The Selfless Mind

Personality, Consciousness and Nirvana in Early Buddhism

Peter Harvey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136783364
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This careful analysis of early Buddhist thought opens out a perspective in which no permanent Self is accepted, but a rich analysis of changing and potent mental processes is developed. It explores issues relating to the not-Self teaching: self-development, moral responsibility, the between-lives period, and the 'undetermined questions' on the world, on the 'life principle' and on the liberated one after death. It examines the 'person' as a flowing continuity centred on consciousness or discernment (vinnana) configured in changing minds-sets (cittas). The resting state of this is seen as 'brightly shining' - like the 'Buddha nature' of Mahayana thought - so as to represent the potential for Nirvana. Nirvana is then shown to be a state in which consciousness transcends all objects, and thus participates in a timeless, unconditioned realm.

Part I

EXPLORING THE NOTION OF SELFLESSNESS

1

THE QUESTION OF SELF

If Self and what belongs to Self are truly, reliably not being apprehended … (M.I.138).

SCHOLARS WHO SEE A METAPHYSICAL SELF IN THE ‘EARLY SUTTAS’

(1.1) In order to explore the implication of the teaching that ‘all dhammas are not-Self (an-atta)’, it is useful to refer to the interpretations of some of those who see the ‘early Suttas’ as positing or allowing the existence of a metaphysical atta : a permanent, substantial, autonomous self or I. To refer to such a supposed entity, I will refer to it as ‘Self’, reserving the lower case ‘self’ for an empirical, changing self of any kind. As the general trend in the literature on Buddhism is simply to see it as denying a Self, it seems appropriate to calmly listen to those who have gone against this consensus. One can then use their interpretations as, at least, hypotheses to be tested against what the texts actually say. Even if they are wrong, they may be wrong in interesting ways!

(1.2) Miss I.B. Horner, while allowing that the early Pāli texts often use ‘atta’ simply in the conventional sense of ‘oneself’, held that it is also used as the logical opposite of not-Self, i.e. as Self (1971: 32). Her view seems to have been that there is a ‘Higher’ or ‘Greater’ Self and a ‘Lower’, individual one that can become the ‘Higher’ Self by perfecting itself: ‘Man was not to be regarded as That Self which is the Highest, but as potentially capable of becoming even as That Self’ (1936: 103). She also talked of the individual self as coming to attain ‘union with’ the Higher Self (1936: 238). Nevertheless, she wished to avoid saying too much as to the nature of Self. She saw the Pāli Canon as not regarding atta as a permanent core to personality, nor as a permanent entity which survived death, nor as an underlying principle of the universe, as in the Upaniṣads. Moreover, nibbāna was included among those things which were ‘not-Self’ (1977: 288–89).¹

(1.3) Another great translator of Buddhist texts (mostly Mahāyāna) who seems to have posited some kind of Self was Edward Conze. In Buddhism, its Essence and Development (1951), he says that ‘our true self gets estranged from itself’ when we identify ourselves ‘with what we are not’ (p.109). He then seems to identify the ‘true self’ with the ‘Unconditioned’ or ‘Absolute’, i.e. nibbāna (p.111). In a 1959 article, though, he says that it has been the ‘curse of Buddhist studies’ that people have tried to ‘attribute to primitive Buddhism the Upanishadic teaching on Self or ātman’ (1967: 12–13). In his Buddhist Thought in India (1962), while still affirming that ‘I am nothing else than the Absolute’ (p.43), he makes clear why he sees no Upaniṣadic ‘universal ātman’ in early Buddhism: because it is identified with ‘consciousness’ (viññāṇa), which is counted as not-Self by Buddhism (p. 127). All in all, his considered view is that the Buddha did not deny the Self but only said that it ‘cannot be apprehended’ (p.39). The passage on which this view is based will be considered carefully below. Conze also warns that ‘The non-apprehension of a self – essential to a religious life along Buddhist lines, is greatly cheapened when it is turned into a philosophical statement proclaiming that the self does not exist’ (p. 130). This warning is, I hold, well given. Conze's own reasons for giving it are that the Buddha taught ‘self’ to coarse materialists, ‘nonexistence of self’ to egoists, and to those near nibbāna and free from all love of self, he taught ‘that there is neither self nor not self’ (p.208). In a 1963 article, he talks of nibbāna as a ‘state in which the self has become extinct’ (1967: 211), by which he must mean that the empirical self becomes extinct. Finally, in a 1967 article, he says that (Mahāyāna) Buddhism aims at ‘some kind of union with the transcendental One, which is identical with our true Self’, also seeing the latter as a ‘divine spark’ (1975: 17 and 19).

