EDWARD'S LECTURE NOTES:
More notes at http://tanguay.info/learntracker
C O U R S E
Buddhism and Modern Psychology
Robert Wright, Princeton University
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C O U R S E L E C T U R E Anātman: Buddha's Concept of the Not-Self Notes taken on June 4, 2015 by Edward Tanguay |
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the concept of the not-self
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two ways to understand it
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1. intellectual: reading about it
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2. experiential: meditating on it
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the discourse on the not-self
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where the Buddha talked about the not-self
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the second sermon he delivered after his enlightenment
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first was discourse on the four truths
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testament to the importance of the not-self in Buddhist thought
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Anātman
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the Not-self, the illusion of self, something different from spirit or soul, the unreal projected by ignorance on the real, the absence of a self, a thing with the property of not existing, a rendition of the impermanence of being
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what did the Buddha mean by the self?
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two ways
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1. delve into the philosophical discourse of the time and try to determine what the word meant to the Buddha
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2. infer what the Buddha meant by self from his argument against the self
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if an alien came and found a paper written arguing that Santa couldn't exist because a man can't visit more than a million homes a night, one could conclude that this what people believed
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in the same way we will understand what the Buddha mean by the self by looking at his arguments against the self
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the five aggregates
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constitute everything about a person
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1. form
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anything physical in the world
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your physical body
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2. feeling
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emotions
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3. perception
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our five senses
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4. mental formations
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desires
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volition
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5. consciousness
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the phenomenon of subjective awareness
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you cannot find the self in any of these aggregates
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two characteristics of each of these
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1. impermanence, e.g. characterized by change
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if the self is characterized by change, is it proper to call it self?
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the self is something we believe to persist through time
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consistent with how we view the self today, a continuity of identity
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self is a solid essence that endures through time
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the Buddha says too much changes so it is hard to say a self is there
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2. associated with control
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if feelings were self, you could control them
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if form (body) was self, you could control its shape and functionality
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the self is the thing that asserts control
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the self should be under control, the self's house should be in order
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you ultimately don't have control over your body, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness
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the self is about control and persistence through time
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and the fact is that there is not as much control over the various faculties as we like to think
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and we are not as impermanent as we like to think, i.e. we can't remember thousands of memories we once had