A Brief Word on the Self
Buddhist philosophy branched off from Hindu philosophy about 400 years before Christ and continued to develop for centuries thereafter. It begins on the doctrine that the self is an illusion produced by our will to survive, and as such is the source of suffering. The self is an individuated unit which pervades our consciousness and produces all sorts of striving. All greed, malevolence, folly, etc. are produced through this selfhood we believe we have, but in reality, we are not a self. For there are two major problems: (1) we can only know things through our consciousness, and (2) everything is impermanent.
On the first problem, we are subject to the forms of our subjectivity. That we are subjects experiencing a real world does not justify the world being as such. This world appears as it is because we are conscious, but that it is a real world as such is not something apparent in any evidence. That is something imported by us. It is only the case that the world is real and follows necessary causal order because we need it to be that way, for we survive through an implicit belief in causality. Our survival instinct drives us to rely on illusions. And this is why there is suffering. Dismantling this cause of suffering through conditioning our consciousness to have awareness of its own nature is the goal of Buddhism.
To put it bluntly, the reality we know is not reality. This can be interpreted according to a strong and a soft position. The strong position is that the world exists because we know it. Because we only know the world through experience, we actually create the world in consciousness. Thus matter is an illusion. Whether or not this leaves consciousness as the real thing is up for debate. The soft position is that the world is simply different from our consciousness. We assume reality is a specific way simply by being alive, and by dismantling its apparent self-unity as being something brought about in our understanding, the fundamental illusion producing suffering is unblocked.
The second problem, which I have treated as secondary but is really the primary experience of Buddhist doctrines, is that everything is impermanent. The simple fact that everything changes moment-to-moment should be justification enough that there is no self or consistency. Causality is a necessary part of experience, because our being brings it about as an illusion, but it has no end goal, because it is merely a production of ours. Essentially, there is nothing permanent, and therefore nothing really is in the way ordinary consciousness would have us believe. The appearance of persistence through time is a production of our consciousness. Only the present is real. Past and future are produced through the formation of memories in the mind and through expectation ascribed onto memory. Otherwise, they have no being. Each moment is an individuated thing, held together by nothing but our consciousness believing it to be so. Thus, time is an illusion.
Now what is happening when someone thinks on such ideas? Is it really some one thinking? Is there a real mind underneath physical experience? How is consciousness related to biology, our bodies, our brains? Is the mind generated by our bodies or vice versa? Is there anything different from physical experience, from this body? What would it be if it was not physical and thus would not really be, since we only know being as an element of physical reality? How rigorously should our understanding of the illusion of reality be implemented? Am I not an I? What is it that is writing this, reading this, preserving this? Is Buddhism asking us to deny matter in order to transcend it, yet without ascribing existence to anything otherwise? What about enjoyment of ordinary life? What value do I have? Wouldn’t it be very cruel to deny the life of any thing?
Different schools of Buddhism answer these problems in different ways. But, conventionally, they are held together by an agreement in the source of suffering being one of individuated illusion, and that our versions of reality are mere conventions, tools for us, stories, not truths with the kind of binding power our bodies would ordinarily have us believe.
I think Buddhism gets a lot right. But, I think that it gets some things wrong too. Or, at least, I think that Buddhists get Buddhism wrong. Here’s why.
It would seem to be the case that most Buddhist schools of thought advocate a kind of nihilism, that we are nothing at all and should focus our energies on staring into the black. We should be indifferent to everything, feeling nothing, no preference, no desire, no attachment, no plans. And if it just so happens that feelings of desire arise in this mortal body longing for, say, a cheeseburger, then it is not really anything at all happening. There is no one wanting that cheeseburger and there is no desire, nor is there a cheeseburger. Nope. I’ll just sit here in the dust instead, meditating.
Although this is full of shortcomings even to Buddhist standards, it is not too far from the truth. Many people understand Buddhism this way. The denial of the self is used as a proxy for self-esteem problems, just as Christians often use God’s promises to make themselves feel comforable when there is something awry. People take Buddhist practices as a way of hiding from their apprehensions. Instead of furling themselves headlong into life and being disappointed with it at times and satisfied at others, they withdraw in pain, renouncing themselves from the world in its entirety. This is an act of supreme pain. One might sequester themselves off like a monk or detach entirely from experience. These are deep psychological wounds which I think Buddhism can help, but religiosity is likely to only aggravate them. In some ways, Buddhism is actually a bail-out philosophy, though in other ways it is much more moderate. Either way, it is deeply sensitive to the inner nature of experience.
Buddhist teachings are not instructions to become compulsive, they are instructions to be loosed from such. Diving into meditative practices can be deeply helpful for someone or it can enlodge vices further beneath conscious awareness. Great pains can motivate someone to seek transformation, but Buddhism is not intended to be a substitute for real life. Its religious practices are supposed to support real life, not to annihilate it. Antipathy to the self is not the inner meaning of Buddhism, because that is to treat nothingness like it is a real thing that must supplant the material world. No, Buddhism is a journey of consciousness and nothing else.
