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buddhism personal identity

i would like to hear your ideas and suggestions to the problem of the impermanence and the refusal of personal identity in buddhism. as we know buddhism because of the idea that the whole consists of parts, and so that parts are temporal, then there is nothing permanent. i refer to the book milinda pahna, the dialogue of the monk nagasena with the kind menandros. but let us see this from another point of view. not from the current world point of view but from the opposite side. from buddha point of view. according to buddhism i can become a buddha, you can become as well. and they talk about the 1.000 or 10.000 buddhas. in that case WHAT MAKES THOSE BUDDHAS DISTINGUISHABLE? COUNTABLE? BECAUSE OF THE OBVIOUS PERFECTION, THEY ARE SUPPOSED NOT TO HAVE TEMPORAL PARTS. as you see i do not argue the religious concept of what is or if exit a Buddha, but what makes them distinguishable. in that case this should be permanent or not? i would to see like your comments.

Something about you (optional) greek orthodox priest, lover of philosophy , logic and physics

Re: buddhism personal identity

Hi George. Thank you for your entry - you're the first!

Regarding Buddhism's view of impermanence and its refusal of personal identity (selfhood) - I have reflected much on these topics over the years and most of my essays on this are collected in my book THE SELF.

To give you two sample chapters that you can read online:
http://www.thelogician.net/6_reflect/6_Book_3/6c_chapter_15.htm - on impermanence
http://www.thelogician.net/6_reflect/6_Book_3/6c_chapter_16.htm - on no-soul

I am to date not convinced - indeed less and less convinced - by Buddhist arguments on these topics. For instance, I am currently reading Shantideva's BODHICHARYAVATARA, and though I enjoy and learn from a lot of what he says - words of wisdom about non-attachment for instance - I find his arguments on such theoretical philosophical issues incredibly biased. Yes - there are dogmatic ideas in Buddhism about impermanence, no-soul etc. and the authors do their best to match them. They pretend to reason and call it proof - but it is not, honestly speaking.

For example, at one point he claims that sensation requires contact and then argues that contact is impossible since atoms are indivisible and to make contact they would have to overlap. This is of course just his imagination - he does not know atoms are divisible, and in any case contact does not only occur the way he visualizes it here (it could for example happen through such contact between molecules or through rays of light or heat or fields, etc.)

Thus it is throughout many Buddhist arguments - they think that their mental projections - their imaginations of the way things are - corresponds necessarily to reality. Their reasoning is very often invalid. They call it 'proof' but it is not in fact. All this makes me fear that "enlightenment/liberation" is perhaps a figment of their imagination too. I hope not! I hope it is indeed possible and accessible...

Something about you (optional) writer in logic, philosophy, spirituality

Re: personal identity

Dear George and Avi: When I was young, I was much intrigued by the theory that mind and self do not coincide, not in any Buddhist sense, but in that elaborated in the West from Spinoza through Freud. Now that I enter old age, I have more practical concerns: what disciplines to pursue to stave off the day when my body, failing me, will definitively dislocate mind from self? All the Buddhist, Spinozist, and related logic chopping, with age, loses its charm, and one focuses on diet, gentle exercise, and harmony with others. Mercifully, with experience, that last desideratum grows easier. Cordially, Paul

Something about you (optional) lawyer, who academically studied philosophy in my youth

Re: personal identity

Hi Paul. Thanks for sharing that thought, and sorry to have taken so long replying.

Of course, practice is ultimately more important that theory. The value of theory, ideally, is to foresee and prevent possible errors, to avoid the uncertainties and confusion that sometimes assail us, and so forth - i.e. generally, to set direction to practice somewhat. As a student of Zen, I remain of course aware of the dangers of excessive theory, i.e. the obstacle this can become for practice. Wisdom is knowing how to balance the two.

Something about you (optional) writer in logic, philosophy, spirituality

Re: personal identity

Dear Avi: Of course, you are right about theory and practice here. The theoretical work of my youth, to which I referred, argued that any phenomenological analysis of mind is of necessity inadequate for fully unpacking the notion of the self. The line of thought leading to Freud, thought seminally synthesized by Spinoza, tried to relate breaks in the phenomenological coherence of speech and thought, for example, “symptoms” such as slips of the tongue or dreams, back to some deeper self. On the level of practice, this attempt leads to a deeper sense of responsibility for one’s acts, but one coupled with a greater compassion for our struggling with what Freud called “resistances” to insight into the deeper self. But we limited creatures can only struggle for better insight which, from Spinoza’s standpoint, would help us understand how our selves are but tiny facets of it all. If I were an orthodox rather than a Hellenized Jew, maybe I’d not say “it all” but use a blank for the ineffable name of the divine. I do not know Buddhist thought well enough in these regards but find its notion of potentially infinite Buddhas intriguing. Cordially, Paul

Something about you (optional) lawyer, who academically studied philosophy in my youth

Re: personal identity

good read!