BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY 101: This semester I teach a class in Eastern Philosophy II. The entire class is devoted to various form of Buddhism and various philosophical doctrines and ideas developed within Buddhism. I also have shown my student how to do zazen (sitting meditation) and we do a little bit of zazen at the beginning of each class. At a personal level, it has been an extremely rewarding class. After about 40 years of studying Buddhism, I finally feel like maybe I have began to grasp some of the central ideas and concepts and and am able to explain them at the intellectual level. In particular, according to the Buddhas first sermon (repeated many times), everything is transient and impermanent (anicca), there is no atman (anatta, i.e., there is no permanent self, soul, or essence), and for an unawakened person everything is marked by dukkha (suffering, uneasiness, unsatisfactoriness). These are so called Three Marks of Existence (an absolutely central part of Buddhist philosophy distinguishing all its versions from, e.g., Hindu philosophical systems). For a very long time, the doctrine of anatta - no self, has been puzzling to me. For it has always seemed to me that I am the same person who was born some 60 years ago, went vegetarian for the first time when I was 4.5, made a few trips to Auschwitz, decided to study philosophy when I was about 18, wrote 700 pp long Ph.D. dissertation on the issue of animal right (never defended, but several portions published), wrote another one on The Moral Intuitions and the Problem of Justification in Ethics (defended and published in form of several paper), and this semester teaches Easterm Philosophy II. When I look at my old photos, I can identify myself -- someone who sits next to my brother, between my parents. I have some memories from those days; I remember that I (not someone else, I) was there. So, there is got to be some self that endures through time and survives all the changes that occurred to me and around me. So, why does the Buddha say that self does not exist? Here are A FEW NOTES on this topic that I haver assembled, during this weekend, for my class. First, we need to clarify the question about what philosophers mean when we say that things change. Basically, a philosophical analysis of change proceed in terms of INDIVIDUALS (or assemblies of individuals) and their features (properties, qualities). A change is usually analyzed in terms of some object, O, having some feature, F1, at some time, t1, and having a different feature, F2, at a different time, t2. An event is usually defined simply as a change. That is, events are changes and changes are events. Here are some examples of events: a windows being smashed. That is, a window (an object, an individual) is solid (exemplifies a feature of solidity) at one time and is broken (exemplifies a different feature, brokenness, so to speak) at a different time. Here is another example of an event, The Super Bowl. The assembly of individuals (players, coaches, referees, and so on) are situated in certain locations at one time (the beginning of an event) and they are situated in quite different ways at the end. (They go through lots of motions in between, too, but let us put it aside.) Apparently, there are events and changes: windows are broken, there are football games, and so on and so forth. But, as philosophers have noticed, appearances can be misleading; they do not always fit reality. So, do things REALLY change? Are there REAL changes? It turns out that there are some deep philosophical difficulties related to every purported account of apparent changes. Here is what I mean. For an object to change, it has to endure through time and change. Change cannot take an object out of existence because, if the object ceased to exist, there would be no sense to say that it (this very object) has changed. That is, for an object to change the following must be true: the object at t1 must be numerically the same as the object at t2, and this object must be F1 at t1 and F2 (but not F1) at t2. But does it make sense to say that, if O1 is F1 at t1 and O2 is F2 at t2, then still O1 can be numerically identical with O2. That is, is it still the numerically identical object when it has one feature (F1) at some time and a different feature (F2) at a different time? To answer this question we would need to have some account of surviving or endurance through time and change. It turns out it is not that easy to provide such an account. There are two general ways to go. THE FIRST WAY is to postulate that there are some essential features of objects, the features that an object has at every time this object exists. Those features do not change for as long as the object exists. On this account, O1 and O2 would each exemplify this essential feature and thus they would be but two different names or labels or ways to referring to the same individual. This individual, in turn, would continue to exists in a sense that, at every time it exists, it would exemplify this essential feature. The problem here is to identify what this essential feature is. And this is just very hard to do. For it seems that every object changes many features over time. In fact, if you give it enough time, it seems that every object changes all its features. For example, take a human being. It seems like there is no feature I have now that I also had when I was born. (If you