Explain the Buddhist Anatta (no-self) doctrine and discuss whether it is compatible with the Buddhist doctrine of rebirth. What difficulties might the combination of these two doctrines generate?
Buddhism is one of the oldest religions in the world. Christianity is younger on five centuries, while Islam formed twelve centuries after it. Buddhism has created a unique culture, having first appeared more than two and a half thousand years ago in India as a religious philosophical teaching. Buddhism can be seen as a religion, philosophy, ideology. It is a cultural complex, a certain way of life, and a path of spiritual development. According to Mark Siderits, “It is a set of teachings that address a stereological concerns” (Siderits 7). The name ‘Buddha’ means the ‘Enlightened One’. Buddhism incorporates a variety of traditions of the peoples of those countries that were under its influence, as well as it determines the life and thoughts of millions of people in the West. Buddhism achieved its contemporary form after numerous philosophical transformations. Both no-self doctrine and the idea of rebirth are central to Buddhism.
First of all, it is important to understand the main concepts of this religion. In the heart of Buddhism, lays the doctrine of Four noble truths. It includes suffering, cause of suffering, its condition and path of liberation. In Buddhism there is no soul, because unchanged substance of the human ‘I’ is identified with the combined operation of a set of all dharmas. A man in Buddhism is neither blessed invention nor the master of its destiny. In traditional Buddhism man is only the executive unwittingly universal international law-Dharma. From the Buddhist point of view, human life is not considered to be a precious gift as it is in Christianity, but only one step in the chain of reincarnations. Buddhists do not seek eternal life after death, because it is not the highest goal. In Buddhism, there is the so-called doctrine of dependent origin. Buddhists believe that peace is illusory and, therefore, are all pleasures that its promises are illusory. According to the Buddhist view on eternal rebirth, the condition of any of the new existence is the outcome of all previous, the sum of all good deeds, or accumulated merit, and bad actions of anti-merit. A person, as a subject, is divided into thousands of fragments of past and future lives.
People tend to consider the Buddhist teachings in light of the material condition and interpret Buddhist views as if they were the scientific theories about the material world rather than trying to pass a vision of reality that transcends modern materialistic understanding. It talks about how our mind and the material world are mutually dependent on each other and come together. The belief in the existence of a soul and self-determination has deep roots in the people’s minds.
The doctrine of ‘anatta’ is one of the most difficult to understand. It is 2500 years old. ‘Anatta’ in Buddhism means that the five khandhs, which are body, mind, emotion, intention, perception, have no self-determination. Anatta is a theory about impersonal. It is defined in the suttah to five khandhs: it's not mine, I am not this, it is not me. Buddha said that the questions about the existence or non-existence of ‘I’ does not deserve the attention. On the question whether there is self or not-self, the Buddha was silent, as this question is incorrect and does not lead to enlightenment. The Buddha was not interested in the metaphysical sense of ‘self’, he presented it as the layers of the distorting perception of exaggerated identifications and assignments. In this sense, ‘I’ as the layering of perception, for example, may not be over, but at the same time, could be present on the channel of intelligence (mano).
In fact, the idea of absence of self-identification denies other Buddhist teachings. For example, it is contrary to the doctrine of the kamme and rebirth. If there is no ‘self’ there is no need in the idea of rebirth. Besides, all other religions believe in the existence of immortal soul or self-identification, as a basic prerequisite of spirituality. If the concept of self-determination does not exist, then there is no goal of spiritual life. According to Christopher Gowans, the issue that people do not have ‘selves’ is the biggest theoretical question to the world. However, it is a fundamental concept to the “Buddha’s portrayal of the path from suffering to Nibbanna” (Gowans 63). Because of difficulties to understand the concept the doctrine has different interpretations. Some philosophers think that there is a self in some significant meaning. In his researches Gowans arrived to the point that the Buddha often speaks about self, teaching to be self-disciplined and self-cultivated. So the concept of ‘self’ exists, but it is a combination of different forces.
The belief in rebirth was strong at all times. According to Nyanatiloka Mahathera, “At all times, many great thinkers have taught a continuation of life after death” (Nyanatiloka). In fact, it was presented in old Egypt, some African tribes, among Australian natives and in many other civilizations.
