Self = auto
Does a self-driving car have a self? Is there a ‘ghost’, ‘spirit’ or
‘soul’, or even a god driving the car? Obviously the self-drive car (or
smartphone) is guided by a clever set of rules (i.e. software) = algorithm,
and is, therefore an automaton? Following the insights of the
Upanishads, the Buddha concluded that a living system (just like any
autonomous vehicle) is self-driven by transient (rather than permanent (i.e.
‘abiding) conditions (nowadays called software). In other words, the Buddha taught that
the humans (and all other biological systems) operate as transient automatons. And that the automatons have no (are empty of)
independent permanent driver (i.e. ‘soul’, ‘spirit’, ‘God’ and so on). They
emerge spontaneously when conditions permit and then happen (evolve) as
actual local applications of those ever changing and transient conditions. The common folk and the bulk of the
Buddha’s less enlightened followers, still seeking comfort from their belief
in spirits, ghosts, gods, and after-life and so on, responded to the Buddha’s
comfortless primary insight of the automatic nature of the world and its
inhabitants with dismay, indeed horror. They could neither understand nor
live with the fact that they were merely (self-less = soulless) transient automatons, the more so the Buddha did not
explain the fundamental purpose (or functions) of those automatons. Nor did he ever define what he
meant by ‘self’ ( Greek, auto) ©2018 by Victor Langheld, alias Bodhangkur |
Atman
(Sanskrit) The question ‘What
drives a living system’ was first put in the ancient Indian Upanishads
(approx. 800BC). The solution given was that all living systems are self-driven. That meant that
there is no God, spirit or soul driving/guiding a living system. Living
systems arise due to a set of universal rules (or forces), and which they
called the Brahman, and conditions arising from motion or turbulence upon
which the rules work. The highly abstract
philosophers of the Upanishads called the universal rules (or forces, hence,
as software having no form, thus nirguna, i.e.
without traits) Brahman (to wit the SELF writ large) and the local
applications thereof (hence with traits) atman (the self
writ small). In short, the universe as we experience it is a
self-originating and self –driven automaton as are all its applications, meaning the world of
phenomena. The ancient view
was that the atman, i.e. the little self (as local driver) together with its
local appendages that produced real form in time and space, such as, for
instance, the human, happen as
localised (hence dependent on local conditions) clones of the Brahman,
therefore are in essence identical with it. Hence ‘Thou art that’ (i.e. tattvamasi). Starting (wrongly)
from the human experience of misery resulting from the struggle for life and
the need for a comforting solution, the creators of the Upanishads eventually
saw the need to personalise both the Brahman and the atman. This the Buddha
did not do. He simply stated: ‘Whatever arises
ceases’ ‘Whatever arises
does so subject to conditions. When the conditions cease, the arisen ceases.’ Arising happens due
to turbulence (explained vaguely as ignorance = vana). Elimination or
stilling of turbulence, thus shutting down the rules that regulate the
turbulence, results in nir-vana. |