The Elusive Buddhist Self: Preliminary Reflections on Its Denial

Journal Article

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Descriptionངོ་སྤྲོད།

No abstract given. Here are the first relevant paragraphs:

The question of what exactly is the referent of the Buddhist denial of self continues to baffle the outside critical observer. The question has a long pedigree in Asia, where it was a fundamental and divisive issue among Buddhists. But it has also a long history in the West, where, closely allied to the question of "the meaning of nirvāṇa," it has produced a substantial literature. The western pedigree of the "no-self question" carries us from the times when it was assumed that the object of the "Buddhist" denial was the Upaniṣadic self (or Self with a capital according to one convention) through the times when some argued for a Buddhist Self (also capitalized).[2] The history of the debate has taken some new twists in more recent, and by far more sophisticated analyses (Collins 1982 & 1994; Oetke 1988; Tillemans 1996).
      The consensus among western scholars points in the direction of a variety of Buddhist positions, and questions the wisdom (and ultimately the usefulness) of attempting to know what the original teaching may have been. Collins (1994) and Tillemans (1996) have examined this spectrum of conclusions.
      In the present essay, I would like to add two more qualifications, exploring them briefly in light of selected Nikāya and Āgama texts. The hypotheses proposed in this paper are extensions or particular applications of the principle that was expressed by Collins with regards to the constructions of self generally. Collins (1994, p. 67) argues that "[o]ne might say that human beings are articulated conceptually as agents, by themselves and in relation to each other, in different ways, in different discourses." The hypotheses can also be construed as two theoretical qualifications to the quest for the Buddhist non-self. Both qualifications raise the question of what may have been the "self" or "selves" that were the object of the Buddhist critique. First, I propose that different Buddhist voices may interact among themselves and with non-Buddhist voices in ways that are not necessarily linear. This would mean that the terms "self" and "no-self" are not univocal. Buddhists and non-Buddhists could interact in polemics without assuming a single notion of self. Likewise, doctrinal experts and philosophers may argue for a propositional no-self, yet assume and propound other types of no-self—social, ethical, etc. These other notions of self and no-self are not necessarily linked to the ontology expressed or implied by the Buddhist philosophical critique.[3]
      Second, the contemporary scholar's view of the Buddhist no-self presupposes notions (explicit or implicit) of what may have been the Buddhist notions of the self that is the object of the denial. These western preconceptions cannot be separated easily from our own notions of what is self. And, yet, we do not have a single set of such notions. We have, for instance, major differences of culture, class, and individual character that affect so-called "western notions of the self." The elusiveness and ambiguity of English selflessness, for instance, has been mentioned repeatedly in the scholarly literature. As still other examples of the problem one may mention the fact that Romance languages, for instance, have no simple, much less a natural, set of grammatical categories to distinguish self from "I." Contemporary English, colloquial and psychological, usage of words like "self," "ego," "inner self," and "identity," is equally problematic. The picture becomes even more confusing if we also consider words like "soul," "spirit," "personality," and "mind." All of these words have a privileged status in North American and British folk metaphysics and in the construction of the English-speaker's "selfimage" (if I may be allowed to incur in my own brand of obscurantism to make a rhetorical point).
      However, slippage and confusion is not the privileged territory of the English speaker. Nor is the rhetorical or polemic exploitation of this slippage a new thing. Consider for instance a key passage in Śāntideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra (La Vallée Poussin, 1914) Chapter IX, stanzas 68-71). What superficially may appear to be an argument against "the" notion of "self," turns out to be actually, against "one" particular notion of self—and one that is clearly tied to folk usage. (Gómez, introductory, 21–22)

Notes

Note #1 is from an excerpt which occurs before the first paragraph. The excerpt reads: The Venerable Ānanda sat next to the Blessed One and addressed him: "Reverend Master, I have heard it said again and again 'the world is empty, the world is empty.' But in what sense is it said that the world is empty?" "Ānanda, it is because it is empty of self and of anything belonging to self that the world is said to be empty." Note #1 reads: Saṃyutta Nikāya (henceforth SN), IV.54. All references within the main body of the text and in the notes are to the standard title of classical works or, in the case of contemporary works of scholarship, to the last name of the author followed by the publication date as listed in the Bibliography at the end of this article. Abbreviations are noted on their first occurrence and are also listed at the end of the article. All translations of Pāli texts are from the Pāli Text Society edition. In this passage, and in similarly structured passages below, constructions of the type "Reverend Master, I have heard it said again and again 'the world is empty, the world is empty.'" are free renderings of the Indian structure: "Reverend Master, it is said, 'the world is empty, the world is empty.'"
Much of this literature has been reviewed and justly criticized by Collins (1982). The most recent advocates of the Buddhist self (or qualified self) have been Bhattacharya (1973) and Pérez Remon (1980). The problem may be more complicated than a simple choice between self and no-self. The question is of course what sort of self? And this question needs to be answered in a manner that is something more than a consideration of metaphysical propositions. For a movement in this direction, see Collins (1994), and the papers in Carrithers, Collins, & Lukes (1985). Of course, we still don't know for sure whether or not at least some of the early Buddhist critiques of ātman were directed at the advocates of Upaniṣadic doctrines.
In spite of its focus on one body of literature, the reader will detect the instability of the concepts of self and no-self. As philosophical extensions of a pronoun with a wide range of discourse functions, "self' and "no-self' are fluid concepts. Their fluidity will become obvious from their changing position in the passages that follow, as well as from the uncertainty of the English translations ("myself," "my self," "no-self," "non-self," "not self," etc.).

Citation

Gómez, Luis O. "The Elusive Buddhist Self: Preliminary Reflections on Its Denial." Communication and Cognition 32, no. 1/2 (1999): 21–52.