As we all know, India is a forest of world religions. Regardless of small sects, there are hundreds of large religions. Buddhism can be refreshing in the intellectual world of ancient India where a hundred schools of thought are contending. It relies on the concept of selflessness. A distinctive feature. Once the Buddhist theory of selflessness came out, it brought a huge shock to the Indian intellectual world, and the one most affected was the Brahman theory of self.

Today, the Buddhist thought of selflessness is increasingly valued by all walks of life. Evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, philosophy, and even medicine all have many views and arguments on selflessness. On the one hand, it provides more evidence for selflessness and makes it easier for people to accept it. On the other hand, it makes it easy for people to equate the selflessness of Buddhist supramundane dharma with the selflessness of social mundane dharma.

In fact, the Buddhist concept of selflessness is very different from the argumentation method to the argumentation results to the guiding significance and the selflessness of worldly law. It is necessary to clarify the similarities and differences between the two kinds of selflessness. The points can not only enhance the world's further understanding of selflessness, but also allow Buddhist disciples to gain new enlightenment in the ancient proposition of selflessness.

Regarding the self, the most well-known is Descartes. His sentence "I think, therefore I am" is still discussed by people today. Although they are both skeptics, Descartes is different. Unlike Hume's agnosticism that swept away everything, Descartes also used skepticism to destroy all authenticity, but excluded the cornerstone of knowledge - self.

The spiritual self and the material world constitute the famous "mind-matter dualism".

As he famously said: I think, therefore I am. A "I" who doubts whether he exists or not does not exist. It is a cognitive contradiction and cannot be deduced logically. Therefore, I must exist without doubt.

Descartes' doubt is for better certainty and a stronger foundation for the theory.

What he is convinced of is my existence, "I", which is the unshakable Archimedean point of his entire philosophical edifice.

As a skeptic, Hume is generally skeptical and completely negative. Even "I" is not immune.

Hume believes that we can only perceive a variety of special perceptions that change all the time, and cannot perceive an abstract and general "self" at all.

"Mind" or "self" is nothing but "a collection of perceptions, or a bundle of perceptions, that are connected to each other at an unimaginable speed and are in perpetual flow and motion." There is no reality. "identity".

But identity is the cornerstone of the sense of self. Hume believes that there is a common misunderstanding in people's understanding of identity; people's judgment of identity does not rely on whether the essence of the object is consistent. Rather, it relies on the existence of continuity in cognition, which can lead to recklessly judging perceptually similar objects as the same object, even if they have changed, especially the understanding of self.

Just like the classic metaphor "The Ship of Theseus" reveals: Even if all the parts of a ship are replaced after decades, people will not change their attitude towards it. In people's minds, the changed ship and the original ship are still the same ship. Isn't this the case with people's self-understanding?

Camus, hundreds of years after Hume, once said: If I try to capture myself, the self that I do feel, if I try to define it and grasp it, then what I get is as if I had grasped it from a finger. The sharp scratches through the water, but there is nothing else.

This sentence can be seen as a complement to Hume.

Nowadays, Yale University professor Shelly Kagan has also led people to search for self-identity in "Yale University Open Course: Death". He dismissed the theory of soul, body theory and personality theory in order. In the end, I only got a vague answer.

In fact, Hume’s views have many similarities with the views on consciousness in early Buddhism’s five-aggregate view of selflessness. The waves of consciousness in our mind are constantly flowing, but due to the illusion caused by memory and the This migration change itself proceeds slowly. As a result, we barely notice them and mistakenly assume a "continuous" identity.

Can this be seen as a rift between enlightened persons and wise men behind closed doors?

From a medical perspective, the word self is even more fragile.

The cerebellar atrophy caused by Alzheimer's disease will gradually eat up our memory, making our conscious experience unable to maintain continuity in time, resulting in a loss of self-sense. At first, we may just forget our relatives, environment, and past events. When these self-identifications are scattered one by one, the self has no way to gain a foothold.

Body Integrity Identity Disorder makes us think that a certain part of the body does not belong to us, but has become something alien and unimaginable, and then we try to "cut off" it from the body.

The more common schizophrenia will cause us to lose the boundaries between ourselves and the environment, making us unable to distinguish between delusions and reality, making our thinking, emotions, and will not cooperate with each other, thereby eroding us The spiritual basis of existence leads to distortion, chaos, division, and disintegration of the sense of self.

Depersonalization disorder causes us to lose our "sense of self" but feel that all or parts of ourselves seem unreal, distant, or false.

Autism can cause people to lose their identity and not respond when others call their name.

The doppelg?nger effect of OBE will make us feel that another self is accompanying us. We can be aware of the other self talking, walking, and doing actions, as if in the mirror. Seeing your own shadow like that.

As for the important part of self: "emotion", it is not determined by "I". Your excitement may be determined by your intestinal bacteria, and your depression may be just dopamine, Endorphins and other neurotransmitters are not secreted enough.

Due to the innate sense of superiority of being born, no one wants to be determined by the neurotransmitters in the anterior cingulate gyrus, pituitary gland, gene expression, and intestines, but this may be the case.

