Verhoeven Martin - Buddhist Ideas About No-Self and the Person

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Buddhist Ideas about

No-Self and he Person

Martin Verhoeven

Abstact: The uhor rgue h he docrine of no-e lhoughndmenl

o Buddhi eching, i widely miunderood form of nihilim. The eenil eching i h ll phenomen, including he humn e re compoie,nd h herefore hey hve no permnen eence of heir own The Buddhdid no, however, dicoun he experience of e on he conrry, he heldh our chmen o elf i he ulime cue of uering

Thi pper w preened o he fourh nnul Norhern Cliforni Chn/ZenCholic Dilogue, Jnu 2006.

Mere suering sts, no sueer s found;The deeds are bu no doer of he deeds is thereNvana s, bu not he man tha entes it;The path is but no raveler on i is seen.

-om he Visuddhimagga X

Be a eson of the Way Wth no mndAlthough you'e a esonThere's n o self hen he Way of being a eson is efeced,Budhahood accomplshes tself.

Chan Maste Hsan Hua

The idea that no permanent sef is to be found n the basc elements of

our expeience is at the heart of the Buddhist path to beation. The

nmn doctrne taught by the Buddha pocams the impersonal

ity of al living phenomena of exstence: thee s no self, nothng belongs to a self. In the Buddhist teachng, no being has any enduing essence o

personalty; eveyone, even the Buddha, exsts in name only. The name

meey efes to a congeres of psycho-physical eements which aise and

vansh om moment to moment, carried along from begnnngess tme

ISSUE , OCTOBER 33



Martin Verhoeven

on a turning wheel of lves. I ndeed, the rst stages of enghtenment are

marked by a diect and deep understandng that our sense of"I is not what

o how we imagne it to be-solid enduring nvioabe and autonomous

Rathe, it s a habtfomed constructon hed togethe by caving, clngng,

averson and attachment

Despte ts centra impotance the concept of noself geneates more

conson and msundestandng than almost any othe Buddhst dea "I

just can't seem to wap my mnd around nosef! s a remak I fequently

hea fom begnnng students n faness so thony s the doctne of no

sef that f one could easly wap the mnd around t, suppose one would

aleady be a Buddha To a large degree the probem s one of unque de

ences n anguage, cutue and psychoogy, as they appy East and West.

n taking about the "self;' it must be remembeed that the Buddhawas referring to a concept tman, as t appeared n the Hindu Upanishad

tadton Contray to what was asserted by the Brahmins, the Buddha hed

that the "self conceived as a pemanent, stable, eternal and unchanging

entty does not exst anywhere At the rsk of ovesimping a hghly

complex idea, we could say that the deent notons of tman al refeed

to abstact ontoogica dmensions of the indvdual-the"sef of cosmic

conscousness that denties wth the unvese All wee thought to be

somethng lke an abding entity, a"soul,"inne self or"hgher sef that

was uncondtoned, pemanent and selfexsting. n othe words, tman

efered pmaly to a presumed phosophcal and metaphyscal entty not

to a psychologcal and empica concept of "self used in contempoary

Westen discouseBut at anothe leve the pobem is decty related to a universa ex

perience that goes beyond cultura o ngustic dierences: Frst, what if

anythng, n this word s stabe, xed and independenty abidng? Secondy,

"who or "what am ? Am I my body? My mnd? Some combnaton? f

so, "who or "what exists before I am born? "Who or "what emains

ae body and mind depart? Even when examinng man or the person

n an emprica and mmedate way the dea of"self s both scientcaly

and phlosophicaly poblematc. No matte how dligenty we seach an

enduing entity we ca "sef emains eusve t tuns out that wapping

one's mnd around "self s no ess fomdabe than wrappng one's mnd

around noself.

The Buddhst doctne of nosef states that nether within the physcaand menta phenomena of existence no outside of them can anything be

found that in the ultimate sense mght be egarded as a selfexsting, eal

egoentity a soul or any othe abiding substance Lacking a pemanent and

ndependent nature nothng n the wod exhbts any form of unchanging

34 RELGION EAST & WEST



Buddhist Ideas about No-Se and the Person

reality. The impcatons of this teaching mght be claed by stating it anothe way, st as t apples to dharmas, that s, to phenomena, and secondas it apples to people (Howeve, t should be emembeed that the to aeinsepaably interwoven as the "world and "self ae intedependent).

Fist, "a phenomena are devod of self (sarva dharma antman)means that all things ack a natue of ther own (sabha) A phenomena of the word ean on each other in a vbatng dance of constant ux.As all things aise and fade away govened by the ebb and ow of changingcondtions, nothing exists independenty; eveything eles on somethngese ad nntum Because a phenomena arise and exist interdependently (prata-samuda)they are ndamentaly"empt (nya) becausethey have no substantal sef-exsting natue they ae chaacterized as"not

sef or moe precsey as havng the condtion of"non-essentialty No-sef and emptiness then ndcate"no nature of ts own (nihsabha) meaningthat there s nothing that s of tself immutable m or lasting: nothing wecan obseve has a xed fom that s subject nethe to arisng o passngaway Ths s why the Buddha said to nanda: "Empty s the world, empty is the wold:

In what way, enerble sir, is it said, 'empty is the world?" It is,Ananda, because it is emp of se and what belongs to se that it is said, empty i the world." 1

