Who Was The Buddha?

Who am I? What is the Self? This is the most fundamental of questions.

Buddhism has the concept of anatta (no self) which is usually interpreted to mean that souls and selves do not exist. However, The Buddha may have meant that individual, discrete selves are an illusion, but there is a singular, undivided Self that can be realised by one who has awakened from the dream of separateness (ego). This interpretation makes The Buddha's teaching compatible with the Indian philosophy of Advaita (non-duality).

Buddhists believe in reincarnation, which suggests the existence of souls. It may be that The Buddha saw souls as merely subtler forms of the gross body, and not something one should identify with. Perhaps this is the intention of the anatta doctrine. Centuries later, the sage Shri Shankaracharya wrote his Tad Niskala, which states that who you are is not the body, or the sheaths of the subtle body (soul), but Shiva (the Self of all that exists). Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi has said that Shri Shankaracharya was a reincarnation of The Buddha. Shankara encouraged devotion for the Adi Shakti, the feminine aspect of Shiva, the Universal Self, who manifests in each of us as the Kundalini. This is because, without Kundalini awakening, Self-realisation is not possible.

One might ask why The Buddha bothered to try to liberate people if he did not believe in souls, or selves. What would be the point of mere matter trying to enlighten mere matter? It's a good question. According to tradition, The Buddha did initially consider that perhaps teaching people about enlightenment would be a futile task. The answer may be that the Self, like the sun, must shine, no matter that there are clouds of ignorance and illusion. Suffering is due to the illusion of separateness, and this illusion should be dispelled, even if there are ultimately no 'others' who suffer.

The Buddhist scholar Alexander Wynne considers this issue, and also questions the emphasis on therapy in the contemporary offshoot of Buddhism, Mindfulness Meditation, in contrast to the Buddha's emphasis on Self-realisation as the main aim. In his article Who Was The Buddha?, he also tries to separate the mythical and historical figure of Gotama Buddha.

Read the article. here

Muso

A virtuous man when alone loves the quiet 
of the mountains.
A wise man in nature enjoys the purity
of water.
One must not be suspicious of the fool who
takes pleasure in mountains and streams,
But rather measure how well he sharpens 
his spirit by them.

Muso Soseki was a 14th century Japanese Zen master, poet, and calligrapher. Today he is probably best known for developing the art of traditional Japanese Zen gardening.

To pursue his meditative practice he resorted to remote places in nature, but was often summoned back to court where his advice was sought by officials, and even by the emperor himself.

Muso was instrumental in the formation of the Five Mountain System network of Zen temples which became centres of learning and the arts, and had a long-lasting influence on Japanese culture.


In the realm of True Purity, there is no such thing as self or other.

When there is nowhere 
that you have determined
to call your own, 
then no matter where you go
you are always going home.

Inner Being

Deborah Stevenson, Time out of Mind, paper collage.
Image used with kind permission of the artist.
See more of her work at deborahstevenson.com

Try to meditate. 

Meditate more, so that you reach that inner being. 

And this inner being is the vast ocean of bliss 

which exists inside every one of us.

-Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, 1983

According to several Indian teachings, including that of Guru Nanaka, the founder of the Sikh religion, the inner Self and the universe "outside" are one and the same. No part of the infinite cosmos, with all it's countless swirling galaxies, is outside the ambit of who you are.

One of the main obstacles to meditation is the mind's objection to being quietened - something it tends to see as a form of limitation. However, contrary to the mind's expectations, genuine states of meditation are characterised by a sense of expansiveness in consciousness; something Buddhists call the Vast Mind.

The poet and translator, Patricia Donegan, uses the composition and reading of the Japanese Haiku form as an awareness practice, a means of realising the Vast Mind. In her book, Haiku Mind, she writes: "to create and appreciate this tiny form of poetry, one needs a vast mind like the sky." 

Steve Jobs on Meditation

“If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is,” Jobs told his biographer, Walter Isaacson. “If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things, that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It’s a discipline; you have to practise it.”

-Steve Jobs CEO of Apple.

Steve Jobs in his Zen apartment

Jobs was a practitioner of Zen Buddhism. He took it up seriously, not just as a passing fad. Buddhism is part of the philosophical tradition of non-duality, and this may have influenced Jobs to converge different technologies and media into a single simple device. Being half-Syrian probably gave him a sense of being the convergence of two worlds. 
The Zen aesthetic is certainly there in the design of Apple products.

Tron Legacy

The science fiction film Tron Legacy explores Buddhist/yoga themes of non-duality (advaita) and humanity's struggle with the ego.

Jeff Bridges, plays Kevin Flynn, a character trapped inside a virtual universe, the Grid, he has initially designed, but which has taken on a life of its own. His ego self has manifested as Clu, a ruthless perfectionist control freak seeking total domination of, not only the cyber world, but the 'real' world. 

Realising that direct confrontation with Clu (ego) only strengthens him, Flynn uses meditation to integrate himself with the digital world he has created, while his companion and confidante Quorra (played by Olivia Wilde) fights Clu's minions. She is a kind of shakti figure (divine feminine active principle) who acts while Flynn rests in a state of non-action. Quorra tells Flynn's son, who has entered the Grid in order to find his father, that Flynn is trying to "remove the self from the equation". 

Wilde describes Quorra as being like Joan of Arc, a child warrior, with innocence and optimism, led by some greater power.

The concept of self in Buddhism

In his review of Thomas Metzinger's book, The Ego Tunnel, Owen Flanagan includes the Buddha in his list of figures who have endorsed the idea that there is no self. This is somewhat simplistic. Sanskrit, the language spoken by Buddha in it's variant form, Pali, has several terms that could translate into English 'self'. The Sanskrit word jiva refers to an individual soul, atma can mean either an individual or universal self, aham means 'ego', while Brahman is a self that is coextensive with the universe. It's probable that the Buddha rejected the reality of jiva, but would have found rejection of Brahman illogical. This might sound pedantic but these terms refer to vastly different things. It's a weakness of the English language that it uses woefully imprecise terminology for discussing concepts of 'self'.

Edit 28 April 09

I sent this to New Scientist for their Letters pages, and surprisingly they published it. I was reading the issue and it took a few moments to register why the text I was reading seemed so familiar. It also took a while to appear on the news stands. Do they run letters past experts first?