by Tang Huyen

The Buddha twenty-four centuries ago in India had understood such ideas and even pushed them to their logical end. To him, our basic problem is that we follow speech to chase realities.

As to the self and its absence: Buddhist discourse gets complicated because Buddhism pushes critique far past what is normally taken for granted, what is usually taken to be the case. It suspends all the tacit assumptions that we humans no longer think about when we go about our daily routine, and therefore what it says (or doesn't say) depends on how far back it stands in that critique.

In modern critical philosophy, there is the widespread idea that ancient metaphysics was built on false problems, problems that were based on language in general and on grammar in particular, and that were created by taking words and concepts seriously and for real, namely as things, essences, substances, especially such words as "I", "self", "soul", "God", etc., and making them exist independently, each on its own side (that is, apart from the words and concepts that stand for them, and even apart from our daily world altogether). In modern philosophy of science there is the widespread idea that if you ask a wrong question, you won't even get a wrong answer.

In modern critical philosophy, there is the widespread idea that even physical objects of our daily life, like tables and chairs, are logical constructs, which don't exist as such in sensation but are constructed from bits and pieces of the sense-field. All the more so for non-physical entities or non-entities that we construct on a much more abstract level, by much more complicated constructions, like "I", "self", "soul", "God", etc.

The Buddha twenty-four centuries ago in India had understood such ideas and even pushed them to their logical end. To him, our basic problem is that we follow speech to chase realities, and the most basic errors that we commit in that direction and inflict as problems on ourselves are "I", "mine", "self", "soul", "God", etc., not to mention concrete physical objects, like tables and chairs, which we logically construct from bits and pieces of the sense-field. We build our lives on such words and concepts, stabilise and congeal the flowing reality around them, and thereby offer resistance to the flowing reality. Suffering comes from such resistance, and the ending of suffering comes from no longer putting up such resistance.

So the Buddhist method (dharma) comes down to dissolving such resistance to the flowing reality. One part consists in paying attention to what happens and therefore to reverse the usual scattering of thought in memories of the past and expectations of the future, memories and expectations that converge on "I", "mine", "self", "soul", "God", etc. Another part consists in examining whether there is anything that corresponds to such words and concepts, or whether they are mere ideas without referent.

The referents in total are admitted only in so far as they are received into some sense-fields, and all that surpasses the sense-fields altogether is banished as outside of range, without object, and mere figments of the imagination. Thus the referents are admitted as they fall into the five classes of experience called the five aggregates, except for those constructions (those compositions, belonging to the fourth aggregate) that surpass the sense-fields, like "I", "mine", "self", "soul", "God", etc.

As one advances on the fore-mentioned practice, one learns to undo the patterns that create suffering and substitute other ones that don't. In meditation, one even calms down all mental activities other than mere cognition of raw sensation, and thus quiesces all mentation altogether. In such state, even the ideas of "I", "mine", "self", "soul", "God", etc. don't arise. One doesn't create a self for oneself to carry around, doesn't inflict the problem (a false problem, built on language) of "I", "self" on oneself. Thus one has no problem to solve, for one doesn't create problems for oneself.

"The self, the self (aatmaa aatmeti), monks, [thinks] the foolish common person who follows speech (prajñaptim anupatito). But there is no self and what belongs to self there (na caatraasty aatmaa naatmiiya.m vaa). This suffering, arising, arises, this suffering, ceasing, ceases (du.hkham ida.m bhiksavah utpadyamaanam utpadyate, duhkham idam niruddhyamaana.m niruddhyate). Compositions, arising, arise, ceasing, cease (sa.mskaraa utpadyamaanaa utpadyante, nirudhyamaanaa nirudhyante)." MA, 62, 498b, Sangha-bheda-vastu, I, 158, Waldschmidt, Catuṣpariṣatsūtra, 354–356.

"If the recluses and brahmans see the self, all see it in relation to the five aggregates of grasping. The recluses and brahmans see form [and the other aggregates] as the self, form as different from self, self in form, form in self." SA, 45, 11b.

"The foolish common person sees form [and the other aggregates] as self. This seeing is a composition (yaa kho pana saa samanupassanaa sa.nkhaaro so, Skt. yaa saa samanupa'syanaa sa.mskaaras te)." SA, 57, 14a14, SN, III, 96 (22, 81), Dietz, Dharma-skandha, 53.

To the Buddha the alleged self/soul is not a thing, not a substance, not an essence existing on its own side, but merely a composition, a product of the compositions (the fourth aggregate), and in Nirvāṇa, which is nothing more than the calming of all compositions, one does not compose a self for oneself, and that is the truth of the absence of self. This absence of the self is not the absence of a thing, a substance, an essence existing on its own side, but merely the absence of a composition, the composition of the self, and when one calms one's compositions all the way, one does not compose a self for oneself to carry around.

Even less does one chase one's past lives and future lives and attempt to figure out one's past deeds and their returns and future deeds and theirs, and so on and so forth.

All those issues, along with all else (the self included), have been laid to rest, when one calms one's compositions all the way. The only thing self-evident then is raw sensation, shorn of all mentation. There is no truth separate from that, even less dogmas.

In that state, all has been settled, and yet one flows right on with reality. One doesn't try to bend reality one's way (and the self is the centre of convergence of such bending), but merely flows along with it.

In the awakened state, the awakened is not aware that he has no self, and if he doesn't teach, he won't need to know that fact. But if he teaches others, he has to activate thinking and reflection, and then he is aware that he has no self and can tell his students that fact. So, in the normal awakened state, there is no thought of the absence of self. It is unreflected spontaneity.

If you want to call it "true face" or whatever, go ahead, but be aware that there is no mentation in such a state, even less naming and labelling.

So in the awakened state, the awakened does not mentate the absence of self, and only when he reflects on such a state does he arrive at the idea of the absence of self.

The absence of self is a fact, but such a fact needs not be mentated.

In raw sensation there is no self (there is no table and chair, either), but it takes thinking to cognise the fact that there is no self, just as in deludeds it takes thinking to construct the self, though the deludeds then go on to take that self seriously whilst the awakened merely cognises the absence of self and teaches that fact to others as a mere means to arrive at the same awakened state but does not cling to it as if it were a thing, a substance, an essence existing on its own side.

The awakened goes back past our normal assumptions of concrete concept-delimited things like tables and chairs, and even past abstract constructions like "I", "mine", "self", "soul", "God", etc., to just raw sensation, and he experiences a wholesome sense-field, which is fully differentiated, but he simply receives it intact and does not proceed to cut it up and label the parts (like tables and chairs, which are already not in sensation) and build up fancy ideas like "I", "mine", "self", "soul", "God", etc. at quite some removes from raw sensation.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on August 9, 2003. Author: Tang Huyen (Laughing Buddha, Inc.). Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

Tang Huyen was a scholar of Buddhist studies with deep command of Pāli, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan sources. Posting to talk.religion.buddhism and related groups from 2003 to 2008, he was among the most rigorous analytical voices in the English-language Buddhist Usenet world. This post arose from a question about how Buddhism reconciles anātman with "original face" — but expands into a sustained argument that the concept of the self is a false problem built on language, one that the Buddha understood twenty-four centuries before modern critical philosophy, and that Nirvāṇa is simply the return to raw sensation before all mentation.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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