Second, as concenng peope the"self o "me s aso a conditonedentty and theefoe lke al other phenomena nsubstantia and empty Self

is devoid of self Our own condition is one of non-essentiaty "Me and"mne aso lack substantiatyI am born, matue, age and vanishandutimately as Shakespeae amented "Nothing 'gainst tmes scythe canmake defense But om the Buddhist point of vew, we ae "empty and"not sef we before we decline and die All along, there has been no selfony a sees of tansitory phenomena whch cannot be hed or stayed muchlke a rive as Heacltus obseved This early Geek phosophe pontedout that when one steps into a movng rive, pulls out ones foot, and stepsn again the rve has moved on and is n fact a deent rive2 Seand me ae words that efe to an uson o mrage that exsts only as long as t sgrasped at We ke to thnk we have some endung coe essencea sef o a soulwhich s the subject of ou expeences lke someone sittng in a

theate watching a move projected on a screen We fee our self o ego to be a witness of what happens, like a movegoer But the Buddha insstedths so-caled self is meely a bunde of physca and menta phenomena kept gong by gnoance and dese

SSUE 6, OCTOBER 2006 35



Martin Verhoeven

Buddhism, then does not advance a concept of a permanent self. Hu

man bengs tenacously cing to a mistaken idea of self, and ths n turn gves

rise to pde, selshness and attachment to sef That which hods continualy

to the dea of sef s sometmes termed mnas.As this doctrine applies to

the ego, or "me:' t is altenatey endeed as the teaching of"impesonal

ty. Breaking free of this confused attachment to a arge degee marked the

successful competon of the Buddhas jouney to"enightenment Wth

such had-won insght nto the truth of no-self came an end to sueng

and enty into a state of profound peace, that is, nrvana Ths state is oen

mistakeny undestood to mean"extinction It is tue that wth the reaiza

ton of nivana, the tansitory psycho-physica eements which consttuted

the Buddhas fase personaity dsappeaed wthout a tace

just as all the mangoes attached to a stem bearing a bunch of man goes undergo the fate of that stem if it is broken, so the body of theTathagata has broken what leads to existence. As long as his body lasts, gods and men will see him On the breaking up of the body, at the end of his life, gods and men will see him no more.3

Howeve, as ths passage caefuy points out, the Buddha does not say

there is nothing, ony that what is is not accessble to the eyes. In another

reated passage this impotant dstincton is dawn even moe ceay.

just as the ame touched by the wind goes towards stillness, goesom sight, so the sage deliered om his names and bodies [or theve impure aggregates] enters stillness, goes om the sight of all ..He who has attained stillness, no measure can measure; to speak of him there are no words What the mind might conceie anishesT hus eery path is closed to discussion4

Ths subtle dstncton is not theoogical har-spitting. It conveys a

psychologcal and spitua insght that les at the heat of the Buddhist

idea of self and peson hee s, it appeas, a concept of pemanence in

Buddhism assocated wth the state of nivana, but it is not sef or anythng

a sef can possess. Paadoxicay, nrvana is the condtion noself; it exists

but s ee of a self We wil eturn to this paadox ate.

The AnattaLakkhana Sutta (Discouse on the Chaacteristc of No

Sef) was the second core teaching that the Buddha preached to his st ve

dscpes aer his enlghtenment. When the discipes head this teaching,they became Ahats (the word itealy means"wothy of espect and efers

to enghtened pesons below the stage of Buddhahood) So important is

this teaching to a poper understanding and pactice of Buddhism that t

is consideed a false view (tma-d�ti) to hold that there is an abidng self




Buddhist Ideas about NoSe and the Person

or substancethat is, to caim the self is real and permanent, when t is n

fact an aggegate composed ony of ve eements (skandhas) f one

holds false views one cannot competely eliminate sueing and eaze

nvana. Rght views samyag-d�ti which constitute the rst step of the

Eghtfod Path consider as imaginay even that higher sense of a supa

mundane sef or soul which Hndus caed tman

0 Bhikkhus, when neither se nor anything pertaining to se cantruly and really be found, this speculative iew: "The universe isthat tman Soul; I shall be that aer death, permanent, abiding,everlasting, unchanging, and I shall exist as such for eterniis it not wholly and completely foolish?5

No-self is arguably the cental teaching of Buddhism Al the emanngBuddhst doctrnes, to one degree or another, may be found in othe philo

sophc systems and elgons, both astern and Western But the atman

doctine as the Buddha taught t and meant it to be used is specc to Bud

dhsm. The snguarty of ths concept might also paty expan why t is

widey misintepreted as either a knd of nhiism or as a dena of causaity

It s simply lost in tanslaton because thee are no eady equivalents for

rendering the concept into othe systems of thought and language, ether

of ast o West, then o now

Unlike Indian Brahmanc schoos and Western phlosophy Buddhsm

avoids takng about exstence in terms of noumenon o metaphyscal sub

stance, for the smpe reason that human beings lack the cognitve powe

to recognize such things; they do not have the abity to discern an eternaland unchanging matter or being, no anything ese, which tanscends both

time and space All we can know and observe s subject to arsing abdng

change and extincton It s the phenomenalthat whch s located n tme

and spacethat can be understood by means of sensaton and percepton;

thus, it is withn the phenomena that we come to ecognize and evaluate

our lves

This attenton to the here and now" as the ground of awakening s

wonderly explcated in the famous Potthapdasutta6 Here, the search for

tuth beyond what one can conm o deny by one's own drect knowledge

s compared to a young man's faing n ove with a beautiful young gil

who exsts only in hs dreamy imagination. Speculatng on the metaphysical

and noumenal is of no benet to the goa of regous pactice at least inthe orthopaxc tradtion whch s the undestanding and elmination of

sueng (duhkha. mancipaton om sueing can only come through

obseving thngs as they really ae; lookng fo emancpation apart fom

the gound under one's feet" is useless The great seventh-century Chnese

ISSUE 6, OCTOBER 26 37



Martin Verhoeven

Chan master Hui Neng put it this way:

Bodhi [enlightenment] exists in this world, not apart om it.

