The Practical Illusion of Self

Hi … I haven’t posted for a long time, largely because, this being question-based blog, most of the questions I’ve been sent of late have already been responded to in other posts, which I’ve been able to refer people to, instead of writing a new post. But one question appeared this week, which I realized I haven’t dealt with – and that is the question of the Theravada Buddhist notion of Anatta – or ‘non-self’, which so many people so very confusing.

The question goes:

“Roger, I’ve been reading about meditation and Buddhism for a long time now, and one of the things that has always confused me is the Buddha’s theory of non-self. So, in the interests of collecting as much information as possible to try and understand, could you please give me your own understanding of this very difficult aspect of the Buddhas teachings.”

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Okay then, I’ll try.

This doctrine of ‘non-self’, or Anatta is, understandably, a very confusing subject for us who live in a world in which ‘selfhood’ is the core of most things we do. In short, this Theravāda Buddhist view says that there is no permanent, unchanging soul or self to anything, whether human or any other creature or thing. Instead, what we call a “self” is just a temporary aggregation of form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. 

So the Buddha was telling us that there is no self or immutable essence or soul within us, or in any other part of nature for that matter – that everything is merely a combination of other smaller things which, in concert, take on the presence of the larger form, which is itself constantly changing. And we see that, theoretically, that is true. If, for example, we start at the bottom of the creational mulch, we see that all things material are formed from sub-atomic particles – wave patterns of electromagnetic energy which arise and pass away at an incredible rate. From there the landscape of material form is a ‘patterns-forming-larger-patterns’ kind of thing – the infinitesimal blips of particle forming atoms, which form molecules, which form cells, which form all the stuff of life and living creatures we’re familiar with.

So the Buddha asks us, where in this vast and intricate and constantly evolving pattern of energy is the individual soul that religion speaks of?

Fur us, particularly those of us in the West, who have been brought up in the Judeo-Christian traditions, this flies in the face of everything we think we know. On the most fundamental level, when we look within, we feel ourselves as being autonomous beings – separate from everything else, with a name and history and destiny. We look in the mirror and we see ourselves, and we remember our self having existed in the past. And everybody knows us by our name, and everything around us speaks to ‘our self’ and judges us, all under the nomenclature of our name.

Not only that, but everything around us also seems to have a ‘self’ – a name or label they’re known by – dogs, cats, birds, trees, cars and so on. We live in a world of separate things, every one of which has a ‘self’ however rudimentary.

So then, how can we bring  ourselves to believe that there is no intrinsic self in anything, when everything in our life is a ‘self’?

Well, for myself, the only way I allay my own confusion is to treat it as an ‘either/or’ question – to entertain both sides of the equation at the same time. Indeed, I think this is the case with a lot of what the Buddha was teaching. In alluding to the many conditioned beliefs he saw among those around him, like the God-belief and non-self, he chose to acknowledge the evident reality of those beliefs as ‘relative’ truths – that is, true relative to the assumptions of the prevailing zeitgeist – and ‘ultimate’ truth – that is, what is ultimately true, above and beyond what people believe.

So lets look into this dichotomy.

The roots of our confusion lie in our direct perception of ourselves as an autonomous ‘self’.

But then we have to ask – where is it?

Is it in our body, or our brain? And if so, exactly which part? Because wherever we look, we see everything we are can be broken down into small and smaller things. The brain is, after all, simply a community of trillions of smaller cells, each of which have their own rudimentary sense of self. And those cells are built from the molecules and atoms and particles that are the most basic material of all things.

So where, in the vast community or things all working together, is the singular soul we assume?

Or, is our ‘self, or soul, a part of the ‘collective consciousness’ – that is, the composite energy presence of all the stuff of our mind and body?

But then, if it is a collective consciousness, where does it end? And surely, that would mean that apparently inanimate things also have a ‘self’ or soul. After all, why, in this collective consciousness, should selfhood be exclusive only to humans, who after all, are made of exactly the same stuff as the rocks, air and all the rest of the universe around us, including all the bacteria, virus’s and foreign body’s that live within our body as essential parts of our community?

Where, in this huge mulch of creation does our ‘selfhood’ begin and end?

Hence the ‘two pronged’ solution.

To accommodate the discrepancy between our personal perception and evident reality,, as I said before, the Buddha, very practically, acknowledged two truths – the ‘relative reality’ of our human Zeitgeist, that self does indeed exist, because it’s undeniably true that we perceive a ‘self’. And the larger, ‘ultimate reality’ – or ‘universal truth’ if you like – of what is called ‘anatta’ – non-self.

That is, that at no point, stage or aspect of this universe is there a self or essence to anything in existence, be it human, animal, vegetable, mineral or spirit, that is separate from the unity of everything else. That all things are simply parts of a constantly changing and endless ocean of manifestation, coming and going eternally.

So then. We have two realities co-existing. The evident one, and the ultimate one.

So even though we use self-hood as a temporary vehicle for this life – and indeed, we need this self to survive, we should never forget the ultimate reality which this apparent relative truth exists within –  that the self we have become is simply a practical illusion we’ve created to use in this life – nothing more.

In this, the Buddha was not telling us that we don’t exist in the terms we perceive – he was merely trying to help us to see that our self is temporary and illusory – that it has been created by itself and the life we live – like any other of our many habits.

As such, in the big adventure of life and the little entities we have created to ride its waves, he recommends that we should not cling to the stuff of this life. Nor should we assume we own it. That we should always be mindful of the larger reality which this little trick of the light we call life spins in, from which we emerged, and to which, presumably, we will disappear back into.

And with regard to the relative reality of self, the Buddha said that the belief in this idea of fixed identity can only lead to suffering – that liberation – or enlightenment – can only come come when we realize on an instinctive level, the fundamental truth of existence. And that can only come from practicing meditation – where we learn to let go of all of our conditioned views and mental concocting, and fall back into the ultimate truth of what lies beyond – in the indescribable realm of pure, untrammeled awareness.

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Roger’s book, ‘BEING STILL – MEDITATION THAT MAKES SENSE’  is available now. Just click on the links below:

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