Buddhism, like other major religions, has a particular philosophical framework underpinning its teachings. In other words, Buddhism and other religions might be thought of as offering a set of answers to philosophical inquiries, such as questions about moral right and wrong or questions about our position in the universe. The area of philosophical inquiry with which this paper is concerned is the philosophy of self. What does it mean to be a person?   Buddhism engages with this debate.

          Foundational Buddhist thought, or Theravada Buddhism, offers a particular conception of personhood called anatman, or “non-self.” The idea here is that the commonly accepted notion of the self if mistaken; we are not selves. Ordinarily, pre-philosophical reflection on the question of what a person is, one might likely respond that a person it a unified individual entity, such as you or me. Philosophical views depart from this common concept to varying degrees. Some define a person as a human body, comprised of cells and ultimately governed by biological processes. Alternatively, perhaps a person is a mind, constituted most fundamentally by their beliefs and feelings and decisions. Maybe personhood is some mix of the two, or something else entirely. In contrast, the Buddhist conception of personhood rejects the notion of the self as a definable single entity entirely. At first glance, this may seem unacceptable to someone unfamiliar with Buddhist teachings. However, by reproducing the arguments presented in early Buddhist texts, I will show that anatman is on its own a plausible view. I will argue that the real trouble for anatman arises when considered within the broader tradition of Buddhist thought, especially in regard to samsara and karma. Samsara refers to the Buddhist idea of a cycle of rebirth, closely related to karma. Both samsara and karma involve the self persisting from one lifetime to the next. But, if there is no self, how can it persist? Surely, for something to persist through time, that thing must exist. So, it seems that if we accept anatman, and there is no such thing as a self, then we cannot accept samsara or karma. To resolve this tension, there must be a description of this persistence through time that does not require the existence of a self. I will argue that the Buddhist concept of dependent arising accomplishes this, and therefore resolves the tension between anatman on the one hand and samsara and karma on the other.

Anatman

           The argument for anatman derives from the concept of the five aggregates. This is a Buddhist concept that refers to five constitutive parts of a person. The five aggregates are translated various ways, but for the purposes of this paper I will offer them in simple terms. The five aggregates consist of 1) material form, 2) sensation, 3) perception, 4) volitional force, and 5) consciousness. A foundational Buddhist text, the Questions of King Milinda, includes a conversation in which a Buddhist monk named Nagasena purports that the self does not exist. His interlocutor, King Milinda, then asks, what is it that the name Nagesna is denoting? Does it refer to material form? To sensation? He continues through each of the five aggregates, and Nagasena responds that it is none of these (Milinda’s Questions 36). To explain how that may be, he uses an analogy of a chariot. A chariot is not its wheels nor its axle nor its pole, though it is also not an entity separate from these things (37). In this case, the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. Therefore, the chariot, as an entity, doesn’t exist.  Rather, “chariot” is merely a term used to denote a collection of things and nothing more. Similarly, Nagasena’s name is just a useful term referring to the collection of constitutive parts called aggregates, but not to an individual self (34). The self cannot be reduced to any one of the five aggregates, and it is also not an entity separate from them. Indeed, when understood in this way, the self simply doesn’t exist.

Samsara

          Samsara, or the cycle of rebirth, is another foundational Buddhist concept. It posits that when someone dies, they are reborn. This means that each of us have past lives that we don’t remember, from which we died and were reborn. So, we persist through one lifetime into the next. This notion of samsara is closely related to the Buddhist concept of karma, which ascribes a desert component to this cycle. Karma drives the rebirth cycle by attributing the quality of the life into which a person is reborn to the actions of their past lives. If someone commited immoral acts in their past lives, they would face the consequences by being reborn into a hellish miserable life. Conversely, if someone committed good acts, they would be reborn into a happy beautiful life (Sayings 203). This causal explanation between the actions someone undertook in their past lives and circumstances of their current life is what’s referred to as karma. In foundational Buddhist thought, Karma governs the persistence within a person from one lifetime to the next, and thus is related to samsara.