Searching for bodhi apart om this world

Is like looking for a hare with horns/

Thus, the Buddha imited hs teachngs to what would ead to caming,

knowedge enlghtenment and nrvana Eveything ese s but specuaton

He refused to discuss certain thngs not because he acked answes but be

cause umnatng over them dd not contrbute to deverance. Fo exampe,

when Phaluguna who beieved in the existence of a sou and pesonaity

asked: "What is the beng that touches fees desres and grasps? The

Buddha replied: "I deny that there s any beng that touches, feels, deses

and gasps Convesey when Vatsagota who no longer beieved n theexstence of a sou asked whether it wee tue that the sef did not exst

the Buddha efused to answe n the negatve "in orde not to conrm the

doctrine of the ascetcs and Brahmns who beieve in annihilation8

This is also the eason fo the famous parabe of the poison aow9 In

ths story the Buddha scolds his discpe Maunkyaputta fo obsessng ove

classical metaphysca mnd-twisters he Buddha stresses that as a teache

he only explains the Four Noble Truths:

Suering, the cause of suering the cessation of suering and the

way leading to the cessation of suering ..This is usel is n-

damentally connected with the spiritual holy life is conducie to

aersion detachment cessation, tranquili, deep penetration ll

realization, nirvana.10

Generay speaking then Buddhism concens tsef excusively with the

phenomenal woda world in whch a phenomena are conditoned and

n a state of constant change. The unceasing ux and the seemingly contn

gent nature of existence ae expeienced as a bittersweet state: one of pan

and sueng accompaned by eeting joy and peasure As this goes on day

to day, lfe to life, t is called that which "keeps gong' he elease

om this cycca unsatisfactory state is nivana wo rendtions of ths

teachingone philosophical, one poetcappear n the folowng veses

All phenomena are truly impermanent

Subject to the dharmas of arising and decayWhat has arisen ends in destruction

heir cessation is ease.

Colors are agrant but they fade away.

In this world of ours, no one lasts foreer





Cross the deep mountains of conditioned things today,

There will be no more shallow dreaming, no more intoxicationY

It is not surpsing then, that Chan/Zen medtaton pactce oen

centes on the nvestgation of the question "Who? -the ho o '"

that is at the center of the poblem of suerng and the ending of sueing.

It woud also seem that ths questionng of the sef s reated to the"geat

doubt whch is generated by most foms of Chan/Zen pactce. "Geat

doubt precedes"geat enightenment in this meditation exercse, which

culmnates n breaking through into an understanding of ths conundrum

of"sef o"who.12 So goes the Chan/Zen iddle:

Who is me?I am who?

ou ask me,I ask 'who?13

What we commony ca"me o"I in Buddhsm is seen as a mndbody

phenomenon conssting of ve eements, or skandhas:physical foms ( rpa)

feeing (vedan) percepton (saj impulses (saskra) and conscous

ness (vijnaThese psychophyscal eements are the bass fo a false and

ilusory sense of"sef fase and lusoy because al ae chaacterized by

mpermanence, suffeing and the absence of any nheent nature of the

own. The Buddha eaborated:

Monks! Form is impermanent. That which is impermanent is pain l That which is painl is [the result of a false idea of] sel Onewho is without seknows, This is not mine, I am not this this is not my sel" Thus should it be rightly regarded and consideredMonksFeeling is impermanent .Perception is impermanent ....Mental constituents are impermanent Consciousness is impermanent Thus should it rightly be regarded and considered.4

Stated n the moe ank language of the Chan/Zen Schoo, the skandhas

are "nothing moe than a heap of snot and a pu of wind. Led astray by

a beief in a pesonality (satkyadJ�t), the odnary peson considers his

physica form, the rst of the ve skandhas, as the Sef, or alternatelythe

Sef as possessing physca fom, physica form as pesent in the Self, and

the Self as pesent n physcal form This confuson epeats tself wth the

other four skandhas.15Noself s sometimes temed nya (empty) onyat (emptiness)

Chan/Zen Buddhsm uses the term wu ("without or"nonbeng n the

same sense. As used n a these ways, howeve, emptness and nonbeng

do not mpy nothngness or nhlsm; the tems smpy ndcate that a




Martin Verhoeven

phenomena are devoid of permanent, self-exsting status. In the Buddha's time as now there wee a varety of doctrnes running along a continuum

between to poles: eternalism and nihilism The Buddha adopted nether

postion

At one poe wee those who agued fo a divnely ceated and d

ected unvese with the promse of etena and immortal happiness for

a permanent soul or sef. At the other poe were teaches who based ther

doctines on the concept of nosef Popuar nonBuddhist views of nosef

so closey appoximated the Buddha's teachng that many students duing

the Buddha's time accepted these teachngs as Buddhstc They dveged

howeve in sgnicant ways Buddhsts caed these other teaches of the

doctrnes of no-sef the Six Teaches or the Heetica Teachers.

A summary of three of these teachngs wil suce hee. One of them that of Purakayapa argued that thee is nethe mert no sn neither

goodness nor evil; that all actions are of no eect because everythng is

soely an object, a natura thng wth no sef o any quaty beyond base

matea reaty Anothe teacher Makkhagosala denied that causalit gov

ens ou ves and actons Lfe os on and unfolds by itself, and nothng

we can do makes any dieence; good and bad ae meey playl hoaxes

and theefore no cause or powe can qucken o alter ths Such evouton

ary deteminsm encouraged eithe amoraity or a fatalistc and apathetc

indieence Stl anothe teacher, Ajta Ke8akambai, insisted that there

is absoutey nothing Peope are just aggegates of eements thee is ony

iuson and emptness, and athough we name thngs, n eaity thee are

no such things. This outlook on no-self eectivey made ts folowes fee at ease n that they neithe had to behave ghtly nor estrain themseves and

there was no reason to feel soowl or happy about anything At death all

ends n silent extincton Elements of this vew, an exteme form of nihilistic

eatvsm ae simila to some elements of postmodenism

The Buddha's doctrne of no-self does not impy ths knd of nhiism

He himsef never dened the exstence of the peson or the sgncance of

sefcultvaton He ony hed that ths entity was not a pemanent self or

eterna sou and moreover that clingng to t was the souce of sueing.