(1.4) Among scholars who have devoted full books to outlining a Self-interpretation of Buddhism is George Grimm, in his Doctrine of the Buddha (1958, English version). In this he runs into a number of problems. One is that, in order to explain why the Self is not liberated, he has to attribute craving to it, but as the latter is clearly said to be not-Self, he has to see it as an ‘inessential quality’ (p.233). One part of his interpretation which is of real interest, though, is his view that ‘you are not Something, but you are indeed Nothing’ (p.133), ie. one's Self is no-thing, nothing knowable: it is beyond the categories of ‘being’ and ‘non-being’, which only apply to the finite world (p.6). This seems similar to Conze's view that the Self ‘cannot be apprehended’. J. Pérez-Remón has produced a somewhat more sophisticated version of a Grimm-type position in his Self and Non-self in Early Buddhism (1980), but it still fails to avoid the problem of coherently relating craving to the ‘Self’.

(1.5) Having outlined the views of selected Self-interpreters, it is clear that they raise certain possibilities which must thus be borne in mind when investigating the ‘early Suttas’ on the question of self/Self:

i)	there is a real Self, which is not nibbāna, and a changing self which becomes the real Self (Horner).
ii)	there is a ‘true Self’ which is the ‘Unconditioned’, nibbāna, but which is ‘not apprehended’ (Conze).
iii)	such a real or true Self is beyond the categories of ‘existence’ and ‘non-existence’ (Grimm).

USES OF THE WORD ‘SELF’ (ATTA) IN THE ‘EARLY SUTTAS’

(1.6) Before examining passages which might support or disprove the above hypotheses, it is first useful to clear the ground of possible confusions. It is clear that the ‘early Suttas’ often use the word ‘atta’ (literally ‘self’) in such a way that no metaphysical Self is implied, only a changing empirical self. One common usage of this type has ‘atta’ simply meaning ‘oneself, ‘himself’, or ‘myself’, according to context. For example, when it is recommended that one should not act in a way that would be displeasing if someone else acted in this way towards one, it is said, ‘self (of another) ought to measured against self (i.e. oneself)’ (M.I.97).²

(1.7) A second, related meaning of ‘atta’ is when it refers to ‘character’. For example, at A.IV.114, a monk is said to be a ‘self-knower’ (attaññū) when he knows of himself that his spiritual qualities such as faith are developed to a certain degree. Pérez-Remón sees such a usage as evidence for a real Self, which is the ‘substrate’ of such qualities as faith (1980: 65, cf. 82 and 92). As such qualities must be seen as part of the personality-factor of ‘constructing activities’, however, this view seems to be a form of ‘view on the existing group’ (sakkāya-diṭṭhi), all of which are rejected by the Buddha. This is because it would see Self as ‘endowed with’ the constructing activities, or these as ‘in’ Self. Other passages use ‘atta’ to refer to one's ‘self’ (character) as ‘uprooted and injured’ if one prevents someone from giving alms (A.I. 161), and as ‘become pure’ when one lives virtuously (M.I.179). Such ‘character’, as it is clearly changeable, may be what I.B. Horner refers to as the changing ‘Lower’ self, but it cannot be the supposed Self that is different from the ‘not-Self’. As it changes, it is impermanent, and so must be not-Self (S.III.67).

(1.8) Thirdly, atta also occurs in the compound ‘atta-bhāva’, literally ‘selfhood’. At A.V.202, this is used to refer to the (living) body of an elephant, and at D.II.210, to refer to the visible, bodily aspect of the god Brahmā. At M.III.53, it is said that a harmful ‘assumption of selfhood’, when followed, leads to the growth of unwholesome states of mind: here the compound means something like ‘personality’. Likewise, there is reference to a ‘formless assumption of self (atta)’, i.e. a personality in a formless rebirth realm (D.I. 195).