          The concepts of saṃsāra and karma, hand in hand, appear to be incompatible with anātman. If we grant that no person can point to any of the five aggregates and claim — “That is me!” — but, at the same time, a person is nothing more than those aggregates, we can accept the claim that the self does not exist. That is the structure of the argument presented above by Nagasena. However, accepting that the life a person is living right now is a consequence of a life they lived in the past requires that that person is persisting over time. That is, if we are to correctly say that Anita, for instance, deserves the poor quality of her life because she undertook immoral actions in her past lives, it must be that the Anita experiencing this poor-quality life is the same Anita who undertook those immoral actions. Otherwise, the immoral actions of the past lives couldn’t be attributed to the person who is living the consequentially poor-quality life. So, karma and saṃsāra require persistence.

          However, if the self doesn’t even exist, surely it cannot have the quality of persisting over time. Persistence necessitates existence. This is the tension that arises with the consideration of anātman in conjunction with saṃsāra; it seems we cannot accept one without rejecting the other — unless, that is, we have an account of non-self that involves persistence through time.

Dependent Arising

The concept of non-self can extend through the dimension of time with the inclusion of dependent arising. In another early Buddhist text, the Buddha delineates a series of causal chains. He says, “Conditioned by ignorance there are volitional forces, conditioned by volitional forces there is consciousness, conditioned by consciousness there is mind-and-body, conditioned by mind-and-body there are the six senses…” until he arrives at suffering (Sayings 210-211). This causal chain is called dependent arising. Within this series of states, each caused by an earlier one and causing the next, we find the five aggregates: between volitional forces, consciousness, and mind-and-body.  So, the five aggregates we refer to when we speak of the self are themselves just parts within a system that extends beyond them.

In this way, the non-self is positioned within a greater system of causal chains. If this understanding is applied to the earlier concepts of saṃsāra and karma, the tension between them and anātman may be resolved. Initially, the idea that there is a cycle of death and rebirth called saṃsāra seems to presuppose the existence of a self, particularly as an individual entity that persists through time. Moreover, the proposition, known as karma, that the conditions of one’s present life are a consequence of past lives ascribes continuity within a self as it undergoes multiple life cycles. It seems to follow from this that one’s past actions result in one’s current experiences, meaning that the person who commits the actions must be the same person who has the current experiences. So, there must be a self that persists.

But, if the cycle of rebirth driven by karma is reconsidered through a lens of dependent arising, there is no need to account for the existence of an individual entity called a self.  It need not be the case that there is a self who at one point both committed certain actions and is now experiencing the effects. There need not be an individual entity to which these actions are attributed. Rather, there can be certain actions committed and resultant effects being experienced. Indeed, the constitutive parts of a person, the five aggregates, are nothing more than steps within a greater causal chain. By accepting dependent arising, we can understand what was once necessarily the persistence of the self through time as, instead, a causal relationship and no more. Earlier states bring about later states. There is no self.

Conclusion

By including an account of non-self over time, such as dependent arising, the tensions between saṃsāra and anātman are resolved. The argument for anātman in a given moment, what I’ve referred to as static non-self, derives from the five aggregates. As expressed in the chariot analogy, a person is not any one of the five aggregates and a person is not anything more than them. Therefore, the existence of a unified self is a mere illusion. This is an important claim within Buddhist thought because it is included in a foundational teaching: that clinging to the self is the cause of suffering. This might be enough to motivate letting go of the idea of the self, for the purpose of ending suffering. However, the idea that clinging to the self causes suffering isn’t enough to justify the plausibility of non-self. It must also be consistent with other teachings in Buddhism. Initially, it seems to be incompatible with the teachings of saṃsāra and karma. These teachings seem to necessitate a self that persists through time, because surely it must be the same person who lives through the multiple lives involved in a particular cycle of rebirth driven by their own karma. But, if the self doesn’t exist even for a given moment, how can it exist from one moment to the next? Indeed, it doesn’t. This can be explained through the concept of dependent arising, a dynamic picture of non-self. Through this lens, the five aggregates are placed in a causal chain of events. This way, there can be causal continuity within a person's life — or lives — without there necessarily being a self. Past events cause later events, and so goes the cycle of rebirth. Finally, there is no incompatibility between anatman and the rest of Buddhist teaching, and it can be justifiably accepted as a plausible account. In this manner, dependent arising resolves the tension initially faced between anatman and saṃsāra.

References

Gethin, Rupert. 2008. Sayings of the Buddha : a selection of suttas from the Pali Nikayas,

Oxford world's classics. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.

Gethin, Rupert. 1998. The Foundations of Buddhism. Oxford [England] ; New York: Oxford University Press.