Mention of self n the odnary conventonal sense of the word appears

throughout the Buddhst liteature Ths concept of the odnary "self

accodng to the conventona modes of expesson s sometmes gven as

pudgala, meanng the personaty o the individua and sometimes gvenas beng (sattva) or even as sef (tman) But al such tems desgnated a

pesonal entit and according to the Buddha wee mere names for mnd

body combnations which were temporay even though subject to ebirth

Ths dstincton helps to car a moden misconcepton that the doctrne





of no-self is sef-negatng and nhlstic Buddhists use terms that n theordinary way, but not n any metaphysca sense, convey a conventona senseof self Fo exampe, n the phrase "Thus have I head:' spoken byAnandaat the beginnng of many of the sutras the " is smply the odinary orsef So too, n vese 160 of the Dhammapada "Sef is the lod of sef for who ese could the od be? By a fuy contoed self one obtains a lod, who is had to gan. n his nal instructons to hs discples the Buddhaspoke of a persona self, not an eterna self

Monks, be islands to yourselves, be a rege to yourselves, and takerege with no other Make the Dharma your island, the Dharma your refuge, and no other16

Smlaly in "The Ten ransferences:' Chapter25

of the AatamsakaSutra, we ae told that a Bodhsattva reects that "self and a iving bengsare condtoned phenomena, mee "deluded thoughts:' and yet we stil efeto them n the ordnay manner

The Bodhisatva clearly understands that no living beings areborn,

Nor are there any liing beings who turn and ow [in birth anddeath].

Although there are no living beings which can be spoken of at all,We simply follow worldly custom in falsely referring to them7

his eveyday usage s what the monk N gasena tried to convey n hs

dialogue wth the Geek kng Menande18 The monk explained that we usethe name Ngasena to designate a tempoary arangement of elements,not a pemanent individual, just as chariot is a name gven for the sakeof convenience to a oose combination of various pats (wheels, axle andhaness, made of leathe o wood, etc) Nethe a charot no N gasenathemseves have any abding essence that can be found Each nctons, but nethe has the substanta existence that the name implies.

The illusoy sef, the presumpton of an ontologcal entty behind andn chage of a ou experiences, s ust that a presumpton, a conecturehee is mental nctionngthoughts, perceptons, habts voliton feelngs, conscousness, etcbut these can be accounted fo without a selfnd whle Buddhism like modern psychology oes a rich and complex

anayss of psychoogica functions and states of mndcontact feengpecepton, voiton, attenton, vitalty, distracton, agitation, tanquity,dscursve thought and equanimity, to name a few9 yet nethe Buddhsmno moden psychoogy makes any cam fo the ultimate reaty of thesefunctons Moe recent psychoogical theory s tending to sound much like

ISSUE , OCTOBER 41



Martin Verhoeven

traditonal Buddhist thought n suggestng that sef s a conceptualized

abstaction, a constucted identity

The rather compex and specialzed Buddhst use of the tem tman,o sel has been generay msunderstood by Western ntepetes. Tansa

tors' over-itea endeings have not heped, and n cutures centeed on

notons of the autonomous, ghts-beaing indvidua, a misunderstandng

of the Buddhist concept of nosef can be sucient to reduce Buddhsm

to a life-denying nhlsm that would negate human personaty, epess

the feelings and dismiss the worth of the individua Such msconceptions

caused Cal Jung, n hs ntal encounter wth Buddhst doctine, to remak,

"Buddhism s a radical denal of lfe Once ung better understood the

teachng of noself, he not only ecanted this vew but actvey embraced

Buddhsm He wote:It was neither the history of religion nor the sudy of philosophy that

rst drew me to the world of Buddhist thought, but my professional interest as a doctor. My task was to treat psychic suering, and it was this that impelled me to become acquainted with the iew and

methods of that great teacher of humani whose principal themewas the chain of suering, old age, sickness and death.20

To consder that nonexistence of a metaphysca self means the loss of

a psychoogcal, empica sef is to slide nto the nhsm that the Buddha

warned aganst (To asset, however, that this eveyday sef constitutes more

than a tempoary condtioned name and form, that behind t or within t

thee s a permanent metaphysical self, strays into etenaism, whch theBuddha also warned against) But, wthout an empircal, persona self,

who would undertake a spitual pactice? Who would end sueing and

attain nvana? All of the exhortations to foow the moral pecepts, ad

vance aong the Eightfold Path, and pefect deeper states of mndfuness

are diected to ths person. The odinary person, with a of his or he aws

and imperfections, s nevetheless the aw material fo awakenng Awak

enng means understanding the tuth of noself, since that undestanding

s an ndspensabe peconditon for escapng the grip of our habtuay

conditioned pattern of reexve desre and graspng that ies at the oot

of a sueng

Such understanding nvolves more than mee nteectua appehenson;

t entas pesona tansfomaton It would be fai to say that, unlike otheBuddhst teachngs, where the doctrine guides and nfoms ones practce,

the teachng of nosef s the other way around: only dsciplned practce

can revea the tue meaning of the doctne Pactice and understanding

buld upon each other, but so strong s the clingng to a noton of sef that





only direct seeing can dispe it. Buddhsm, especialy as t is practced as a

lving tadition thus places a great deal of stess on sef-cutivation that wl

perfect one's human quates; only then can one each enightenment

The obstaces in the path to enightenment are not, aer al, abstract

metaphyscal puzzles but very real human fauts: greed anger gnorance

prde doubt wath enmty hypocrsy woy jealousy deceit arrogance

harmng and hutng others, ndolence, stinginess, to name a few. In medta

tion practice fo exampe part of the discplne s to obseve the wokings

of our menta states the seemingy ceaseless ise and fall of our feeings

actons, thoughts, mpuses, uges, feas, memores and perceptons. By

neithe reactng to no epressng them but simply no-

ticing them, we begin to get some sense of their trans The ordinary person

tory and nsubstanta natue, as wel as the absence of any permanent self that canbe found n themFor those is the w materialengaged n ths pactice, the resut is libeatng

Moeover, a reatvey sound and stable psycho for awakening. logcal makeup is essenta for successl practice The

absence of such is a disquali caton for "gong foth into the monastic ife.

