Still Struggling with "no self"

General Discussion
1

I’m still not really getting it and no matter where I ask I get different answers, all while in my day to day I struggle to regard people as people since there is no “self”.

I read someone putting it as:

But, you protest, I never had any such silly idea at all. Who would ever think that s/he is anything other than a set of psychophysical processes? You, answers the Buddhist. And here is an easy way to convince yourself that you do succumb to the self-reification instinct, even if you recognize that it is a metaphysical error. Think of somebody whose body you’d love to have, for whatever reason. I have always wanted to have Ussain Bolt’s body, at his peak, for just about 9.4 seconds.Just to see what it feels like to go that fast. You probably have other desires.

In any case, I don’t want to be Ussain Bolt. That would do me no good. He is already Ussain Bolt. I want to be me with Ussain Bolt’s body. That shows that I do not take myself to be my body, but to possess that body, because I can imagine (whether coherently or not) being me with a different body.

But how about my mind? Same thing. Imagine somebody whose mind you would like to have for a little while. I would like Stephen Hawking’s. Just for a bit. So that I could understand general relativity and quantum gravity. It would be so cool. Again, I don’t want to be Stephen Hawking. He already is, and that does me no good. I want to be me with his mind. That shows that (whether coherently or incoherently) I don’t imagine myself to be my mind, but to be its possessor, which could be the same self with a different mind. (And, by the way, I can desire to have both Bolt’s body and Hawking’s mind at the same time, so that I can see what it is like to understand quantum gravity while running 100 meters in under 10 seconds.)

That self—the one that owns but is not identical to the body and mind—that subject of experience and agent of action, is the self that we all instinctively take ourselves to be, but which Buddhist philosophers argue does not exist. Take away the physical and the mental, and nothing remains. So, even at a given moment, I am not a self.

The article I got it from was by someone who wrote this too: Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy by Jay L. Garfield | Goodreads

apoha: a special negation meant to do away with universal properties by excluding something from being, say a non-cow. One important point is the relationship between negation and absence; saying “there are no angels on my desk” does not commit one to the existence of angels, or for that matter, non-angels at all. The mature form of this doctrine is found in Dharmakīrti who proposes a two-stage model: first, we must have a paradigm instance of a particular that satisfies the concept in question (which reminds me of Lakoff & Johnson’s concept of “prototype” or experiential gestalt we use to classify things), and second, we must have the capacity to distinguish things that are similar to the paradigm from things that are not;

But right now it’s got me apathetic towards other people, and myself since I just see parts and that there is no true “Whole” apparently. I’ve been meditating regularly but that has also lead to problems too since after it I just end up apathetic and indifferent towards everyone, not in a “everyone is valued” kinda way but a “nothing matters”.

I don’t know how to be or process what is going on with me…

2

War, genocide , occupation , measles , debt, warming, extinction, poverty , homelessness, fascism .

Lots going on.

3

Not sure how that’s related.

4

Youre navel gazing while Rome is ablaze

5

This is a nothing remark though, it’s like saying people can’t be sad over a breakup while someone is getting stabbed to death.

6

Its a comment you engage in nothing remarks . WW3 about to break out scholar .

7

Again what does that have to do with me? It’s not like I can stop it.

Getting back to the point and drawing from the article:

That self—the one that owns but is not identical to the body and mind—that subject of experience and agent of action, is the self that we all instinctively take ourselves to be, but which Buddhist philosophers argue does not exist. Take away the physical and the mental, and nothing remains. So, even at a given moment, I am not a self.

Does that mean that I am nothing?Not at all. And here another distinction is helpful, that between a self and a *person.*We have seen what a self is supposed to be—the simple, continuing thing with which I identify.But a person is a different kind of thing: a continuum of causally related psychophysical processes that plays a role in the world.In fact, the word person, in English, captures this perfectly. The word comes from persona, a mask, or a role in theatre.

Selves, if there were such things, would be independent metaphysically real entities. Persons are constructed, or designated by our own psychological and social processes, and reflect the role that we play for each other as individuals in a collectively constituted world, a world constructed in our experience and mutual action in response to our psychological, perceptual and social natures. Persons are complex, interdependent and impermanent, constantly changing and causally enmeshed with their environments. We are persons who take ourselves to be selves; and that is the Buddhist diagnosis of the root of our psychological problems.The solution to those problems, in this view, is to be found in stopping that reification and self-grasping.

