Non-self

THE TEACHING OF NON-SELF

 

Inextricably tied up with impermanence and suffering is a third principle intrinsic to all phenomena of existence. This is the characteristic of non-self (anattā), and the three together are called the three marks or characteristics (tilakkhaṇa). The Buddha teaches, contrary to our most cherished beliefs, that our individual being — the five aggregates — cannot be identified as self, as an enduring and substantial ground of personal identity. The notion of self has only a conventional validity, as a convenient shorthand device for denoting a composite insubstantial situation. It does not signify any ultimate immutable entity subsisting at the core of our being. The bodily and mental factors are transitory phenomena, constantly arising and passing away, processes creating the appearance of selfhood through their causal continuity and interdependent functioning. Nor does the Buddha posit a self outside and beyond the five aggregates. The notion of selfhood, treated as an ultimate, he regards as a product of ignorance, and all the diverse attempts to substantiate this notion by identifying it with some aspect of the personality he describes as “clinging to a doctrine of self.” In several suttas in the Majjhima Nikāya, the Buddha gives forceful expression to his repudiation of views of self. In MN 102 he undertakes a far-reaching survey of the various propositions put forth about the self, declaring them all to be “conditioned and gross.” In MN 2.8 six views of self are branded as “the thicket of views, the wilderness of views, the contortion of views, the vacillation of views, the fetter of views.” In MN 11 he compares his teaching point by point with those of other recluses and brahmins and shows that beneath their apparent similarities, they finally diverge on just this one crucial point — the rejection of views of self — which undermines the agreements. MN 22 offers a series of arguments against the view of self, culminating in the Buddha’s declaration that he does not see any doctrine of self that would not lead to sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair. In his map of the steps to liberation, identity view (sakkāyadiṭṭhi), the positing of a self in relation to the five aggregates, is held to be the first fetter to be broken with the arising of the “vision of the Dhamma.” The principle of non-self is shown in the suttas to follow logically from the two marks of impermanence and suffering. The standard formula states that what is impermanent is pain or suffering, and what is impermanent, suffering, and subject to change cannot be regarded as mine, I, or self (MN 22.26, MN 35.20, etc.). Other passages highlight the relationship among the three characteristics from different angles. MN 28 points out that when the external physical elements — earth, water, fire, and air — vast as they are, are periodically destroyed in cosmic cataclysms, there can be no considering this transitory body as self. MN 148 demonstrates by a reductio ad absurdum argument that impermanence implies non-self: when all the factors of being are clearly subject to rise and fall, to identify anything among them with self is to be left with the untenable thesis that self is subject to rise and fall. MN 35.19 connects the mark of non-self with that of dukkha by arguing that because we cannot bend the five aggregates to our will, they cannot be taken as mine, I, or self.