That mental and emotiona soundness is a citerion fo admission to hgher

ordnaton should remove any msconception that the psychoogical ds

sociated pesonality, or even more the sevee foms of oss of sefidentity

assocated with psychosis or schizophrena, coud n any way be construed

as advantageous pedspostions to spirtua self-cultvatoneven less as

nearenghtenment

In actua spitua practice, the abstact concepts of noself and emptiness get transated into the moe concrete expessons of nonattachment

and nonhndrance A of ths comes about though direct nsght, not

phosophica posturng Otherwse the idea of nonattachment strs up fea;

notons of emptness and no-sef ceate anxiety The famous Heart Sutrdescibes the acquistion of ths lberated state as follows

When the enlightened being Avalokite5var was practicing the pr found peecting of wisdom, he illumined the e skandhas and sawthey are all empt thereby crssing beyond all suering and diculty .. . . Relying on this perfect wisdom, the enlightened being's mind isunimpeded, and because there is no hindrnce he is unaaid and

able to leae upsidedown dreamthinking far behind, ultimately [gaining] nirvana! 21

This state of unquaied eedom that esuts from the dect insght

into the emptness of sef aso marks the end of al suerng and fear In

the Chan/Zen Schoo ths s descibed as ony in puttng down the fase




Martin Verhoeven

can you pck up the true." The conditon of no-self is rther lnked to thearisng of the fou nnite states of mnd" of indness, compassion, joy

and equanmity The eazaton of the state of nosef thus cleary suggestsa pesonality not repessed but athe ee fom seshness and narrow selfseeking, unencumbered by negatve emotions such as fea, ange, jealousy and hatred, and dsnclned to dispays of atery, nsult and arogance hus, the epigrammatic expesson cited in the beginning of this pape: Whenthe Way of being a person s perfected, Buddhahood accompshes itsel'

he cultvaton of antman withn the Buddhst tadtion then is not self-wthdrawa but self-coectng Use of the tems kusala and akusalaascriteria for chartng one's spritua practice and understanding arms thsmpotant point Kusala refes to a those mental factos and nctons that

are positve and wholesome and tending toward goodness blamelessnessnsight, wisdom and liberaton Akusalarefers to menta actvtes associated with greed cavng hateness anger and folly ack of moral sensbltyunwhoesomeness delusion and anxiety. The Buddha advised the Kalamasthat only when one nows fo onesef that such and such is kuala o akuala" can one reiaby advance o reteat and be cetan that one is on

the right pathY So in Buddhism recting the pesonalty s not only themeans and the end of ght pactice but to a lage degree its measue Inguidng hs discipes on the path to enlightenment, the Chan Master HuNeng instructed them that n taking ege" n undertakng to become aBuddhst discpe and practtionerthey should take ege with the trueBuddha," by whch he meant they shoud cultvate ther humanty

To take rege i to rid your eential nature ofegotim and unwhole-

ome thought a well a ofjealou obequioune, deceilne,

contempt, pride, conceit, wrong view and all other unwholeome

tendencie whenever they arie. To take rege i to be alway aware of

your own trangreion and never to goip about other people' good

or bad trait Alway to be humble and polite i to have penetrted

without obtruction the eential nature23

Paradoxicay the perfecting of one's humanity, not its epresson, sthe path to Buddhahood The accompished person is empty of sel' andtheeby enters the unattached, unbound, lbeated state of compassionate wisdom where nivana and the world of suerng sasra nexpicably

unite he enlghtened peson is in the word but not of the world, entes there but is not burned, s like the lotus n the water, unsued by the mud

The Buddhist concept of no-sef has posed poblems fo Western thnkes Smpy within the Buddhst context, the dea of noself seems to cainto queston the vey basis for the belef n kama and ebith If thee s





no self then what or who is subject to the reward or retbution that esult fom acts, accordng to the workngs of karma? Moeover, if there s no

pemanent sef, what or who s rebon? The teachng of no-self aso seemsto chalenge Westen vews of the soul mmotalty ethical responsibilityreward and punishment aer death and even free wi.

The Buddha's answe to the question concerning karma was simpe,though not necessarily cear to inteect only Both the doer and the deedsae, ultmatey, empty phenomena, subject to asing, abiding declinng

and dsappearing. As the h -century Pali commentary the Viuddhimagga(The Path of Purication) expresses t:

No doer of the deeds is found,

No one who ever reaps their uits;

Emp phenomena roll on:his view alone is right and true.