What’s wrong with self-grasping? Well, it creates a distorted view of reality, with each of us as selves at the centre of their own universe, and everything else arrayed around us as our objects. That leads in turn to selfishness, a view that it is rational to act in our own narrow self-interests, and anxiety about the preservations of the integrity and the welfare of the self. All of this leads to greed, anger, fear, conflict and general unhappiness.

How all of this works is a long story — too long to summarize here — and it is the burden of much Buddhist ethical theory and moral psychology to tell that story. But the basic idea is this: once I take myself to be this special kind of entity, I have a relationship to that entity of identity that I have with nothing else, and so it seems rational to give it special priority, and so on for everyone and their self. And so we get this crazy competition of interests between beings whose lives and interests are in fact completely interdependent.

When we experience ourselves as decentered persons, however, we experience ourselves as part of a larger network of others, whose interests we share, and whose pains and pleasures we share as well. This allows the cultivation of the set of virtues known in the Buddhist tradition as the brahmavihāras, or *divine states.*They are benevolence, care, sympathetic joy and impartiality.

Each is understood as a kind of detached concern for others not with our own interests and desires in view, but with theirs as the object of our state. So, attached love is different from benevolence, because I wish well for the beloved because I love her, as opposed to because she deserves happiness; sympathetic joy is different from shared joy, because I rejoice in her happiness, not in the happiness that brings me. This is a Buddhist view of rational moral commitment grounded in selflessness.

So, I conclude, the Buddhist no-self doctrine is not a strange mysticism or nihilism; it is just common sense. It does not undermine agency or morality; it explains why agency and morality are possible; it should not provoke despair; it should enable confidence.

Though in my opinion his description of “persons” sounds exactly like a self so it just reads like splitting hairs.

8

Inthedark,
I stumbled on an article that might relate to your struggles.
I don’t know.
Have you ever heard of Dissociated Disorder?
In case you are curious, check it out.

8 Subtle Signs You’re Dissociated, According to Therapists

I had a dissociative disorder for 20 years, and I had no idea

Maria Cassano

… What exactly is dissociation?

Dissociation is a “sense of disconnection,” said Dr. Alissa Beuerlein, PhD, Licensed Professional Counselor and trauma specialist. Clinically, it can manifest in different ways, including depersonalization (feeling detached from yourself) or derealization (feeling disconnected from the world around you).

It’s not always a problem. In fact, almost everyone dissociates sometimes.

Research shows that up to 75% of people will experience at least one full-blown dissociative episode in their lives — and then it goes away. An even higher percentage of people experience mild dissociation on a regular basis.

“From mindless scrolling, to getting lost in thought, to multitasking, to numbing out with food, alcohol, or substances, dissociation reflects a natural human tendency to mentally ‘step away’ from the present moment,” said Rebecca Kase, LCSW.

Temporary dissociation is actually a coping mechanism: When something feels too stressful or too overwhelming, your nervous system numbs itself to protect you.

But when your nervous system numbs itself permanently, dissociation can become an issue.

According to Kase, studies …"

9

Some of that sounds about right. I do feel numb a lot of the time. Even stuff like love is hard for me to feel, mostly because some guru I read said that love is lovely, like flowers in the wind. But that there are truths in the deep places of the earth or something like that. Made it sound like love was a waste of time and since then whenever I feel it I guess subconsciously I think it’s bad.

10

Seems to me you focus on this part,

but not these parts:

11

I saw those parts but none of that is compatible with the teachings he’s talking about. He talks about no self and then his description of persons is literally just “self” but in a roundabout way.

So he spends the whole article talking about no self and then wraps around trying to salvage it in the end. HE doesn’t actually understand the teachings, which I guess is the issue when you only see it from an academic sense.

He even mentions the self being a metaphysically real thing which is sorta implying that people aren’t real.

