Non-self: an interlude

To understand how many Buddhists think of the self, it’s important to understand their views on collections in general. Buddhists are skeptical that collections are real; on a common Buddhist view there’s nothing more to them than the parts that make them up and their vari­ous relations.

These collections are known as skandhas in Sanskrit, a term that means a heap, pile, bundle, or aggregate. So just as a pile of laundry just is a collection of shirts, socks, and pants arranged in a particular way, what we think is a self is simply a collection of different physical bits and mental events. These are sometimes called the five aggregates. These categories include things like the material parts of our bodies, and instants of perception, sensations, and consciousness.

For our purposes, the details of the categories aren’t important. Realizing that there’s noth­ing to a pile of laundry beyond the clothes that make it up does not require understanding the difference between shirts and socks. What’s important is this: Buddhists deny the reality of collections. There’s no pile on the floor aside from all the clothes. When you clean up your bedroom you cannot see a pile of thirteen socks on the floor and complain that you must clean up fourteen things — thirteen socks and one pile.

In the same way, for many Buddhists, there is nothing more to you or me than the various mental and physical bits that make us up.There's no self beyond the five aggregates that make it up. This view, known as non-self, is the denial of a separate and persisting self, one that exists beyond the parts that we're made of.

Of course, Buddhist philosophers don't just assert this claim.There are a wide range of argu­ments.¹⁶ Here's a brief taste of one famous argument for this claim. It works as a reductio: if we suppose that both the parts and the collection are real, we get into trouble. The trouble comes when we try to think about the relationship between them, particularly identity. If two things are real, they will either be identical or not. So, the parts and collection will either be identical or not.

But, as the argument goes, none of the options for identity between a collection and its parts seems to work very well. Consider the classical example of a chariot. The collection cannot be identical to any particular part; a chariot isn't a wheel or a spoke. The collection can't be identical to all the parts; a chariot with a single spoke removed is still the same chariot. The collection can't be identical with none of the parts either; it can't be the case that I have a chariot but all the parts have been sold. So, we should reject the supposition that both a collection and its parts are real. Since the parts are privileged in some way (they're more directly known, more causally efficacious) they're the real ones.This is in a way less radical than saying that there are collections but no parts.¹⁷

There are, of course, many objections and responses to this particular argument and others that aim to establish the same conclusion. In fact, many of the Buddhists I cite here accept some­thing even more radical: that even the parts themselves lack any inherent essence, an idea known as emptiness. But this more radical idea isn't necessary to see the special kind of humility found in Buddhist thought. The point is not to set sail on the sea of metaphysics never to return, but simply that Buddhists think collections are not real and they think that we are such collections. This radical view has important implications for ethics in general, and for humility in particular.

It's important to keep in mind that Buddhists do not advocate for banishing words like ‘pile' or ‘chariot' from our speech.We can still say true things about collectives: “Watch out for that pile of socks!” or “That chariot doesn't look too safe” can both be important and useful things to say.What's important, however, is to say these things while keeping in mind what a pile of socks (or a chariot) really is, nothing more than a bunch of socks or parts organized in a particular way.

Though words like ‘pile' or ‘chariot' can be a handy shorthand for a more complicated reality, the problem is a psychological tendency to start feeling as if these things were real.The danger, then, is that we start to believe the stories we tell out of convenience. This is most dangerous when it comes to the self.The words ‘I' and ‘me' are useful ways to talk about a complicated and constantly changing collective, but we start to think of it as an extra thing in the world and to become intensely invested and protective of this imagined self. For Buddhists, there is a deep mistake in thinking that the pile of socks exists in the same way as the socks themselves. It doesn't. The socks are real and the pile is just and easy way to talk about them when they're organized in a certain way. In the same way there is also a deep mistake in thinking that I exit in the same way as the mental and physical events themselves.

Here's where the ethical relevance comes in. For Buddhists, in mistaking ourselves as separate things in the world, we make the same kind of mistake as someone who thinks they're cleaning up 14 things from their bedroom floor.This, they say, is the source of all kinds of suffering and misery in the world. It's a deeply ingrained and misleading sense of self that both produces and reinforces feelings of selfishness, alienation, and as I'll claim, pride.

20.4