Buddhism's belief in 'no self'

reply to post by eNumbra


Great story, and I have even come to that conclusion on my own, in my own meditations. However, I do take issue with the idea that we must live every single life that exists or has existed, not taking into account that there are foreign entities that enter to either help or wreak havoc from time to time. I cannot fathom that I must live the lives of serial killers, rapists, or criminals of the worst kind. I do not have/recognize that level of evil in me, and the thought that my next life must be something evil is depressing at best. What am I working towards if not the full embodiment of love? Or hopefully, all those lives have already been lived, and I'm now done with the "dark side", so to speak. I would like to believe I am moving "up" the ladder, and not skipping around on it.

To address the OP, keep it simple. You are a leaf on a massive tree. It is a product of the tree. In it's lifetime, a tree will produce unfathomable numbers of leaves, each sprouting, growing, withering, dying, falling to the ground, and decomposing back into the root system. Like humans, no two leaves are exactly alike, and in-as-much, they are "individuals". But they cannot survive once removed from the tree, and are always a part of the whole organism, each one performing the same task, just from a different part of the tree!

If you want to blow your mind, don't stop at contemplating just the tree...contemplate the roots, then the earth, and the myriads of trees around you. Then contemplate all of life. Then contemplate the human body's chakras in relation to the planets....we reside, literally, in the heart of the solar system. The earth IS the heart chakra, or more specifically OUR heart chakra - yours, mine. We have created this world by what is in our hearts, or our heart. Then go back the other way on the scale and imagine picking one single cell in your body, and living consciously the existence of the life of that single cell. Essentially, that's what we're doing as humans.

Beyond that, I can't help much more other than to speculate.

Re Dragonfly 79

You wrote:

".......this existence is without beginning or end, it just changes from nirvana to samsara over and over again. The change is only in the perception, ultimately it is neither."
I'm not doctrinal, so I don't refer to any bible-verses, sutras or citations from famous scientists, taken out of context.

It's quite true, that mainstrean buddhism operates on 'perception' as the pivot point. But the intra-buddhistic different interpretations on this seem to have passed un-noticed by, by most westerners. The 'perception point' can variously be placed in individuals (dualistically cosmic fragments), cosmos' perception of itself or in the perception of a trans-cosmic entity (super-imposed on cosmos).

Samsara = Nirvana is a rather Mahayana postion, not shared completely by other buddhistic factions.

As to 'beginning and end' this is an intrinsic part of samsara, not referring to the nirvana position.

You also wrote:

"Samsara is a nursery in a way, there are many wonderful comparisons of the human mind being like a seed growing in the mud to become a lotus, the mud being like ignorance, there's a collection of sutta's on the subject on accesstoinsight (overview by simile, "lotus")."

In Mahayana, somewhat 'yes', but not in the abramic sense of intrinsic purpose of 'from...to' (making us e.g. more 'spiritual' than we were before). The 'mud' is more like a meaningless hindrance, we must get away from through knowledge or realisation.

Re Gseven

The karmic theory you're referring to is a popularized version, normally found in extremely exoteric contexts. It presupposes a chain of components, many of which are purely assumptions or (in the west) asian philosophy predigested through basically abramic perspectives.

Nice allegory you made. But don't make the same mistake as with intellectualizing buddhism too much. A similar 'bhakti' overdoing it, a reminiscence from western thinking again with its complex ideology of pauline 'love' as part of a greater scheme, will twist the buddhist stressing of direct experience as the final aim.

Bhakti has also been a prominent part of some hindu'ism, where the results are far from definite. It looks like a blind alley.

'Love', humane or divine, is in the west rather semantically loaded, and maybe 'compassion' is closer to the original buddhistic concept.

The self exists only as a concept, a label to wrap around our ever-changing physical self and its infinite characteristics and extensions, themselves also ever changing.

Or worded differently, to describe the fractal, flowing properties of ourselves is such a daunting and thus pointless task, that we instead refer to it as the Self. The problem lies not in this intentional and necessary oversimplification of our Infinite nature, but that over time we forget that this is merely a communication tool, and that this Self does not actually exist.

Short Version: The self doesn't exist but is a useful word to use that everyone understands what is being referred to.