Buddhism & Christianity: Self, No Self

 As Christians, we presume we have a self, that we are our selves. We presume at the core of who we are, there is an I that is real and identifiable and is separate from the I you are.

We might use different terms like soul or self. Or even spirit to name this core identity.

Many think the self we are will outlast our bodies, our selves related to God who is eternal.

The Buddha taught something completely different. One of his most central teachings, and one of the most unique teachings in all religiosities, is known as the doctrine of no-self.

No-self is the common English translation of the Sanskrit term anatman. An translates as no or non. Atman translates as self or soul. Anatman has thus been translated as no-self, non-self, or no-soul, or even no-ego.

The Buddha basically taught that the notion of an eternal, permanent, unconditioned “I” does not exist.

I want to highlight those adjective qualifying “I.” Eternal, permanent, unconditioned. I might also add the adjective independent. If someone says I am eternal or permanent, the Buddha would say, no, this is false. If someone said, I am unconditioned by things outside myself or I don’t depend on anything else for my existence, the Buddha would say, no, this is delusion.

This is so because we all exist in relationship. Even the deepest part of who we are is affected by our relationships with people, places, things outside ourselves. We are each affected by the conditions surrounding us, the context we live in. We are each affected by our dependencies, people, places, things that have made us who were are, either in the past or in the present.

What is deemed the permanent, unconditioned, independent self is in flux, influenced by outside forced, and always dependent on something else for its continual existence.

For the Buddha, the person is merely defined by five phenomena and these five alone – body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and conscious awareness. There is nothing else to the person. None of these qualify as atman.    

To most, this teaching, especially at first impression, seems anathema and not true to our experience. This is especially true in America where the notion of soul, spirit, and self are ubiquitous. According to a 2000 survey, 96% of Americans believe they have a soul. To suggest one has no soul or self is one of the worst things you can say to someone. To be told you have no soul is the worst thing you can hear, right?

Here's the thing tough. When examining Christian notions of self (or soul or spirit), we see that the version of self the Buddha argues against is not the Christian-influenced, Western version of self. In other words, the Buddha’s teaching of anatman rests on a version of atman, the self, that does not exist in Christianity. Atman is an ancient Hindu notion. The traditional Christian version of self is different than the one Buddha confronted in his Indian-religious context. 

Atman in the Buddha’s context would have been the immaterial essence of a person that is eternal, immutable, unconditioned and perfect because it is a manifestation of Brahma, which is equivalent to the One God of creation. The Buddha was not rejecting that a person was a person with continuous self-awareness per se, but taught that persons at their deepest levels are marked by change and growth, influenced and conditioned by impermanence, and affected by karma, either negative or positive.

This version of atman – eternal, immutable, unconditioned, perfect, and divine – does not apply to the general notion of self in Christian anthropology. Anthropology is a traditional field of study that looks at and defines the human person. Anthropology in the classical Christian context asks the question who are we?

According to classical Christian anthropology, the self is not eternal in and of itself. The human self has a beginning. Each self is created by God, first of all, and so has a beginning at that level. The human self has a beginning on a more conventional level. We are not selves before we are conceived. Many see the human self beginning at conception or in utero or upon first independent breath, depending on various denominations.

What’s more, in the Christian idea, the self continuing after death is dependent on the self’s connection to God who is eternal.

The self is also tainted by sin, and thus is changeable, and prone to move away from God.

The self is easily influenced and conditioned by the world around it and by the ways of the world. The self falls short of perfection and is dependent on the help of God and others.

The self’s utter dependence on God is crucial here.

In other words, persons in the traditional Christian understanding are marked by temporality, changeability, dependence, and imperfection.

And so our human selves are far from divine by nature – unconditioned, changeless, eternal - like the idea of atman the Buddha would have been familiar with and rejected.

We see the Christian view of self in our popular use of language related to the self. Terms like self-growth, low or high self-esteem, self-knowledge imply that the self is not set in stone or void of change. If the self can grow or regress, there is fluidity and changeability innate to the self. And that the self can be influenced by conditions, people, or experiences, and is able to grow or regress shows that what is called the self is far from unconditioned and set in stone.                          

As for the human spirit, the same description above applies. Again, the simple idea of spiritual growth points to the idea that the spirit can expand and contract, mature and lose maturity. The opposite of spiritual growth is spiritual backsliding, which finds the spirit regressing and weakening.

The soul is often a synonym for spirit. The term derives from the Greek term anima, which Christianity borrowed. It overlaps with the Hebrew notion of spirit, Judaism not having a corollary to the term soul. Still, the soul is not akin to the atman of the Buddha’s context. The soul exists in relation to other souls and is influenced and affected in its relating. We’ve all heard the expressions, “my soul was changed,” “my soul was moved,” “my soul has never been the same,” even “my soul died.”

There is the notion of immortality connected to the idea of the spirit/soul. It is commonly said on the occasion of a person dying, that the body is dying but the spirit is not, and that when the body dies, the spirit will continue.

Now, this is not eternalism per se, which the Buddha rejects, for the individual self or soul doesn’t continue after life in and of itself. It has its beginning in God and its continuation in God. The individual self or soul in death, if its connected to God, will give way to the collective self in the realm of heaven in God. If disconnection to God remains a reality, the self in the end will end.

So, Buddhism rejects a notion of self that Christianity doesn’t really hold to begin with.

We should be clear here, though. Let’s not get the idea that Buddhism is saying nothing exists or that nothing about human persons endure. Buddhism is not nihilism.

Buddhism does maintain some sense of an enduring, continuously flowing reality in persons. If there was no semblance of things enduring, if there was no sense of continuity in us, then when the body dies, everything dies. But Buddhism’s concept of rebirth suggests something does go on when the body dies. The body dying does not end the totality of that person’s existence. Something endures in rebirth.

Buddhism claims that something to be a combination of our mental formations (i.e. memory), our karma, and our conscious awareness, which together seem to at least resemble a kind of self.

When the Dalai Lama dies, the intangible elements carried by the body will continue and take root in another body. The tests of children to find out who is the next Dalai Lama will entail getting at the memory, karma, and self-awareness of the Dalai Lama somehow instilled in the new one.

So, in Buddhism there is an enduring reality.

Again,  I would argue the Judeo-Christian concept of the soul or self is closer to the way of the enduring person in Buddhism than the way of the enduring person seen in atman, because in the Judeo-Christian concept the self or the soul is not static or unconditioned as it is in the ancient Hindu concept of atman.