And while the deeds and their resultsRoll on, based on conditions all,here is no beginning can be seen,Just as it is with seed and tree. 4

They are however at the same tme very real Ou deeds have noetena, abidng nature, but as long as we contnue to act fom sesh de

ses and attachments, we ae bound to the consequences of our actonsFeedom om the inexoabe sway of causaity comes om mastering ts

woings, not om denyng them; it comes om conqueng the sef, not fom ethe extemes of indulgng t o repessng it Nvana is a condtion where sef no longe ules where ignorance and deement (kle5a) have been "extngushed'25 Nirvana is as the Buddha sad the end of sueing

not of existence

Ths heps address the queston, "If there s no sef, who gets ebon?Thee s ebrth yet ultmatey as the Buddha said "The world is empty of a sef and anything beongng to a sel' What gets reborn, what passesfom exstence to existence during the "long nght of sasra is not apemanent stabe etena and unchangng soul or self whch s nowheeto be found, but the series of the ve psycho-physca phenomena caed

skandhas, which ae ever subect to change and rebirth These, real but

impemanent are not a sef and do not beong to a sefThese reections aso shed lght on anothe queston that nvariably

aises when the doctrne of noself is discussed "f there is no self then whoattans nrvana? Western interpeters stugged and stll struggle to makesense of this queston. Nrvana has been altenatey rendered as "nothng-




Martin Verhoeven

ness" or as extinction." The word nirvana does mean to blow out" (as ae) or the condtion of beng blown out." As descibed above, howeve,nrvana is the state n which the e of the delements, not of exstence itsef,has been extinguished. The Buddha was notably ccumspect in dscussing what this highest state entais Perhaps this was so because the amostinstinctive human tendency to regad everything though the myopic ensofme and mine" s so strong. Any elaboation on nivana rsked whetting the vey thrst (t�;) fo immotal self and ts eternal bliss that drives the tuning whee of sasra Whle the Buddha efused to discuss nirvana in ways that mpled a self " who entes o enjoys it he dd not deny that hehad attaned t

There is a sphere which is neither earth, nor water, nor re, nor ai

which is not the sphere of the innity of space, nor the sphere of theinni of consciousness, nor the sphere of nothingness, nor the sphereofeither perception or non perception, which is neither this world nor the other world, neither sun nor moon I deny that it is coming or going, enduring, death or birth. It is only the end of suering.26

Such a view of the person or sef seems counterntuitve and ambguous But as neuroscientists ae dscoveing, so does much of what we ndn exploring the elusve terain of self One of the moe nteresting theoiesin neuoscence curenty ganing ground holds that our experence of the world s active, not passve; that we manpuate what we see and experence wth our emotions and actions. Reality, so to speak, is not out thee" o

n here' but somewhere in between and highly inteactve Moeove f we do not manpuate the word, we see nothng Once we stop attendng to any given aspect of the world, nteracting with it, and projectng ouown limtatons onto it, t drops back into ndstinctness amost as f t isnot thee The world and these' fom ths pont of view, ae a mutually nteractve grand uson This a sounds very Buddhist

In the end, we ae e with somethng of a idde: utmately nothngof what we expeience of reality" or of the expeiencer" is permanent,substantial o unchanging. This view coud easly lead to a pofound senseof futility and despair wee t not fo the pomise of the third and fouthof the Fou Noble Truths (that sueing may be ended, and that the Pathis the way to end t. But without that teachng the pospect of a world

in which thee is nothng asting and no sef that that outasts death may seve to dscourage people om following any spiitua path and even fomadherng to basic moaty.27

The Buddha must have seen how easily the teaching of no-self coud be misconstued as nhlstic and could lead to despair and hopeessness.





He explicitly countered such misunderstandng by proclaming,

There is an unborn, unarisen, uncreated, unconditioned; if therewere no unborn, there would be no release for what is born, arisen,created, conditioned.28

The Buddha steeed a deicatey nuanced mddle couse: he neithe

espoused nihilism no encouraged any specuaton about a "paradse that

mght exst outside of space and time and that an immortal sef could look

forwad to and etenaly enjoy He smple stated that thee is suerng t

has a cause, t can be ended, and there s a Path that leads to ending t.

But the natue and content of nivana and of the Buddha's state he

efused to discuss or descibe except in the most vague and metaphor

cal language-language he openly dsmssed as borowed, inadequateand utimately false. Whateve state lies beyond the end of suerng and

also necessaily beyond the reach of the self and al the sef can imagine

no amount of thnking or study could eveal. By ts very natue, or moe

precisely because of ou own lack of enghtenment t must eman inac

cessble to the thoughts anguage feelings imagnation and ongngs of

the self and what beongs to sef. Much lke the psoners in Pato's alegory

of the cave who mistake shadows on the wall for reaity we odinay vng

beings according to the Buddha ae lost n a dense forest of ignorance

bocked and obstucted We are

imprisoned in a narrow cavedwelling of the skandhas, chained by the fetters of our own cravings, fears ..so swallowed up in the viewof self that we spin and ow in the whirlpool of birth and death ...so consed and dazed [by sel] that like blind men without guideswe constantly mistake dead ends for exits29

The Buddhas nirvana can be known drectly ony with the awakening

to the truth of nosef The Avatamsaka Sutra descrbes it as a state beyond

all duality, wthout beginnng mddle or end; t cannot be expessed in

words and s beyond time

This Buddha's state that is born of wisdomIs dicult to express, dicult to accept.It is not thought it leaves the path of the mind

The skandhas, realms, place3° are not its gateway.The wise know that intellect cannot reach it

Like traces of a bird in an empty skSo dicult to express, so hard to discern.Incomprehensible to mind and thought




Martin Verhoeven

But om compassion, kindness and the power of vows

These states appear and one can enter them:Gradually there is perfection of the mind-Wisdom's practices are not reection's realm.

