Subject and object may be spoken merely for convenience of
communication, putting very gross labels is necessary for
communication. It does not necessarily imply that there is a true
inherent existence of subject or object. Anyway, we are not using
laws of logic or dualistic concepts to reject dualistic concepts.
We are just challenging, investigating, and pointing out at the
fallacy of inherent and dualistic concepts that we have been
employing in our perception and communication in day to day living.
We do not create new concepts, we simply investigate and expose our
existing concepts/views.
For example, we know there is no inherently, independently,
unchangingly existing thing called a "weather" that can be pinned
down as an entity.
But for convenience we say "how is the weather like tomorrow"?
"Weather" is simply a convenient label or convention for pragmatic
purposes of communication. It does not correspond to a solid
reality. 'Weather' is empty of any inherent core or essence that
can be pinned down or located anywhere, it is merely a name imputed
on an ever-changing process of clouds forming and parting, rain
falling, wind blowing, lightning, snow, etc etc.
The same goes for 'car' and 'self'. Even though there is no
inherently, solidly existing 'car', we speak of car for
convenience. No inherently existing car can be pinned down or
established, merely an aggregated appearance that functions
interdependently as a gestalt.
See
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.sg/2009/03/conceptions-of-self-in-western-and.html
It is important to realize what is meant by the “self”
rejected by the Buddha as illusory. Not only are human beings
declared to lack a soul or self, but so is everything else: rivers,
mountains, this paper, and your pencil, all lack a separate self.
What this means is that they cannot have any existence except in
terms of the interconnected net of causal conditions that made
their existence possible. All things (including human beings) are
composites, in other words, they are composed of parts, and have no
real existence other than as temporary (impermanent) collections of
parts. They are essentially patterns, configurations, or
Gestalten rather than objectively existing separate
entities. They possess no separate essence, self, or soul that
could exist by itself, apart from the component parts and
conditions.
Consider, for example, an automobile. Does it have an
essence or a “soul” when separated from its component parts? Does
it have any real existence apart from its parts? One could try the
following mental exercise. Removing one of the tires of the car,
one could ask oneself, is this the car? Successively taking away
the windshield, a door, a piston, a bolt, the radiator cap, and
continuing until the last piece of metal, plastic, glass, or rubber
has been removed, one would never find the part which, if removed,
transforms what remains into a non-car. Such part, if found, would
have represented the essence or the “soul” of the car, and yet it
was nowhere to be found. Now all we have is a pile of parts—where
is the car? At which point did the car disappear? If we reflect
carefully we are left with the realization that there never was
a car there—all that was there was a conglomerate of parts
temporarily connected in a certain way, so as to result in a
particular mode of functioning, and “car” was just a convenient
label to designate this working arrangement. The word “car” is
nothing but a label for the gestalt formed by the
constituent parts, and although it is true (as realized by
Wertheimer and the other Gestaltists) that the whole is
more than the sum of the parts (one cannot drive sitting on any of
the separate parts, or on a random heap of them, but driving is
possible when one puts them together in a certain way), it is
equally true that a gestalt cannot continue to exist when
separated from its parts. The gestalt, the “whole,” cannot
exist by itself; it does not have a separate self or
“soul.”
But what about a person? According to Buddhist psychology,
what we call a “person” is the composite of five groups of elements
or skandhas. The skandhas are form, feelings,
perceptions, impulses, and consciousness. Just as an automobile is
a temporary collection of car parts, a person is a temporary
arrangement of these five aggregates or skandhas. There is
no separate, independent self or soul that would be left if we
removed form (which includes the body), feelings, perceptions,
impulses, and consciousness. While these aggregates are together,
the functioning gestalt we call a person exists; if they
are removed, the gestalt ceases to be. For this reason,
the self can be said to be “empty” of reality when separated from
its component aggregates— a view of the self radically different
from Western perspectives. But it is not only the self that is
empty, and cannot exist by itself; the skandhas themselves
are also empty.
The five skandhas, like everything else, are
dependently arisen, and cannot exist by themselves. Take the form
of one’s body, for example. What would remain of it, if one removed
one’s perception of it, one’s feelings about it, one’s impulses to
act on it or with it, and one’s conscious awareness of it? Form is
empty of reality when separated from perceptions, feelings,
impulses, and consciousness. And what about feelings? They also
cannot exist by themselves. Feelings are feelings about something,
about one’s body, one’s perceptions, one’s impulses, one’s state of
consciousness. The same is true of the remaining
skandhas—each one is composed of the other four. They are
in a state of interdependent co-origination, they inter-are (Hanh,
1988).
The teaching of “dependent origination” is at the core of
the Buddha’s teaching or Dharma. In its simplest
expression, dependent origination is a law of causality that says
“this is, because that is; this is not, because that is not;
when this arises, that arises; when this ceases, that ceases.”
Despite the apparent simplicity of this formulation, it is a
farreaching principle, that leaves nothing untouched, and, in fact,
causally connects everything in the universe, for it implies that
all phenomena, whether they be external objective events or
internal subjective experiences, come into existence depending on
causes and conditions without which they could not be. These causes
and conditions can themselves be either internal mental states or
external events.
Borrowing an example from Hanh (1988), consider a piece of
paper: it can be, because a tree was, since the tree had to be in
order to be cut down to make the paper. This same piece of paper,
is also because there was rain and sunshine, for without them the
tree could not have grown. The same is true for the seed and the
fertile soil, and for the logger who cut the tree down, for without
them, the tree would not have been there for the paper to be. But
for the logger to be, his parents had to be, and the food they
consumed, and all the conditions that made their lives possible,
and those lives upon which theirs in turn depended, and on, and on.
There is no end to this causal interconnectedness. Everything in
the universe is connected to this piece of paper through a web of
causal conditions. If the component conditions are regarded as
elements, we can say that this piece of paper is composed of
non-paper elements, or, in other words, that conditions other than
the paper itself are necessary for the paper to exist. Stated
differently, the paper cannot exist by itself; it lacks a separate
self, soul, or essence. The same is true for anything else in the
universe, including a person. It is also true of cognitive or
mental states, because for every emotion, for every perception, for
every thought, there are necessary causal conditions without which
they would not have come into being. Everything is dependently
arisen, everything exists only if the necessary conditions are
there. This means that nothing is ever truly independent or
separate from everything else.
I agree that while it does not necessarily imply that there
is a true inherent existence of subject or object, neither does it
necessarily imply there is none. And the word in dispute would be
"inherent" which I suspect could be subjected to equivocation.
The word "weather" is used to describe the conditions like
raining, snowing, hot, cold etc etc. I have yet come
across anyone who is of sound mind who thinks that weather is a
thing, it is not. Since no one attributes such a notion to
weather, why talk as if people do? But I have yet come across
anyone who thinks that a car is not a car or does not exist when he
has just driven it and parked it. And it surely doesn't work
when your car gets clamped or you get a parking violation
ticket.
I think I understand your point about dependent origination. But
it is infinite regress and not an answer if you do not have a
necessary being. Which is where God comes into the picture. A
self-existent, independent being, eternal, spiritual being, who is
the source of all that exists but who Himself is not dependent on
any other. Instead of there being no-self or each one recognising
himself as "I am", there is a God who exists eternally and who is
known as "I AM", through whom an by whom all things are made, in
heaven and on earth i.e. the universe.