12

I’ve often had trouble figuring out if you were struggling with the complex concepts or of you weren’t understanding the basic descriptions on the various readings you cite. In this case, here’s the point you are referencing:

People see themselves as a “self”. But “self’ doesn’t have form, it doesn’t exist physically. People do exist. You aren’t struggling because dealing with “no self” is hard, you are struggling because you don’t understand the material you are reading.

It’s fine. Most don’t even bother. But not understanding it won’t mess up your life, unless you let it. Give it time. Let it sink in. Live. See how these ideas map onto your experiences. You don’t have to figure this out before you can be a person in this world. Being a person will help you figure it out.

13

Lunatic israel launches bombing attack on Iran . Pakistan is at war with Afghanistan, Russia at war with NATO. Your concerns of self will no longer be after being vaporised in a thermal nuclear war

14

That’s what I was getting at, saying that selves are metaphysically real and independent entities. So by extension a person, which he describes a a collection of parts, isn’t real.

It’s that I do get it that I’m struggling, he’s not really getting at the heart of what no self is which is why he ends up looping back to a self when describing a person. “no self” means there is “no one” else, which contrary to what he says about it leading to selfishness is the reason we regard others and why suffering matters. To see there is someone else, who has their own inner world and all that, in short another self. If there is no one then there is no one to help, and also no one to harm.

I do have to figure it out because it prevents me from being a person or seeing people as people. Like when Buddhism talks about the 5 aggregates to dispel the idea of a self. I even made another thread where I cited another article about how “you” don’t exist: https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/136116/does-buddhism-say-that-you-are-everything/136136?noredirect=1#comment440151_136136

15

That’s really dark. Knowing that we die is part of knowing what we are

16

It doesn’t mean that. there would be no one else if there were no other physical persons.

As far as I can see here, you want to argue semantics, but you get the semantics wrong. You get it that life matters because we are interdependent with other lives.

It’s always hard to tell who you are over in the philosophy stack. Are you BoltStorm? I can’t help pointing out that the question there was closed because it’s not “focused”. We don’t have moderation like that over here, but it’s true, your questions are not focused.

17

I usually put these in other threads and hope they will be noticed, but I want to make sure this one gets discussed. Alan Watts gets a little off in the clouds, but he has a good sense of the divide between what we perceive ourselves to be and what we are. It’s very hard to teach, and sometimes his analogies don’t work for me. This one starts off a little scattered, saying we are an expression of the universe, but then we forget that’s what we are. It gets better when he talks about how we are what we are because the universe happened the way it did, shaping us to have the senses and feelings we have.

18

Interdependent would have to mean there is other selves to connect with, which is why the idea of no self isn’t really compatible with it.

That’s me on there, but the quoted segment is the point I was making. That this philosophy doesn’t lead to what IAI is saying.

It’s always worth taking everything he says with a grain of salt since he essentially drank himself to death, which likely means he didn’t believe a word of what he was saying.

That said the end of the video is sort of my problem with no self, in thinking that you are not the body and are doing everything, the logical incoherence of saying that to a bunch of people kinda shows he’s wrong. If you were everything, if it were one, then you wouldn’t need to talk about it. His segment about the line between what is me and not me isn’t really accurate either, since it’s not really arbitrary. We generally agree that we are the body.

But chiefly if you “awaken” to being the universe then it kinda renders life pointless and void, since there is no reason to preserve yourself or anyone or any thing else. In fact he mentions life being pointless in another video:

So mentioning him here wasn’t exactly a point in your favor, you just ended up highlighting the problems I talked about. I would also reiterate the point that the man drank himself to death, meaning this stuff doesn’t work.

(I would also add that he’s also wrong here as well because nature is quite purposeful, animals do things for reasons, same as other things).

19

It means there are other physical beings to connect with. Other persons. Semantics. You are using your own definition of “self”, so you aren’t communicating.

Ad hominem attacks mean I don’t believe you

20

It’s not “semantics”, interdependence would therefor mean there is no separation which then means there is no “other” and by extension no other “people”. It’s a natural conclusion to getting rid of the self.

You can google it, it’s public knowledge, one that kinda calls into question whether his philosophy actually worked or if he believed in any of that.

But like I mentioned above I don’t really need that to point out the flaws in his reasoning, flaws you haven’t addressed. That’s why I said bringing him up wasn’t exactly a point in your favor.