The above symptoms can help us understand the nature of "selflessness" from another perspective. Without logical deduction and awareness meditation, these diseases can help us intuitively realize selflessness.

Perhaps you and I, who think we are normal, are actually patients?

In Buddhism, although there is no pathological or physiological explanation for these symptoms, in the early Abhidharma, Vidhana and later consciousness-only studies, they will emphasize the troubles such as greed, anger, stupidity, and pride. Excessive strength can cause serious psychological confusion.

The state of selflessness manifested by schizophrenia, viewed from a Buddhist perspective, may actually be a manifestation of over-obsession with the self. The lack of self-boundary caused by "omnipotent narcissism" is not selflessness. , but "I" is everywhere.

This is not comparable to the truth of selflessness realized through the truth of dependent origination.

Buddhism’s selflessness is the understanding that the subjective self and the objective world are just the emergence of the aggregation of causal conditions. and disappear, in which no master exists. Just like what Master Kumarajiva said: "From the perspective of confusion, if there is a master, it is not me to find the reason."

On the surface, human body behavior seems to have a master. But if you look for the reason, you can't find the dominant self at all.

Only by staying away from the upside-down dream about "I" can we achieve nirvana.

Star writer Yuval Harari's "A Brief History of the Future" tells a very interesting experiment. The doctor cut the connection between the patient's left brain and right brain, so that the patient's The left and right brains cannot communicate directly. We know that the left brain controls the right eye and the right brain controls the left eye.

If you only let the patient's left eye read a note saying "Please go out for a walk now", he will stand up when he sees the note and do so. At this time, only his right brain knew this command, and his left brain did not. And the area responsible for language happens to be in the left brain.

Now as he walked out, the doctor went over and asked him, why did he go out?

The left brain is responsible for answering the question, but the left brain did not see the note, and it did not communicate with the right brain, so the left brain did not know why "it" wanted to go out. The result of the experiment is, What the left brain does is to make up an answer for you on the spot, such as "I'm going to get a can of Coke to drink." And the left brain is convinced of the answer it made up. He thinks it's him. The decision to take a walk outside.

The results of many experiments tell us that people have at least two selves: the experiencing self and the narrating self.

Our consciousness plays the role of narrative self, forming a web of words and actions.

Many times it is not our consciousness that makes the decision, but the decision has already been made. The conscious mind is responsible for finding a reason for the decision.

Some Freudian advocates call this phenomenon: the subconscious mind is responsible for making decisions, and the conscious mind is responsible for finding reasons.

Regardless of school differences. The explanations are different, and this phenomenon itself is worth pondering: one self makes the decision, and another self makes the decision. So which "self" has the final say?

Or the self? Is it an illusion?

Philosophers, doctors, and psychologists can also draw conclusions similar to selflessness and non-existence through phenomenon observation and logical reasoning, but they are different from the empirical conclusions of the Buddha. An intellectual game or a helpless discovery does not enlighten or solve our situation.

Buddhism believes that the proposition of selflessness is beneficial and boring to talk about. The Buddhist view of selflessness is sideways. The focus is not only on explaining the problems about "I", but also on solving the problems about "I".

If you want to solve the problem, you cannot just rely on external methods such as brainstorming, deduction and brain imaging. What is needed is that we can touch this reality through the inherent light of Buddha-nature and gradually realize it.

There is a famous virtuous night verse in the "Zhong Agama Sutra": Be careful. Think about the past, and do not wish for the future. The past has passed away, and the future has not yet come. All things in the present should also be thought of. There is no strength in thinking. The wise will realize this. If you learn from the saints, who knows that you will worry about death? Otherwise, great suffering and calamity will end, and if you practice diligently like this, you will not slack off day and night.

This depicts the specific scene of realizing selflessness: if you can understand all dharmas in the past, present and future. If you get it and work hard all the time, you will be able to be free and free from any worries. This is the personal realization of "no-self".

For a long time, we have subconsciously believed that we are independent and unchangeable, and have developed a series of self-centered bonds of love and hate, forming a cycle of confusion, karma, and suffering. All these can only be achieved through practical practice. The embodied experience brought about by empirical evidence can stop it and liberate us from the hitching post of ourselves.

Although we have been fooled in the past, fortunately we have not in the future. The personal witness of selflessness is where all suffering ends.

However, the prerequisite for empirical realization is that we are sufficiently convinced of our reality. Without this point, the practice of selflessness will be difficult to be effective.

At this time, it is very important for beginners to come to the conclusion of selflessness in an area that people are familiar with and very convinced of.

If you already believe deeply in the selfless reality proclaimed by the Buddha, these different perspectives can also help you have a more three-dimensional understanding of the selfless reality, and you will also Have a richer experience.

From another perspective, various analysis, induction, deduction and experimental comparisons of worldly laws have stepped out of the trap of "self-grasping", but have entered another swamp of "law-grinding". The selflessness of Buddhism can avoid this shortcoming, but this is a long story.