http://purifymind.com/NonexistenceSelf.htm
Nonexistence of
Self
By Paul Knierim
The idea of a self is fundamental, yet strangely inscrutable. "I
exist" seems an obvious truth, but who is the "I"? Is there a
single distinct "I" experiencing existence, or is it unfair to say
that the "I" is distinct from the experience? Is it sensible to
imagine there not being a self? Buddhist philosophy asserts that
the conception of a separate self having the experiences is a
mistake. Contradicting the assertions of the Samkhya and Yoga
philosophies, Buddhists argue that the self is nothing more than an
arbitrary label for a collection of parts.
In the view of Samkhya and Yoga, the self is an undeniable fact.
Where there is a scene, it is argued, there is a witness. Where
there is an observation, there is an observer. Where there is
something known, there is a knower. The mind isn't properly
described as being the self, for it's clearly known. Thoughts are
all observations of their own sort, as they must pass before
consciousness. Consciousness is of thoughts, therefore
consciousness cannot be the thoughts themselves according to
Samkhya and Yoga. In the Yoga-Sutra this argument is given against
the mind being the self: "Whatever objects color the mind, that
object becomes known. That which becomes known is an object. That
which is not thus known is purusa and is unknown" (482). Anything
which is known must have a knower, so the known mind must be known
by the true self. What's left over after the options of the self
being the body or the mind are dismissed is a self which is a pure
principle of observation -- consciousness in itself. This self,
called purusa, is the eternal observer before whom temporary
thoughts pass. We have a difficulty in that the self cannot be
known (it being the knower of any knowledge, always the subject and
never an object), but confidence that the self must be there since
it's been logically derived.
The Buddhist rejects the self, preferring to say that it's no more
than a label for a collection. Just as we label objects in the
world around us arbitrarily, we invent an arbitrary label with the
word "self" that has no reality beyond the parts. "Chariot" is a
word we use to keep track of a conglomeration of descriptions:
wheels, axles, reins, yoke, banner-staff, goading-stick, pole, et
cetera. It isn't proper to say that these things unite to become
the chariot because there's no real unification, the parts remain
only the parts, it's just we who imagine some sort of unity by use
of the word "chariot" as the unifier. Objectively there's nothing
that "chariot" adds to what's there compared to if we didn't treat
it as though it were unified... all the parts are simply all the
parts, our label adds nothing. So it is as well with the self.
Nagesana explains this with reference to his own being in the
Milindapanha: "Nagesana is but a way of counting, term,
appellation, convenient designation, mere name for the hair of my
head, hair of my body... brain of the head, form, sensation,
perception, the predispositions, and consciousness. But in the
absolute sense there is no ego here to be found" (284). The self is
not form, not sensation, not perception, not predispositions, not
consciousness... nor is it something else, nor is it the
unification. The self is not to be found, it's only the invented
label which is imagined to mean something but actually adds nothing
to the picture beyond what was already there.
The Samkyha and Yoga philosophers may object to the fundamental
ideas of the Buddhist conception as being incoherent, but must
establish that their own view as more coherent if the objections
are to be effective. The Buddhist is denying, it would seem, the
most obvious facts of the world: that there are things in it and
someone perceiving it. The existence of objects being known is
proof of the existence of the knower, the objects cannot be known
without a knowing subject existing. Patanjali says of the mind, "It
is not self-illuminating, being the knowable" (482). This proves
there must be a self, as the fact of the knowable means something
must be doing the knowing. The Buddhist seems simply
self-contradictory, uttering such nonsense as "The Path exists, but
not the traveler on it" (289). If someone is traveling the path,
then the traveler on the path must exist, and to say otherwise is
surely nonsense. The Samkhya philosopher, however, is in the
situation of asserting the existence of something which is defined
as unknown (because it's the knower) and impossible to experience
(because it's the experiencer). Many philosophers would argue that
it's never proper to claim to existence of something which by
definition can never be conceived of -- if you see the tip of an
iceberg perhaps you can deduce the rest, but if you have no sample
at all of what sort of thing it is then you have no business
asserting it. The Samkhya idea of the purusa, then, cannot be
trusted based on appeals to intuition unless there's some sort of
sample of what it could be -- otherwise it might be more reasonable
to say that the intuition that there's a subject for every object
only applies to the experiences within the mind and is misapplied
when used on the mind itself... for after all, we derived the
intuition only from sense experiences. Perhaps Patanjali sees these
objections, for Yoga provides an attempt at showing a way to verify
the existence of the self. In the Yoga-Sutra, Patanjali believes
he's showing a process through which the true purusa can be
experienced in itself, the method to have the subject without any
object. But how coherent, exactly, is the idea of self-observation?
