​What about the Buddhist concept of no-self, anattavada?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Yeah.
So what about the Buddhist concept of the no-self? See, Anattavada, as it is called. Now, to understand this historically, first of all. Buddhism evolved in India about 2,500 years ago.
Primarily as a response to casteist oppression in the prevailing religion at that time. And if we look at Buddha’s life, what he essentially taught and what he essentially propagated in terms of conduct and practice, it is in many ways similar to what was present earlier. You know, we should explore life’s spiritual dimension and we should focus on proper, nobler living.
So now, at that time, he rejected the conventional sources of knowledge that were there, the yoga texts that were there at that time, various texts that were there at that time. They had been misunderstood and misrepresented for perpetuating the caste system. The original Vedic, original idea in yoga texts is that we all have different natures.
And what is called as caste system now was actually originally based on nature. So different people have different natures and they are given occupation according to their natures. It was not meant to be a birth.
It was not meant to be about discrimination. It was meant for cooperation. But anyway, the point here is that yoga, that because those texts were misunderstood, misrepresented, and when Buddha gave some teaching of egalitarianism, of inquiry, of exploration, which was based on using human intelligence, so the existing orthodoxy of that time said, where is this told in the Vedas, in the yoga texts? So he said, if these texts are going to teach something discriminatory, then reject those texts.
Now, if I decide to study physics without any physics textbooks, I cannot study physics. I need physics textbooks to study physics. Similarly, to know spirituality, we need spiritual books.
When Buddha rejected all spiritual books, then what happened? Then how to talk about spirituality? So he basically adopted largely agnostic attitude towards spirituality. So there is a story, you know. Some people came and asked him, so are you God? He just remained silent.
Are you a saint? He remained silent. Are you an angel? He remained silent. What are you? He said, I am awake.
So he gave an answer which was true, but we did not address the specific question. So basically he remained silent about the spiritual side. He said, basically focus on ethical practice.
By that the consciousness will develop and eventually spiritual understanding will dawn. So he did not, he was silent largely about the soul. But subsequent generation of Buddhist thinkers, they wanted theological autonomy from the parent Hindu tradition.
And that is how the idea of anattavada. So Buddha was silent. Buddha did not say that there is no soul.
Buddha was just silent about the idea of a soul. But subsequent thinkers attributed to him the idea that he said there is no soul. And that becomes, it becomes a source of perplexity even for Buddhist thinkers because Buddhism accepts reincarnation.
But it doesn’t accept a soul. So then the question comes up, what is it that is reincarnating? We have consciousness and somebody else, there are past life memories that people remember. I was so and so person, I read so and so.
Some of them have very accurate memories also. So there is something which is going from this life to that life. If there is no soul, then what is it that is going? So rather than seeing anattavada as an absolute truth, what we could see it as a contextual historical development in response to a particular situation.
So Buddha himself was open to philosophical understanding and inquiry. So actually if we explore spirituality, we turn inwards and explore, we can understand that there is a core to our being which is non-material. I will just tell how even science points to this.
There is Dr. Wilder Penfield, Nobel laureate, pioneer of neurosurgery. He wrote a book called, many books, but one of his prominent books is The Mystery of the Mind, in which he reported results of almost 40 years of experimentation done in trying to understand the self. So now researchers know that certain areas of the brain are connected with certain bodily functions.
So say the frontal area of the brain is connected with motor nervous system. So for example, if this front part of the brain is activated, say the hand rises. So he had a subject and he told the subject, raise your hand.
Subject raised the hand and he saw that that part of the brain was activated. Put your hand down. Put his hand down.
That part of the brain was deactivated. Then after that he used external probes, electrodes to activate that part of the brain and the hand went up. What happened? He asked the subject, what happened? He says, my hand went up.
Did you raise your hand? No, I didn’t. You did. Then afterwards he deactivated.
The hand fell down. What happened? My hand fell down. Did you put your hand down? No, I didn’t.
You did. So now while repeating this experiment by which the hand goes up and hand goes down, Penfield also activated other parts of the brain. Now no matter whichever part of the brain he activated, no part of the brain ever gave the person the feeling that I am raising my hand.
Different parts of the brain when activated did different things. Some memories got stimulated. Some other reactions came in the body.
But nowhere did the person feel that I am doing this when a particular part of the brain was activated. So to understand the implications of this experiment, say consider there is a computer and there is a printer attached to it. So in my computer I press the print button.
And then the printer hand starts moving. It’s my computer, I can press the print button and the printer hand will move. But suppose you come there and you press the print button.
Then also the printer hand will move. So now there is a connection between the print button and the print hand. Similarly there is a connection between say the frontal lobe of the brain and the motion of the hand.
Now in the second case, it was Dr. Penfield who came and pressed the print button. It was he who activated that part of the brain. In the first case, who activated it? Who activated it in the first case? There is certainly some person who was activating who said I raised my hand and then later he said I did not raise my hand.
So after 40 years of researching the brain, Dr. Penfield concluded that the source of consciousness is extra cerebral. It’s extra cerebral. So that source of consciousness which exists outside the brain, that is the soul.
There has to be a locus of consciousness from which consciousness is being transmitted. So Anattavada as I said is more of a historical response rather than a timeless truth. Does this answer your question? Thank you.
Any other questions?