{"id":1049,"date":"2016-06-03T15:12:14","date_gmt":"2016-06-03T23:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/myjourneyofconscience\/?p=1049"},"modified":"2016-06-03T15:13:53","modified_gmt":"2016-06-03T23:13:53","slug":"self-as-both-real-and-not-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/myjourneyofconscience\/2016\/06\/03\/self-as-both-real-and-not-real\/","title":{"rendered":"Self as Both Real and Not-Real – The Teaching of the Five Skandhas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

How do you resonate with the Buddhist<\/a> teaching that our sense of self is an illusion? I imagine you feel very real. You exist, and you are not the same as everyone and everything else. You move through your life with a sense of continuity from one moment, one day, one year, to the next. In what way is our sense of \u201cself\u201d an illusion?<\/p>\n

Once upon a time a very bold man, King Milinda, put this question to a Buddhist sage named Nagasena. They started out their dialogue like this:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cKing Milinda asked [Nagasena}: \u201cHow is Your Reverence known, and what is your name, sir?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAs Nagasena I am known, O Great King, and as Nagasena do my fellow religious habitually address me. But although parents give names such as Nagasena, or Surasena, or Virasena, or Sihasena, nevertheless, this word \u2018Nagasena\u2019 is just a denomination, a designation, a conceptual term, a current appellation, a mere name. For no real person can here be apprehended.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But King Milinda explained: \u201cNow listen, you 500 Greeks and 80,000 monks [assembled in the audience], this Nagasena tells me that he is not a real person! How can I be expected to agree with that!\u201d 1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

Nagasena responded by asking Milinda whether the king had arrived at their location via chariot. The king answered that he had. Then Nagasena asked him what the chariot was. Was the chariot the axle? The king replied \u201cNo.\u201d Was it the wheels, the frame, the flag-staff, the yoke, or the goad-stick of the chariot? The king replied no to all of these questions, because none of these taken in isolation could be called the chariot. Then Nagasena asked whether the collection of all of these objects could be called the chariot (picture them piled up together). The king replied no. Nagasena then asked whether the chariot could be found outside<\/i> that collection of objects, and of course the answer was no. The dialogue continued:<\/p>\n

Nagasena: \u201cThen, ask as I may, I can discover no chariot at all.\u00a0 Just a mere sound is this \u2018chariot\u2019. But what is the real chariot? Your Majesty has told a lie, has spoken a falsehood!\u00a0 There really is no chariot\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Milinda:\u00a0 \u201cI have not, Nagasena, spoken a falsehood.\u00a0 For it is in dependence on the pole, the axle, the wheels, the framework, the flag-staff, etc., that there takes place this denomination \u2018chariot,\u2019 this designation, this conceptual term, a current appellation, and a mere name.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Nagasena:\u00a0 \u201cYour Majesty has spoken well about the chariot.\u00a0 It is just so with me.\u00a0 In dependence on the thirty-two parts of the body and the five Skandhas there takes place this denomination \u2018Nagasena,\u2019 this designation, this conceptual term, a current appellation, and a mere name.\u00a0 In ultimate reality, however, this person cannot be apprehended.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201cFive Skandhas\u201d Nagasena refers to are the original Buddhist description of the five principles components of a human being: form (the physical body), sensation (raw physical and emotional data arising from contact between the world and the senses), perception (the mental processes resulting from sensation, including the sensing of thoughts), formation (the mental constructs formed within the mind when perception meets volition), and consciousness (our sense of continuous self-awareness). \u201cSkandha\u201d can be translated as \u201cpile,\u201d \u201caggregate\u201d or \u201cbundle.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0At first glance the teaching of the five aggregates can suggest a view that we are a just a collection of stuff that just happens to result in the phenomenon of self-consciousness. This is a bleak, mechanistic view, and it does not reflect the real teaching. After all, we are not a random<\/i> collection of stuff in any case; we are a particular kind of collection brought about by a particular set of causes and effects. And as Nagasena\u2019s analogy demonstrates, there is<\/i> a certain kind of reality to the \u201cself,\u201d just as there is a reality to a chariot. A chariot did, indeed, function to transport King Milinda to Nagasena\u2019s teaching! It is useful to be able to give a chariot a name and then make use of the chariot\u2019s function. Similarly, to function in the world we not only need a sense of self, we also need to be able to talk about it and make use of it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Still\u2026 the person we think we are \u201ccannot be apprehended,\u201d and this tends to bother most of us, whether we are aware of it or not. We are generally attached to one or another of the five skandhas, thinking, \u201cI am my body,\u201d or \u201cI am my feelings\u2026 perceptions\u2026 thoughts\u2026 consciousness.\u201d This is like deciding that the axle of the chariot is<\/i> the chariot, when in fact the functional \u201cchariot\u201d arises from a combination of causes and conditions that, when separated, cease to be functional.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The first main point of Buddhism<\/a> is that human beings are fixated on finding their \u201creal\u201d self, and this causes them great existential grief because the real nature of the self is an emergent phenomenon. The second main point of Buddhism is that we can relieve ourselves of this existential grief and distress by accepting and embracing the real nature of the self \u2013 which really isn\u2019t so bad. We can actually delight in this emergent phenomenon which we cannot, in the final analysis, apprehend. We can ride on the flow of self like we are floating down a river.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

1\u00a0<\/sup>The Questions of King Milinda (Milindapanha), translated by Edward Conze. See: http:\/\/instruct.westvalley.edu\/lafave\/The%20Questions%20of%20King%20Milinda.htm<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How do you resonate with the Buddhist teaching that our sense of self is an illusion? I imagine you feel very real. You exist, and you are not the same as everyone and everything else. You move through your life with a sense of continuity from one moment, one day, one year, to the next. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2173,"featured_media":1051,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-helpful-zen-teachings-and-practices"],"yoast_head":"\nSelf as Both Real and Not-Real - The Teaching of the Five Skandhas<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How do you resonate with the Buddhist teaching that our sense of self is an illusion? I imagine you feel very real. 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