Surely it's the impossibility of self-observation that motivated
the idea of an observing unobservable self to begin with, and if
we're willing to assert self-observation we might as well assert
the mind as doing it. The idea that subject and object require each
other was just moments ago being used to refute the Buddhist, so
how then can we suddenly moving to talking about a subject by
itself? If there can be no object without a subject, how can there
be a subject without an object... how can there be any way to
distinguish one to say that it exists, without the other being
there to distinguish it? Logically, the consciousness in itself
would have to be either total nothingness or an experience of
another meta-self experiencer (which would lead to an infinite
homuncular regress). It would seem then that the objections to
Buddhism by Samkhya and Yoga philosophy are not especially strong,
in view of how their alternative to the Buddhist falls victim to
some similar attacks -- yet it remains worthwhile to see if the
Buddhist can deal with the objections more easily, in order to
determine if the views will be stuck on equally questionable
footing.
The Buddhist position can be clarified to show how it sidesteps the
problems it's accused of. The denial of self is not a denial that
there are perceptions and consciousness, rather it's a denial of
unity and a denial of absoluteness. There is a chariot so far as
common talk goes, and it would seem nonsensical to deny that
there's a chariot -- but we must remember that we're addressing the
idea of a unified real absolute chariot, not just asking if the
situation has arisen where in our language we're supposed to say
"chariot." There is a chariot there, but only in a relational sense
-- the relation of the parts to each other. It's entirely arbitrary
to try to call that set of relations a unified whole, as it would
be just as easy to extend it out and call the entire world a
chariot. There's nothing in the relations themselves which says how
many or what kind of relations to include in some sort of absolute
unified whole... there's nothing in the parts of a chariot that
says "I'm part of a chariot." The unified chariot, the absolute
chariot, does not exist -- it's only what the senses and mind
structures cause the mind to imagine. This carries over again to
talking about the self -- the thesis in not that nothing exists,
it's that things are only there in a relational sense (with
arbitrary and fuzzy boundaries) rather than an absolute sense. The
chariot is the expression of the relation of parts, and so is the
self the expression of the relation of parts. This is emphasized in
the Visuddhi-magga: "When we come to examine the parts one by one
we discover that in the absolute sense there is no tree; in exactly
the same way the words 'living entity' and 'ego' are but a mode of
expression for the presence of the five attachment groups, but when
we come to examine the elements of being one by one, we discover
that in the absolute sense there is no living entity there to form
a basis for such figments as 'I am,' or 'I'; in other words, that
in the absolute sense there is only name and form" (285). Our
attempts to express an absolute reality of self are mistaken, for
there is nothing there except exactly what's there. There is no
unity, only relations which we hopelessly attempt to turn into
unity. It's not that we're wrong to talk of things existing, it's
that we're wrong to think we mean something absolute or unified by
it, for on close inspection everything we call an object (including
the self) is no more than relations.
The critic may still object that the Buddhist hasn't offered an
account of how experiences exist. To this, the Buddhist may reply
that experiences are made up of skandhas, skandhas being
essentially aggregates or bundles. The five skandhas are form,
sensation, perception/cognition, predispositions, consciousness.
The most important as far as analyzing why experience seems to be
as it seems to be is the consciousness. The consciousness (vijnana
skandha) is the skandha which splits things into subject and
object. This occurs when a sense organ (brain included) comes into
contact with something -- it's here that the duality of experience
is added. Consciousness creates a split into experiencer and
experience, a split which is not real beyond consciousness.
Normally we think of experience being created by subject and
object, because consciousness forces things into such description.
In actuality, says the Buddhist, both the subject and the object
are aspects of experience. The subject/object distinction is
created by the consciousness aspect of experience, rather than
being the reality of the way things are as the Samkhya or Yoga
philosopher would have it. Samkhya would have a self sitting in a
movie theater watching life on the screen. The Buddhist would have
nothing but the experiences on the screen, with no theater or
viewer, and for that matter no screen. The Buddhist, instead of
appealing to the necessity of a subject for every object that seems
so natural, says that the subject/object distinction is illusory
(an aspect of experience itself) and so eliminates the problem of
looking for a self.
For the Buddhist, the knowing that goes on is only relational,
parts relating to other parts. By avoiding the absolute sense of
something being known, the Buddhist also avoids the implication of
an absolute self. When the mind knows something, that's just a
pattern of relations with no absolutes involved. There is no
observer of the mind, for the thoughts stand without need of any
absolutes to put them in context. When subject and object are
illusion and reality contains neither subject nor object, there's
no need to invent a self to fill the hole of
"subject".
The nature of the self is a problem that has plagued philosophy
from the earliest times. The Buddhist argues that this problem is a
psychological problem -- the feeling of a need to find something
that isn't there. If the self seems strangely inscrutable, that's
because there's nothing there to examine. The quest for the unified
self is doomed by the simple fact that there's nothing more there
than what's there, there is no unity. If the subject/object
distinction is truly illusory, then our intuitions of separateness
and unified nature of a self opposed to a world are only a part of
the nature of experience, and not an actual reality
beyond.
