Exploring the fluid nature of the self: A Buddhist insight

International Journal on Humanistic Ideology, 2009

Interpreting “non-self” as no subject (or mental entity) of “awareness” by regarding the five aggregates as “awareness”, leads to an original three-tier structure (“subject”, “be aware of” and “object”) to summarize the progressive stages of “emptiness”, bridging various Buddhist schools in a unified analytical framework.

Hindu and Buddhist Ideas in Dialogue, 2012

The reconciliation of naturalism with the existence of a first-person perspective is the first work of a concept of self. The views of ourselves as corporeal beings and as subjective presences 'of self to self' seem to pull in different directions. Immanuel Kant recognised the tension and sought to resolve it this way:

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.

One of the perennial philosophical questions of human thought and reflection pertains to our notions of self and identity. Socrates enjoins us to above all 'know thyself'. Yet, what precisely is the self? Who are we? What is the nature of personal existence and consciousness? Does our personal identity survive the death of the body?

Asian Studies, 2016

I contrast briefly the Buddhist concept of Self as a process and a conditional reality with the concept of the substantial metaphysical concept of Self in Brahmanism and Hinduism. I present the criticism of the Buddhist thinkers, such as Nāgārjuna, who criticize any idea of the metaphysical Self. They deny the idea of the Self as its own being or as a possessor of its mental acts. However, they do not reject all sense of Self; they allow a pure process of knowledge (first of all, Self-knowledge) without a fixed subject or “owner” of knowledge. This idea is in a deep accord with some Chan stories and paradoxes of the Self and knowledge.