The Concept of Self in Buddhism and Brahmanism: Some Remarks

Alternative Standpoints: Tribute to Kalidas Bhattacharya, 2015

In this paper my aim is to discuss Kalidas Bhattacharya's treatment of "self" with special reference to Yogacara Buddhist philosophy. Bhattacharya has started his discussion with the basic minimum sense of the term 'self'. After discussing different Indian philosophical analysis of the term self, he started discussing the treatment of self by Yogacara Buddhist philosophers. For him in the Yogacara conceptual framework a definite assertible self has not been accepted.

‘According to the teachings of the Buddha, the idea of the self is an imaginary, false belief, which has no corresponding reality, and it produces harmful thoughts’. (Walpola Rahula). I evaluate these criticisms of the idea of the Self in Buddhist teachings.

Journal of Hindu Studies 6 (3) pp. 391-393., 2013

Contents and reviews of PDNRL no. 32, 2006

Journal of Indian Philosophy 42, 1 pp. 173-193, 2014

The paper gives an account of Rāmakaṇṭha's (950-1000) contribution to the Buddhist-Brāhmaṇical debate about the existence or non-existence of a self, by demonstrating how he carves out middle ground between the two protagonists in that debate. First three points of divergence between the Brāhmaṅical (specifically Naiyāyika) and the Buddhist conceptions of subjectivity are identified. These take the form of Buddhist denials of, or re-explanations of (1) the self as the unitary essence of the individual, (2) the self as the substance to which mental properties belong, (3) the self as the agent of both physical actions and cognitions. The difference of Rāmakaṇṭha's position from both Nyāya and Buddhism is then elaborated. He posits a self, but not one that is an eternally unchanging substance, nor one that is anything other than consciousness. Hence his difference from Nyāya. He falls with Buddhism in holding that consciousness does not require anything other than itself to inhere in, but departs from Buddhism in holding that consciousness is not momentary but enduring. The guiding metaphor here is light, but light considered as a dynamic, qualitatively unchanging repetition of the action of illumination.

In this paper, I show that a robust, reflexivist account of self-awareness (such as was defended by Digna¯ga and Dharmakı¯rti, most phenomenologists, and others) is compatible with reductionist view of persons, and hence with a rejection of the existence of a substantial, separate self. My main focus is on the tension between Buddhist reflexivism and the central Buddhist doctrine of no-self. In the first section of the paper, I give a brief sketch of reflexivist accounts of self-awareness, using the Buddhist philosopher Dharmakı¯rti as my example. In the next section, I examine reductionism as it relates to accounts of the self. I then, in the third section, argue that a reductionist account of persons can account for the unique features of first-person contents and our deep and multi-layered sense of self.

In this paper, I take up the problem of the self through bringing together the insights, while correcting some of the shortcomings, of Indo–Tibetan Buddhist and enactivist accounts of the self. I begin with an examination of the Buddhist theory of non-self (anātman) and the rigorously reductionist interpretation of this doctrine developed by the Abhidharma school of Buddhism. After discussing some of the fundamental problems for Buddhist reductionism, I turn to the enactive approach to philosophy of mind and cognitive science. I argue that human beings, as dynamic systems, are characterized by a high degree of self-organizing autonomy. Therefore, human beings are not reducible to the more basic mental and physical events that constitute them. I critically examine Francisco Varela’s enactivist account of the self as virtual and his use of Buddhist ideas in support of this view. I argue, in contrast, that while the self is emergent and constructed, it is not merely virtual. Finally I sketch a Buddhist-enactivist account of the self. I argue for a non- reductionist view of the self as an active, embodied, embedded, self-organizing process—what the Buddhists call ‘I’-making (ahaṃkāra). This emergent process of self-making is grounded in the fundamentally recursive processes that characterize lived experience: autopoiesis at the biological level, temporalization and self- reference at the level of conscious experience, and conceptual and narrative construction at the level of intersubjectivity. In Buddhist terms, I will develop an account of the self as dependently originated and empty, but nevertheless real.

Self in Hindu Thought , 2016

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 2024

The notion of the "Self" is one of the most critical issues in contemporary cognitive science. Whether the self is a single and independent real entity or a collection of constantly changing experiences has been at the core of debates between the substance theory and the illusion theory. Compared to the neglect of this issue in Western tradition studies, the meticulous practice of mindfulness/awareness in Eastern research traditions has long focused on this contradiction. This paper navigates the intricate dimensions of the "Self" by weaving together the Oriental framework of the five aggregates with the Middle Way, the principles of constructivism, and the empirical methodologies of experimental philosophy. This approach bridges the gap by synthesizing introspective first-person experiences with objective thirdperson scientific observations to enrich the understanding of self-constructivism. The implications of these findings extend into the practical realms of psychology and philosophy, offering a scaffold for future research to elucidate the multifaceted nature of the self further.