Tidbits of Indian Philosophy: The Self, Non-Self, and Religious versus “Philosophical” Buddhism

Before we can even begin to discuss the meaning of anatta or non-self, we must discuss the meaning of the self. We in the west tend to separate the idea of the self from the soul. The self is a physical concept of who you are while the soul is the “ethereal stuff” underneath it all. Indian philosophy takes a different opinion on this. I am no expert on Indian philosophy as all I have is a layman’s reading of the texts, not to mention that I see the similarities between Buddhism and Stoicism plain as day. When I read texts like The Upanishads I cannot help but see the self, atman in Sanskrit and atta in Pali, as something that is almost like a fusion of the soul with the physicalist conception of the self as if they are one in the same. I am not a Hindu, but when I read up on various ideas in Hinduism it seems to me that the self in Hindu thought is both physical and metaphysical; Perhaps I am completely misunderstanding this and, if I am, someone enlighten me. Non-self is not suggesting that you don’t really exist, that there is no real individual who has experiences. The whole “self is illusory” bit tends to sound like Sam Harris mixing his own biases with a bit of Buddhism. As I understand it through classical Buddhist thinkers such as Buddhaghosa, Siddhartha Gautama’s overall point was to promote the idea that there is no permanent unchanging self and not “You do not exist.” So non-self is akin to David Hume’s bundle theory, that is to say, what we conceive as “me, myself, and I” is really just a collection of attributes that make up who we are (i.e. our physical traits, hobbies, interests, etc).

Now to discuss how I see Buddhism. Many western scholars have tried to argue that Buddhism was an attempted reform of Hinduism but I would like to make a correction to this: It was no reform but rather a critique of its core ideas. I see a distinct difference between religious Buddhism, the Buddhism spread from India that was primarily sinicized when it went to China and across East Asia, and what I (and probably others) term philosophical Buddhism, originating in the early Buddhist schools with it’s most pure ideas preserved in the modern day by the Theravadin tradition. To give an opinion about what I think the overall point of historical Buddhism was, I believe that it was a was a project not just geared at teaching to live a happy and virtuous life but also a social movement that criticized the Hindu view of atman (if my understanding of it is correct), attack the case system, and challenge the infallibility of the Vedas.

Being a theist, the only real conundrum I see with Buddhism is that it has no emphasis on a creator god. Contrary to what many people believe a creator is hinted at in the Pali Canon, “Mahabrahma” or Great Brahma, seemingly as an impersonal first cause that does not act in worldly affairs like the Judeo-Christian God or even the gods of Hinduism. Perhaps Gautama saw the gods of the Vedas as imperfect just as Socrates saw the gods of the Greek religion as imperfect. Philosophical Buddhism stresses the notion that one must pull himself up by the lobes of his own ears in order to combat suffering; Stoicism makes a similar case while accepting God as a first cause but again it’s not a god that acts in the world. I don’t see Buddhism as an atheistic system as we have religious/theistic Buddhists. And I cannot say that it is agnostic because according to the canon divine forces do exist. I definitely see it as non-theistic, however. To the Buddhist, wrestling with the idea of an all powerful God or even just general gods that govern the forces of nature could perhaps make one’s angst worse. Perhaps some metaphysical questions are best left unasked because, according to Gautama, the goal is an ethical life free from suffering.