Such states as these are dicult to perceiveThey can only be known, not expressedOnly through a Buddhas power are they pclaimedReceive them with all reverence31 �

Notes

1 Samyuta Nikaya 35:5;I 52. The Buddha also used the analogy of a rive o llustrate he transoy and

nsubsanial naure of he body and mnd "Lus suppose he Ganges sweeps along a mass of foam and tha a man with keen sgh perceves observes and atenvely amnes He wil nd ha he bal of foam s empy and nsubsanial wih no ealessence. In the same way if i is obsered corporealy will be seen o be emp and nsubstantial wth no eal essence and i s he same fo he other four Aggregates . . 'The body is ike a ball of foam feelings ae lke a bubble of wae peceponsare lk a mrage, volon is lk the unk of a banana ee [.e. wihou a coe],and conscousness is lke a ghos (Samyuta Nikaya 22:95; 10-2)

3. Digha Nikaya I, 6. Sutanipata 107 65. Majhima Nikaya I, 3.

6.Pothapdasutta n e Long Discourses of the Buddha:

ATanslation of the DighaNikaya, ed Mauice Walshe (Somerille M: Wsdom Publcaons 197), 159

70.7 e Sth Patriarch's Dharma Jewel Plaorm Sutra wih he commenay of he Ven

Master Hsan Hua (San Fancsco: Buddhs Tex Tanslaton Socie 1977) Samyutta Nikaya 13;00 For hs conras am ndebed o he celen essay

by Etienne Lamote "The Buddha H s Teachings and Hs Sangha n e World of Buddhism Buddhist Monks and Nuns in Socie and Culur eds Henz Beceand Richard Gombich (London: Thames and Hudson Ld. 19). Lamote quiecoecly points out tha such conrasing saements by the Buddha have beenmsconstued as conradcons whereas hey ealy hb upya (skilll means) withn a soterological tadton tha amed at existeni lbeation om sueing no inelecual orhodox Fom he ouse he Budha hoed hs folowers ocultvate non-attamen employ upya and avoid dogmatsm The Dharma oeed

a soeiological mehod an eeden medicine pescribed o coune a varie of spriu almens. Once cued, natural healh euned (hat is, ones nheenBuddha naure) and he medcne could be disconnued and even dscarded Theuid and eble nature of Buddhsm hus seems o stem moe om desgn and less fom defaul Thus he Belgan scholar Lamoe noes "The Buddha oen ied to adap hs eachng o he inellecual and moral dsposons of his liseners To




Buddhist Ideas about No-Sel and the Person

those who did not beleve in the aelife bu beleved everthng dsappears a

death, he dscoused on immoaliy and pediced a fuiton in dieen unveses(Anttara I 13; o Phalguna who beleved n the etey of he self he taugh the nonexsence of a peson as a thnkng and uion-ncing beng (SamyutaNikaya II 13).Tis might be said to be a contradiction [my emphasis]; i is howeve

no the leas so but merely sklll means ( upya).Fom the remedal point of viewthe Buddha who s the heale of unversal suerng, vaed he emedies accodng to the diseases to be cured; to the sensuous he augh the contemplaon of hedecomposng corpse; o vndctve and hae-lled men, he ecommended thoughsof goodwll egadng hose close o one; to the deluded he advsed study on hesubjec of dependen oinaonWe shold neve forge tha e omnsent Buddhas less a eache of phlosophy and more a heale of unversal sueng: he imparsto every peson he eachng which suits them bes." Lamote 's essay may be foundn Buddhis Hermeneuics, ed Donald S opez, Kuroda nsiue Sudies n East Aan Buddhism (Honolulu: Unverst of Hawa Pess 188, 21.

The sory is told n he Cula-Maluna Suta as follows: One day Malunkapuagot up fom his aenoon meditaion went to he Buddha saluted hm sat to onesde, and sad: Sr, when was all alone meditaing his though occured o me:thee ae these poblems unlaned pu asde and ejeced by the Blessed One.Namely, 1 s he unverse etenal or 2 s it not eenal 3 is the univese nieor is inne 5 is soul the same as body o (6) s soul one thng and body anoher thing 7 does the Tahagata st aer death or (8 does he not st aer death, or does he both (a the same tme) exst and no exs ae death o 10does he both (a he same tme) not exs and not nost.These problems theBlessed One does no elain to me'

The Buddha declines to answer Malunkaputas quesons however. Hecompaes the quesons o those asked by the wounded man n he parable, asfollows: Suppose Malunkaputta a man is wound by a poisoned aow and hsiends and elaves brng hm o a sugeon Suppose he man should hen say:

wll no le this arow be aken out untl I know who shot me; wheher he s o f he warror caste or of the pesy caste o of he ading and agricultual caste oof the low case; what his name and famly may be; whethe he is tall, shot or of medium saure; wheher hs complexion is black brown or golden; om which vllage, town o cy he comes w no le his aow be taken ou untl know heknd of bow with whch I was shot the knd of bowstrng used the pe of aow

wha sot of feathe was used on he arrow and wh wha knd of maeral the pont of he arrow was made.'Malunkaputa hat man would die without knowng any of hese thngs Even so, Malunkaputta f anyone says: w no follow the holy

lfe unde he Blessed One untl he answers these quesons such as whethe heunivese is eernal o not etc. he would de wth hese questons unanswered by the Tahagaa"

The Buddha elans hat the holy life does no depend on these views. haever opnon one may have abou these poblems, hee sll s brh, old age,

decay death sorow lamenaon pan grief and distress and also nvana. Heconcudes: hy, Malunkaputa have no [answered hese questions?] Because is no usel i is not ndamenally conneced wth the spirtual holy lfe ....Then what Malunkaputa have elaned? have elaned dukkha he causeof dukkha, the cessaton of dukkha, and the way leadng to he cessaton of dukkha

hy Malunkapua have I elained hem? Because is usel s ndamentally




Martin Verhoeven

connected wih he spiritual holy lifes conducive to avesondetachmentcessaon

ranquiliy, deep peneaionf ealzaon, Nivana Therefore I have elanedhem."10 Ibid 11. Fom the Mahaparinirvana Sura ( Suta of the Great Decease). The passage quoed

is arbuted to he words spoken in sorow by the de ndra on he deah of he Buddha Quoed n gen Mzuno and JW de JongEssentials of Buddhism:Basic Terminolo and Concepts of Buddhist Philosophy and Pracice (Toko KoseiPublishng C. 1996)122

12. The Chan/Zen eresson is as follows Grea doubt great enlighenment. Smalldoub, small enlghenmen No doub, no enlighenmen" Ths phrase appeas inhe Pushou ofLnji Chan monkXueyan Zuqinen ied Wu-xuzaning(Supplement to the Canon) vol 122:257a I was an eoaon appaenly given o Xueyan by his eache Chuzhou who old him hat his progess was slow due to nsucent doubt. Chuzhou dd no ce ognal souces for this ession but repesented t

as deivng om he oral radion Fo more on hs see Hae Soon Shim, Gaofeng Yuanmiao's (1238129) ree Essenials" e Naure and Funcion of Doubt inChinese Kanhua Meditation unpublishedM hesis a he Gaduae TheologicalUnionBekeley2005.