Nothingness is experienced as an absence. Poverty, hunger, loss, pain—all of these show the emptiness of life. Life is subject both to our selfhood and impermanence and therefore differentiates from our understanding of it in its essence and in its changes. However, even though we know nothingness best through absence, it is not a material thing and cannot be conceptualized in material terms. Just as matter can be grasped, nothing cannot be grasped. This means that, although absence is an experience of grasping and finding nothing, nothing is not something to be grasped. Matter is what we grasp. Knowledge of nothing is not a grasping knowledge. It is totally different in kind. In this way, Buddhism is extremely balanced. For the consequence of this differentiation between positive knowledge of matter and negative knowledge of not-matter is that the way enlightenment appears is not mere asceticism. Buddhism calls for a wholehearted transformation of understanding. Once this has occured, it is as if the whole world is allowed back into consciousness. For that which is ordinary has been dissected, examined to its roots, and reborn into a new light. After this, it is not necessary to repeat the doctrines of dismantling reality to oneself over and over, nor to seek them. The process becomes organic. Weeds will remain in the garden, but the garden is flourishing. If weeds reappear, the process can be repeated. But it is not necessary to remain in meditation for its own sake. Meditation is not a lodge for one to hide in forever. Meditation is the very immediate experience of oneself, which can be like a home, but is not right whereas the world is wrong. Stillness and movement can both be meditations. Extroversion and introversion are equally valid paths because the content of meditation is this form we have and the knowledge we have of it as such. If nothingness were the supreme object of contemplation, then introversion and asceticism would be the right ways.
You might be predicting what I’m going to say. Yes, Buddhists often come across as introverted ascetics. This is not what it seems, though. The proper intent of such practices is the transformation of ordinary consciousness, which would otherwise assume reality positively. It is easier to change someone else’s mind by appearing opposite to what would be normal. Unfortunately, these practices are often understood to indicate a punk-rock rejection of the physical world, not as transformative instruments. Because nothingness is not a thing and matter is, and because we know them in this way as different, we merely need to apprehend our consciousness as such in order to find Buddha-compassion. We do not need to reject things. We do not need to affirm things. This is the point of it. We have things because that’s the way we are, not because things are independent of us and must therefore be had. Nor do we abandon things because we must be independent of the individuated forms themselves, we abandon the mere forms of individuation as a limited experience. Our world is totally interdependent. Whatever brings us to this point is valid. Being consumed with one way of doing things or with rejecting ways altogether are equally invalid and unhealthy. What we need is not the rejection of the self as a word, but the rejection of the self as a persisting perfect thing. The quality of self is inherited from the forms of our consciousness—nothing more is needed. It is the conditioning of our consciousness that is preeminently important for enlightenment, not the denial of its contents.
This is where I get real antsy. Buddhism tends to affirm this last point only very slightly, probably because teachers know that people need to be bonked on the nose repeatedly from misunderstanding them and using their words for their own power dynamics. Sure thing. However, what of the more balanced position? Is it simply too difficult a doctrine to proclaim openly? Sure, there is not a self as it would seem. But to continue in denying the self seems like some sort of masochistic game. You can’t understand the self as not being a self, except as a form of consciousness. We can’t abandon the notion of it simply because I am the one realizing it, even if I am not what I seem to be, being more or different than the self-production. Moreover, if we deny describing myself as a thing, then I should also describe nothing at all, since all concepts fall short of their true objects. Sure thing. But then language would be useless, so would senses, and bodily existence, and I should just close my eyes and die already. No, the aim of the Buddhist path therefore must not be this, for such would not be compassion but ultimate inward hatred. The aim of the Buddhist path must not be to stop us from talking about the world or from experiencing it, but to radically change our inner awareness of all experience. So, in a way, the self is real, but it is real conditionally. The play it puts on it is not evil, it is merely a play that if taken on its own right ends up being destructive.
Again, I want more Buddhists to teach this. Their teachings are too hesitant to share their inner essence. They assume too often that the secrets must be held except through mediation or through a personal teacher. But this is too human a tendency. The Buddha-path is not a concrete path. It should be treated less prestigiously, more organically. It is not necessary to hold off on teachings for a great long while. The teachings are appropriate on whatever conditions are appropriate, not what is understood to be the case.
As such, I want to hear more about how the enlightened no-self of ordinary speech, action, desiring relates to the transcendental-self of Vedanta Hinduism. In what ways do we experience the freedom and openness of other-consciousness rather than self-obsession along either path? Are these not functionally the same, having their own pitfalls which must be overcome? Furthermore, I would go so far to say that the Christian notion of a self, rightly understood, is much like that of qualified non-dualism (vishistadvaita) in Hinduism. The Spirit is in the self just as the self is in the Spirit, and the Spirit is equal with God.
I find that avoidances of the doctrine of selfhood are not courageous enough to face the reals of life. Yet there is an otherness which cannot be apprehended as the same. This otherness is very satisfying and necessary for transformation. It is too much to reduce all matter to ought or to naught, essentially. That is a psychic demolition derby. The claim is a tool, designed to indicate to your mind the source of its content. When you think that matter is nothing, the real content of matter flashes into awareness. This is the point of it. We do not deny matter, we find it. Likewise when we honor the oughts of causal activity by being enravelled in it, we do it as an experiment. The way things are is subject to change. This is the great beauty and mystery and freedom of life. We are bound to it as subjects, but it does not stay the same. More needs to be emphasized on this. There are too many shoddy self-help manuals that stick to the essentials. These are designed to advertise to a large customer base, to be easily marketable for the publisher, they are not true reflections of the content of contemplation. Esoteric doctrines can be written because form is emptiness and emptiness is form.
27 June, 2020
San Luis Obispo