(1.9) Fourthly, ‘atta’ can be used as equivalent to ‘citta’, which is variously translated as ‘mind’, ‘heart’ or ‘thought’. This is evident from an investigation of Dhp. 160, a verse which is often picked on by Self-interpreters:

Self is protector of oneself (attā hi attano nātho),

for what other protector would there be?

For with a well-controlled self (attanā’va sudantena)

one gains a protector hard to gain.

Here, the ‘protector’ self is one which is ‘well-controlled’, parallelling a line at Dhp.35: ‘a controlled (dantam) citta is conducive to happiness’. A self/citta identity is also seen at A.II.32 and Dhp.43: the first refers to ‘perfect application of self’ as leading to prosperity, the second to a ‘perfectly applied’ citta as of more benefit than the action of relatives. Now something which must be controlled or well applied is evidently changing, and not an unchanging metaphysical Self. The ‘protector’ self is simply the empirical citta, which is said to be very changeable, so that it should not be seen as ‘my Self’ (S.II.94). Again, as the arising of citta is said to depend on the arising of mind-and-body (nāma-rūpa, S.V.184), which is not-Self, it must itself be not-Self, following the principle enshrined in the following: ‘How will the eye, which is arisen from what is not-Self, be Self?’ (S.IV.130). Citta as ‘self’ seems to refer to one's psychological/emotional ‘centre’, which can be uncontrolled, badly applied and agitated, or well controlled, well applied and calm. It is ‘self in this sense which can upbraid one, as can other people, for lapses from virtue (A.V.88). It is also a ‘self’ which can be ‘unguarded’ even if a person is protected externally by an army (S.I.72–3).

(1.10) Among the non-Buddhist religious groups of the Buddha's day, the Annihilationists held that a person was completely destroyed at death. It appears, though, that they believed in up to seven ‘Selves’, the physical body, and various kinds of mental Selves, perhaps seen as psychic ‘centres’ (D.I.34–6). While all such Selves were seen as destroyed at death, they seem to have been regarded as unchanging during life, for the Buddha describes the Annihilationists as teaching the cutting off of a ‘real being (sato sattassa)’: i.e. they saw death as destroying a substantially real being/Self. The implication is clearly that an unchanging ‘real being’ is synonymous with a Self, and that it is contradictory to posit such an entity but then say that it can be destroyed.

PASSAGES WHICH MIGHT INDICATE THE ACCEPTANCE OF A SELF

(1.11) I.B. Horner has pointed to a passage at Vin.I.23 as indicating an early Buddhist belief in a Self (1971: 33): ‘What do you think of this, young men? Which is better for you, that you should seek for a woman or that you should seek for self?’. This passage has been seen as an allusion to the Upaniṣadic ātman, for at BU.I.4.8, it is said ‘One should meditate on the Self alone as dear’. However, the Vin.I.23 passage need mean no more than ‘look within’, particularly if the young men that the Buddha spoke to would have taken ‘seek for one's self/Self’ as simply a call to spiritual practice. Indeed, at the time, it seems that the religious life was popularly equated with ‘seeking for Self’. Thus at M.III.155, a non-Buddhist gatekeeper simply assumes that some Buddhist monks meditating in a grove ‘appear to be desiring Self (atta-kāma-rūpā )’.

(1.12) I.B. Homer (1971: 34) also refers to a passage at Ud. 47, where king Pasenadi and his wife agree that there is no one ‘dearer than self’. Later, the Buddha says, ‘Since self is so dear to others, let the self-lover not harm another’. Whatever Pasenadi meant by ‘self’, it is clear that the Buddha does not here refer to a metaphysical Self: for such a thing, being permanent, would be beyond suffering and harm. Reference to it would thus not be a reason for not harming others. The Buddha is here saying: everyone cares for their own happiness, just like oneself, so don't inflict suffering on them.

(1.13) A passage which both I.B. Homer (1971: 34) and K. Bhattacharya (1973: 62) refer to as showing a ‘Great Self’ or Upaniṣadic Self is A.I. 149–50:

There is nowhere in the world, indeed, for hiding evil action,

O man, your self knows whether it is true or false,

Indeed, dea...