According to Buddhism, there are three important factors of the rebirth. Buddhists understand it as “the formation of the embryo in the mother's womb” (Nyanatiloka). According to Nyanatiloka, they are: “the female ovum, the male sperm, and the karma-energy, which is called ‘gandhabba’, ‘ghost’ or ‘soul’ (Nyanatiloka). The Buddhist concept of rebirth is thin and stands in line with the truth that creatures have not permanent or independent nature. It is not equivalent to the Hindu concept of reincarnation. In Hindu, people believe in a constant and unchanging soul, which the call Atman. It is the host sequence of different bodies, which is a kind of reward or punishment for bad or good actions. The Buddhist concept shows that ever-changing stream of psychophysical energy takes shape and transformed lives and rebirth them in different forms. Therefore, the Buddhist concept of rebirth is not a soul which goes from one life to another. According to Nyanatiloka, “the Buddhist doctrine of kamma and rebirth offers the only plausible explanation for all the variations and dissimilarities in nature” (Nyanatiloka).
The man, who was reborn, is not the same or completely different from the deceased, it is a new form, which is a continuation of the process of changes. It can be explained by the example of the water taken from the river. It achieves a new shape, but it remains the same as it was in the river. It is a continuation of the previous form of being. According to the Buddha, there is no "me" that goes from one life to another (Laumakis 12). On the other hand, the Buddha was able to remember his past forms of life and warned his disciples that they will reap the fruits of his actions in future lives as reborn people would be the same, with whom he spoke. It is a very interesting thought, as in a world that continually changes, nobody today is exactly the same as he was yesterday.
Buddha believed that people will benefit in the future from acts that they are doing now. Siderits underlines that “Which sort of rebirth one attains depends on one’s karma, which has to do with the moral quality of the actions one is engaged in” (Siderits 8). According to the person’s karma, he could reborn as a “human in a fortunate life circumstances, or even as a god” (Siderits 8). Buddhism teaches that the essence of a person is unchangeable. Under the influence of his actions, human existence and perception of the world change. Behaving badly, he reaps the disease, poverty and humiliation. Doing good, receives the joy. The law of kamma determines the fate of a man in this life and in future incarnations.
Buddhism does not see sense in the eternal life, because it describes the eternal life as a constant process of changes. That is why Buddhism does not accept the fact of the eternity of a soul. In a modern world, nothing can be sustainable or really exist, because of birth and death. Human desire to the happiness and avoidance of the pain are natural to everybody. The understanding that each person is only a small part of the great universe gradually leads to perception of the world beyond the personal concept. According to the Buddha, there is no-self in body or in mind. The understanding of it, is the first step, which is a gift on the way towards the liberation. In this condition the illusion of separate ‘ego’ dissolves, and the person no longer identifies itself with suffering. This is the basis of the highest state known as the Enlightenment.
Nowadays science confirms Buddha’s belief in a continuous life, because everything is made at a sub-atomic level of matter. The modern physicists describe the universe as a transformation of forces, while the human being is a part of it. The Buddha was the first to realize this. According to Stephen J. Laumakis, “The Buddhist tradition is considered to be an account of causation or the process by which things come to be, exist, and change” (Laumakis 107). So does Buddhism believe in the eternal soul?
But if in Buddhism there is no ‘I’, then what is reborn? According to the Buddhist doctrine of Rebirth and Kamma, death is only a phase then in continuous existence. It is a step that links present and future or past. The combination of two Buddhist doctrines of Rebirth and Anatta gives the understanding that nothing exists permanently in this world. According to Buddhism, it is wrong to ask: is it the same person to born or it is a completely different person? Because according to Buddhism, the person, who was born, is not the one who died, but he is not different from the person who died. For this reason Buddhism avoids the expressions ‘transmigration of souls’, ‘reincarnation’, because reincarnation is a personification of the body, and the concept of self-determination does not exist in Buddhism.
Works Cited
Gowans, Christopher W. Philosophy of the Buddha. London: Routledge, 2003. Print.
Laumakis, Stephen J. An Introduction to Buddhist Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008. Print.
Nyanatiloka, Mahathera. Fundamentals of Buddhism: Four Lectures. Legacy Edition, 2013. Web. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanatiloka/wheel394.html
Siderits, Mark. Buddhism as Philosophy an Introduction. Aldershot, England: Ashgate ;, 2007. Print.