13 Verse of eortaion fo Chan practce om Mase Hsan Hua 14. Sumyutta Nikaya.15 Majhima Nikaya I300; III1716. Cakkavatti-Sihanada Suta (e Lion's Roar on the Tuing of the Wheel) 27.17. Fom the verse secon of the Fih Tansference n the Chapter on Ten Tansferences"

om he Avatamsaka Suta (Rol 25 Tanslaon by he auho 18. Known as the Questons of King Menande" (Milindapanha quoed in H. C.

WarenBuddhism in Tanslations: Passages Selected om the Buddhist Sacred Books (New York Atheneum1963 [1896])128 35. Also found inW T. DeBared.eBuddhist Tradition in India China&Japan (New ork: Moden brary, 1969, 21 5

A similar use of the chariot analog appears in e Book of Vers (Sagathavaa,chap 5Bhikkunisamyata; 10 Vajra, whee he nun Vaa defeaed Mara's atemp o ighen her ou of medaon by ecng he folowng verse ha allows he osee even Mara as jus anoher heap of sheer fomations. Hee no beng s found The verse: Just as with an assemblage of parts the word chao is used so when thearegates ist, there is the convenion a being.

19 For a moe comprehensve reamen see Vasubandhu, Shastra on the Door toUnderstanding the Hundred Dharmas (Talmage Calf. nternaonal nsue fohe Translaon of Buddhis Texts, 1983)

20. have been unable o rack down the original souce of this quoe om Jungscollected woks I appears n Praised by the se Famous Men and Women Comment on the Buddha and His Teachings ed S Dhammika (Singapore:Buddhs ResearchSocetyn.d..

21 Ven Mase Hsan Hua, The Heart Sutra and Commenta with Verses without

a Stand tans. Ron Epstein and David Rounds. (San Francisco Buddhst Text Tanslation Socey, 1980)1

22. Anguttara Nikaya 365 188 93.23 e Sixth Patriarch's Dharma Jewel Plaorm Sutra 1.24. BuddhaghosaViuddhimaa e Path of Purcaion tans. Bhikkhu Nyanmoli

(Seatle: Buddhs Publicaion Society, Pariyai Editions1999X, 19622 3




Buddhist Ideas about No-Sel and the Person

2. The term klesageneraly refes to amisaken hought acon o habi hat obstrucs

our atanmen of enlghtenment Besdes hnderng awakenng, hey resul inmental and physical distess and hus are oen tanslated as "actions. lternaetanslations nclude: deements hndances, yokes, chans, fetters ouows, ragng steams tes bonds cankes poisons aows jungle tangle and cess.

26. Udana 8:3; 8.27 Perhaps this is why Buddhsts hold hat belef n a self s no drecly a cause of

wong-dong. One who beeves n a self wshes for happness n his fe and the presumed nex, and as a esul lives a wholesome life n he hope of ensurng afavorable ebrth ehe in the heavens o as a peson. Howeve his eroneous vew of a permanen self becomes an obstace o sprual reazaon (endng suering and attanng nana) because bulds upon ather than upoots desre and thesouce of cravnga vew of self Takng a ny bal of dung beween hs ngers heBuddha said to a monk "The belef n he sence of a pemanen stable eealand unchangng Self be i as ny as his bal of dung would run he religious fe

which culmnaes n the perfect destcton of sueng'' (Samyuta Nikaya III,44) he also said Wth regard to ths I see no adheson to hat vie whch would no engende n hm who adheres to t gref, lamenaon, sueng, anguish and despai (Majhma Nkaya I, 3 8.

28 Udana 83 80-29. Fom he Avatamaka Sut, chap. 26, "The Ten Gounds;' hee descibng the

Bodhsatva on the Second Ground, "Leavng Flth Auhor's ranslaon 30. "Te kandha, realm plac s a efeence o he psycho-physical phenomena

of stence o conditioned reality as seen and eerienced (and to some en ceaed) hough ignorance and caving that arse om a view of self The skandhasare form or copoeay feeng percepon voon o hab-dven actions and conscousness The second skandha feelings resuls from conact beween sx nernal organs and sx ernal obects which ogeher fom the Twelve Places. The sx neal ogans are: eye, ea nose, ongue body and mind The sx exteal

objecs are sghts sounds odos ases touch and mental objecs. Pecepton hethd skandha s related to the sx exte obecs volion the fouh skandha, isthe reacon of the wll to he sx obects Conscousness, the h skandha, graspsat the arbutes of he sx obects forming sx knds of consciousness. They are

vsual consciousness, auditory consciousness olfacoy conscousness gsaory consciousness acle conscousness and menal conscousness. Added o the aboveTwelve Places, hey make up wha are caled he Eghteen Reams (dhatu). In short,the whole eld of livng erience s dened by the Budha n terms of the subeunceasing and lagely unexamned neracon of he skandhas, he welve placesand he egheen ealms.

3 From the Avatamaka Sutra veses om the "Chapte on the Ten Grounds (TamageCaf: Buddhs Text Translaon Socety 80

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