Robin Faichney:
Buddhist philosophy takes subjectivity very seriously indeed, but in it subject and object are "ultimately" seen as one. The Enlightenment experience is commonly described as a transcendance of the subject/object dichotomy, in which there is no experiencer, nor thing experienced, but just experience. This is not to say that subject and object *are* necessarily not separate, as interpretations of that experience might differ, but it does invalidate the claim about "anyone who takes subjectivity seriously".
The enlightenment experience" is *also* commonly described by Buddhists as an experience in which self is *all*, or at least the source of everything. Compare, for example, the famous lines by Hui Neng, the Sixth "Patriarch" of Zen, where upon reaching "full enlightment" and receiving the transmission of the Dharma from the Fifth Patriarch, uttered the famous lines:
"Who would have expected that the self-nature is fundamentally pure and clean? "Who would have expected that the self-nature is fundamentally beyond birth and death? "... is fundamentally complete in itself? "... is fundamentally immutable? "... can create all things?"
(as translated by Lu Kuan Yu [Charles Luk], in his *Chan and Zen Teaching, Series Three*, Rider & Co., London, 1962, p. 25. Compare also D. T. Suzuki, Philip Kapleau, etc.
Indeed, the idea that there is *nothing but* self is common in Zen (i.e., "Ch'an" in China).
On this understanding, of course, the "subject/object dichotomy" *is*, as Faichney notes, (said to be) transcended; but this is because *everything* is now recognized to be *nothing but* self, not because self doesn't exist. How then to reconcile this with the traditional Buddhist "no-self" ("anatta" or "anatma") doctrine? As Luk puts it, Zen holds that "no-self" is true so long as one uses the term "self" to refer to (most of) what people ordinarily think self to be--namely some localized, psychologically imaginable psycho-physical or psychological entity (i.e., the ordinary notion of "self," constructed, for various psychological and conceptual reasons, within one's awareness). But it is false when one uses the term "self" to refer to one's *true* self (i.e., one's "original face before one was born"), often referred to in Buddhism in terms of unbounded pure suchness or consciousness. Thus, as Luk points out, reconciles on an experientially intelligible basis, the "no-self" doctrine with the other doctrine (taken by Zen to be) found in Buddha's sermons of self in which self is taken to be one of the "Absolutes." Thus also the terminological distinction between "self" (referring to the false, limited conception of self) and "Self" (referring to the unbounded reality of self).
Which is the "true" *Buddhism*? A hard question. But Buddhists disagree here. (Though I did once ask a Therevada ["no-self" doctrine] Abbot about this, and he replied "Of course" to my question about the necessity of the existence of unbounded Self vs. bounded self.) Somehow, however, contemporary Americans often seem to assume that the "no-self" (including "no-Self") perspective is what Buddhism (a la Hume) unambiguously holds--despite the position of so many (especially non- South-Asian) Buddhists.
Which thesis is the more *sensible* one? This of course is quite a different question. I myself think the approach taken in common by Zen and Vedanta is much the more intelligible one, on philosophical (Descartes, Hume, Kant, Russell, etc.) as well as commonsensical grounds, and I argue for this position in the chapter on "The Self and Pure Consciousness" in my book *The Inner Dimension*. No need to go into that here, though.
Jonathan Shear
jcs@richmond.infi.net
"No-self" and "Absolute Self" are one, if there is no self/other dichotomy. What is the problem?
Hmm... I don't know what your "'No-self' and 'Absolute Self' are one" means. "No-self" is a doctrine. "Absolute Self" is a phrase used to refer to a specific, language-and-concept independent experience/state- of-consciousness. So what do you have in mind when you say these are "one"?
Also, I guess I wasn't very clear in my earlier posting. What I was trying to say was that the truth of the "no-self" doctrine (and the discovery that there is no abiding entity in experience corresponding to "self") is (according to many Buddhists, and to my own way of thinking) compatible with that of the doctrine (and experience) of "Self." Further, insofar as one is dealing with the world of multiplicity (in which things, terms, truth, and falsity can be distinguished at all), the self/other dichotomy remains. To be sure, as I understand it, one sees that both "self" and "other" are expressions of an underlying reality--but the dichotomy between "self" and "other" remains--otherwise a Zen master wouldn't have anyone to teach. The problem here, as I see it, is one of intermixing different state-specific sorts of phenomenological/ontological claims without indexing the states they refer to carefully. A complex topic, though...
At any rate, when I asked "Which is the *true* Buddhism?" I was reflecting the very real historical argument between Buddhists re relationships between the notions of "no-self" and "no-Self." For there are many Buddhists (reflected in various earlier postings) who (contra to Zen) take "no-self" to mean (among other things) "no-Self," too.
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