The Depersonification of the Personality
THE TEACHING OF THE SKANDHAS
If we were to subject what we generally regard as our human personality to an exact philosophical examination, we would discover that this "personality" is merely a process of spiritual and physical phenomena that actually has no more substance than a dream or a bubble on the surface of the ocean.
According to Buddhist interpretation, human beings in their physical-psychical manifestation are made up of a constantly changing combination of individual existence factors, which in functional interdependence emerge and then fade away to make room for new factors to follow. These existence factors can be divided into five groups, referred to as skandhas which are listed below in order of decreasing density and substantiality:
corporeality (rupa-skandha)
sensation (vedana-skandha)
perception (samjna-skandha)
mental formations (samskara-skandha)
consciousness (vijnana-skandha)
The skandhas should not be viewed singly or collectively as making up a self-sufficient, independent self; nor should consciousness, which in its purest form comes closest to the concept of the soul, be viewed in this way.
In truth, existence factors possess no reality at all and only have a momentary, quickly subsiding presence. The singular moments of all processes of spiritual and physical life change constantly and so quickly that we do not perceive the change. The only thing that exists is a chain of momentary existences and combinations thereof. Both the individual and the existence factors, which belong to the individual's experienced phenomenal world, last but an instant. At the next moment, nothing remains of that which just came into existence.
Sensations, perceptions, and mental formations merely make up the various appearances taken on by these uninterrupted, successive, single instants of consciousness, which flare up at every moment with unimaginable speed just to disappear in the same instant forever. Our identification with these functionally interdependent fleeting moments of consciousness gives rise to the delusion of a separate personality.
Regarding the "nonpersonality" and the "emptiness" of the skandha processes, which are in perpetual motion, Buddha says:
Supposing a man views the many bubbles in the waters of the Ganges. He observes and examines them closely. Afterwards, they will appear to him empty, unreal, and without substance. In the same manner, a monk views all corporeality, all sensations, perceptions, mental formations, and all consciousness, whether of the past, present, or future, inherent or extraneous, coarse or fine, common or noble, far or near, and sees them as empty, void, and unreal. And so he says to himself: "That is not mine, I am not that, that is not my self."8
Once we recognize that the existence factors which create the illusion of personality are really not our true self, we no longer need fear their death! On the contrary, the collapse of the skandhas would signify the ascent of the inner light for those free of all identification. Concerning this, Zen master Huang-po says :
If an ordinary man, when he is about to die, could only see the five (existence groups) as void; that they do not constitute an "I"; the real mind as formless and neither coming nor going; his nature as something neither commencing at birth nor perishing at his death, but as whole and motionless in its very depths; his mind and environmental objects as one, he would receive enlightenment in a flash.
He would no longer be entangled by the myriad world; he would be a world-transcendor. He would be without the faintest tendency toward rebirth. He would just be himself, oblivious of conceptual thought and one with the absolute. He would have attained the state of unconditioned being.9
THE TEACHING OF ANATMAN
In view of the gross misinterpretation of the skandha doctrine, which belongs to the foundation of all schools of Buddhism, we should note that Buddha never taught that there was not a self apart from the skandhas. Instead, he taught that a self, in the sense of a permanent, death-defying, reincarnating "I," was not to be found among the existence factors. Of all Buddha's teachings, that of the "non-I," the anatman, is the most misunderstood.
Buddha's anatman doctrine is really leveled against the illusion of personality that propels people narcissisticaly toward a kind of self-shackling, in which they understand their "self" to be a separate, self-contained ego. Buddha's intention was to show the way to an experience of self that is not egotistically-egocentrically bound, but rather is realized through first detaching from itself in a state devoid of "ego-delusion." For as long as individuals live under the impression that their self exists apart from other selves, their true eternal self will remain concealed under this delusion.
Buddha rejected the equation of the true self with the ego-delusion evoked by identification with the skandhas. Due to the confusion of the universal foundation of human consciousness with illusory ego-consciousness bred out of ignorance, Buddha felt compelled to substitute for the term atman (self), the term anatman (nonself), meaning non-ego.
It would be equally wrong to compare the idea of atman, as used in the Upanishads, to ego-delusion. Buddhist scholar Daisetz Taitaro Suzuki explains:
To say there is no atman—that is not enough. We must go one step further and say there is an atman; however, that this atman does not exist on the plane of the relative, but on that of the absolute.10
To equate the the denial of an illusory and limited self with the denial of the eternal in humankind would be a gross misunderstanding of Buddha's message. Buddhist authors who likewise write that nothing beyond the skandhas outlasts death teach what Buddha never taught. If we really want to grasp what Buddha meant by the pronouncement of his anatman doctrine, we must leave all philosophical speculation far behind and turn to our inner source of knowledge, the atman itself. This is where the inexpressible mystery will unveil itself to us, where that which is beyond all designation of being or nonbeing manifests itself as our true nature. The Katha Upanishad it says:
No word nor thought can reach him, No eye can see him. How else can he be reached Unless you realize: He is?11
And Chinese Zen master Huang-po says:
Our original Buddha-nature is, in highest truth, devoid of any atom of objectivity. It is void, omnipresent, silent, pure; it is glorious and mysterious peaceful joy— and that is all. Enter deeply into it by awaking to it yourself. That which is before you is it, in all its fullness, utterly complete. There is naught beside.12
Even though Buddha taught that there was no self-sufficient, separate, individual self, he still left the self intact—but with a difference! He lifted it out of the bounds of duality into the unlimited vastness of original being, beyond space and time.
As long as we continue to ask ourselves whether or not we possess a certain spirit, self, or soul, we are on the wrong track with questioning that has its roots in discriminating, dualistic thinking. We should not focus on having a spirit or self, but rather on being the indivisible reality of the one mind. This inexpressible reality, which lies beyond all human concepts, is the unborn, eternal, unchanging self, the foundation of all we experience. In ancient Buddhism, it is Buddha's words that most clearly attest to this unborn true self:
There is, monks, that which is unborn, undeveloped, unmade, unformed. If this were not so, there would be no escaping from