point to the DNA as something essential for me, please notice that this move is not available to those who, like the Buddha and many Buddhists, believe in reincarnation. Also, I might share my DNA with my twin. Furthermore, if I had a total amnesia and then somehow some personality were to be rebuilt, would he be the same person just lacking all my memories and personality traits. Thats just implausible.) So, everything changes. But then why (in what sense) am I now the same person, the person who was born about 60 years ago and went through all the changes outlined above? In fact, the argument sketched above is very similar to typical arguments offered by the Buddha and Buddhist philosophers. The idea of many of those arguments is based on the assumption that a human being is a collection of basic components named dharmas (using a small d to distinguish them from the Dharma i.e., the Truth, or the Law). Roughly, dharmas are basic components (atoms) of existence, or basic existents. Some of those dharmas are physical (e.g., mass, spin, charge, and so on). Generally, they are referred to as rupa (matter). Some of the dharmas are mental. Here we have sensations, volitions, perceptions, and so on and so forth. Generally, they are referred to as nama (name). According to this analysis, a person is nama-rupa (name and matter) and nama-rupa exhaust what a person is. There is nothing more to a person beyond dharmas. Buddhist philosopher make the following point: there is no dharma that exists at every time when an individual exists. In particular, there is no mental state that we always have (from birth through death and beyond, if you believe in rebirth) and there is no physical state that we always have. So, there is no one component that can be identified as the essential and unchanging essence (or self) of a person. But the same analysis applies to everything else. Hence, everythin is anatta (no atman, no self, no soul, depending on translation). But if there is no unchanging essence in anything else either. Thus, it seems that everything is impermanent (anicca); that is, everything changes all the time. Here we have an explanation of the second mark of existence, i.e. the impermanence. (The first mark is that there is no atman-self; the third mark is that everything is dukkha (suffering, unsatisfactoriness, uneasiness, depending on translation). As the Buddha said in his first sermon (and in many other sermons): all composite things (i.e., things composite of dharmas) are impermanent (anicca)). Then, in Mahayana circles, the argument was taken one step further. Namely, dharmas (basic components according to Theravada tradition) were analyzed into even more basic components (say, an upper part of a dharma and a lower part of it; a temporarily early part of a dharma, a middle part, and an ending part, and so on and so forth). So, since dharmas are also composite things, they also change, they are transient and impermanent. This leads to the doctrine of shunyatta (everything is empty of some permanent essence, or self, or however you want to think about it). THE SECOND WAY to go is to postulate that there are no essential features (or, alternatively, that every feature is essential, implications are the same). On this account, every change would literally take an object out of existence. But if an object literally ceases to exist when any of its feature changes, then it makes no sense to say that an object changes. So, how can we account of the apparent fact that objects change but survive this change. The usual answer is based on two factors. First, it identifies some deep and relevant similarities between objects. For example, O1 and O2 are considered to be deeply and relevantly similar if they share sufficient array of their features (even though they do not necessarily share all of these features. (To relate it to Buddhist philosophy, it would assume that, sometimes, O1 and O2 share many of their dharmas, i.e., many of their basic constituents.) Then, this second way to address the issue identifies causal connections between O1 and O2. Finally, it postulates that, if O1 and O2 are deeply and relevantly similar (in just explained sense) and, furthermore, causally related, then for all practical purposes we may treat them as one object, the object that survives a change and endures through time. THE SECOND WAY (or something very similar to it) is the way developed in Mahayana (and other Buddhist) circles. THE FIRST WAY (or something very similar to it) is a way favored in some Hindu circles, e.g., by philosophers working in Nyaya tradition. I hope this makes sense (at a philosophical level). It seems to me that this sort of analysis is frequently offered in Tibetan philosophical circles. In those circles, people have a conviction that good philosophical analysis in some ways loosens a grip that philosophical categories and concepts have over our minds. In this way, clarifying ideas somehow prepares a ground for a spiritual awakening. I hope even more than it helps someone. It surely helped me at a philosophical level but this is the case because I like philosophical maps and arguments and like to have a philosophical clarity about what people say and imply. After all, I am a professional philosopher; I philosophize for living. ~~ Deep bow~~
Posted on: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 15:21:49 +0000
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