins (Vaibhashika)
provides a list of seventy-five dharmas, and the list of yogakarins
(Vijnanavadins) includes already one hundred dharmas. Firstly, If we talk about
the classifications of dharmas, they can be classified in a relation to
skandhas aggregates (dharmas related to rupa skandha and vedana skandhas). This
five-part list can be reduced to a binary: dharma rupa skandhas and dharmas of
all other skandhas (according to the division of constitutions of personality
to nāma and rūpa - mental and physical). In this case, the second group of
dharmas is named dharma dhatu (dharma element) because dharmas as members of
the 'dharma dhatu' are objects of mind (manas), which as we remember from the
chain analysis of cause-effect origination, are related by Buddhists to
perceptual abilities. Dharmas relating to the saṃskāraskandha are also
typically divided into associated with the mental (citta samprayukta) and not
associated with mental (citta viprayukta).[9]
Secondly,
dharmas are often divided into sanskrita dharma (included the compositions) and
asanskrita dharmas (not included the compositions). The first type is so named
empirical dharmas, which are the elements which constitute our samsaric
experience - dharmas belonging to the five skandhas of living beings. The
second type is over-empirical dharmas, the dharmas that are not related to
everyday experience. It is an absolute space or a space of deployment of mental
experience (Akasha) and two types of cessation (nirodha, which is suppressing
state of functioning of empirical dharmic streams, nirvana): cessation
associated with knowledge (pratisamkhya nirodha) and cessation not associated
with knowledge (apratsamkhya nirodha). Moreover, dharmas are divided into
elapsing with affects (sasrava) and not elapsing with affects (anasrava). First
are dharmas which involve in the cycle of samsara; in the process of Buddhist
practice they are subjected to a gradual elimination. Also a dharma of 'true
path' (marga satya) stands alone: although the path to nirvana, as well as
nirvana itself which can be the object of attachment, but this certain
attachment does not lead to the accession of affects to this dharma, because
they do not find a support in it. But in general, this type of dharmas should
be considered karmically bad (akushala). The second type of dharmas, on the
contrary, contributes to the acquisition of good (kushala) qualities and
promotion on the path to nirvana. The same goes also for those of dharmas that
are not included in the compositions.[10]
Dharmas
constantly appear and disappear, being replaced by new, but conditioned by
previous dharmas arising from the law of cause and dependent origination. These
constantly arising and fading non-substrate dharmas in their totality form a
stream or a continuum (santana) which empirically are found as a living being. Thus,
any creature, including human personality is not understood in Buddhism as
unchanging essence (soul, atman), but as a stream of constantly changing
elementary psychophysical states. Ontology of Buddhism is the ontology of
non-substrate process.
Another
essentially important feature of the Buddhist world is closely related to the
theory of dharmas. It is the doctrine of momentariness (kshanikavada). Buddhism
asserts that samsaric existence is characterized by the following features:
§ Everything is impermanent (anitya)
§ Everything is suffering (duhkha)
§ Everything is deprived of self (anatma)
§ Everything is inauspicious (ashubha). (Coseru)
The
doctrine of momentariness follows directly from the first thesis of the
universality of impermanence. It argues that each dharma (and, respectively,
the whole complex of dharmas) exists for only one negligible moment, in the
next moment being replaced by a new dharma, and caused by previous one. In this
way, we cannot not only enter the same river twice, but there is actually no
one who could do something for a second time. In essence, every new moment there
is a new one which causally related to the previous one and conditioned by it
(Coseru).
In Dhammapada
we find the Buddha’s words about this impermanence of existence: "There
can be, bhikkhu," the Blessed One said. "Here, bhikkhu, someone has
the view: 'This is self, this the world; after death I shall be permanent,
everlasting, eternal, not subject to change; I shall endure as long as
eternity.' He hears the Tathagata or a disciple of the Tathagata teaching the
Dhamma for the elimination of all standpoints, decisions, obsessions,
adherences, and underlying tendencies, for the stilling of all formations, for
the relinquishing of all attachments, for the destruction of craving, for
dispassion, for cessation, and for Nibbana. He thinks thus: 'So I shall be
annihilated! So I shall perish! So I shall be no more!' Then he sorrows,
grieves, and laments; he weeps beating his breast and becomes distraught. That
is how there is agitation about what is non-existent internally."[11]
Thus, according to the theory of momentariness, a
stream of dharmas that forms a living being is not only a continuum, but is
discrete at the same time. If using a modern metaphor, it is best to compare it
to a film: it consists of separate frames; however, we do not see when we watch
a movie and perceive it as a pure continuum. In this case, the difference
between the two adjacent frames is completely insignificant, and they appear to
the naked eye as almost identical although the difference is growing and occurs
gradually. In this example, each new life is a new episode of a series without
beginning, and nirvana is the finale of the movie.
However, here,
another question may arise: if there is no soul, then what is reborn and
proceeds from life to life? The answer is quite paradoxical: nothing is reborn
and nothing proceeds. In contrast to a popular belief, in Buddhism there are no
teachings about rebirths or reincarnations from an unchanging soul. A man in
Buddhism is not an embodied soul, as in Hinduism. He is a continuous flow of
the states – dharmas - a series of shots that are moments.
[1] Ibid…
[2] The Buddha, Chapter Three, "Grief", The Mahayana
Mahaparinirvana Sutra
[3] The
Buddha in the "perfect insight" scripture, The Questions of
Suvikrantavikramin, from Perfect Wisdom: The Short Prajnaparamita Texts, tr. by
Edward Conze, BPG, England, 2002.
[4] The
Mahaparinirvana Sutra, Chapter Three, translated
into English by Kosho Yamamoto, 1973
[5] Arshdeep
Sarao, The Story of Buddha Sakyamuni
[6] The Questions of
King Milinda, translated by T. W. Rhys Davids
[7] Khandha Sutta: Aggregates translated from the Pali by Thanissaro
Bhikkhu
[8] Mathieu Boisvert, The Five Aggregates p.669-700
[9] Willemen, Entrance into the
Supreme Doctrine p.219-224
[10] Ibid…
[11] Bhikkhu Nanamoli, and Bhikkhu Bodhi, The
Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha p.230
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