Self and Not-self in Indian Philosophy Alex Watson Ashoka University, India Introduction The main traditions of classical Indian philosophy could be divided into four groups according to the answer they give to the following metaphysical question: What is the (essential/ultimate) nature of sentient beings such as persons? The first group, containing just one member, the cārvākas, held that a person is just a body and the powers or properties thereof. They thus denied the possibility of the continuation of life after death. All other traditions claimed that persons include a nonphysical constituent, which is their core identity and which survives the death of the body. Do these immaterial entities remain permanently separate from each other or do they – at the time of liberation – lose their separate identities and merge into a greater whole? The latter answer was given by those in the second group: Advaita Vedāntins (see advaita vedānta), nondualistic Śaivas (see nondualistic śaivism of kashmir), and certain Pāñcarātrika Vais.n.avas (see vais.n.avism, philosophical). For them, individual souls/selves are either identical to, or parts/contractions of, an Oversoul or Absolute Self, named by the respective traditions as Brahman (see upanis.ads), Śiva, and Nārāyan.a. The two remaining groups agree that the nonphysical parts of persons remain forever distinct from each other; they disagree over whether the nonphysical parts should be characterized as souls/selves or not. For the Buddhists (see buddhism) they should not; for those in the final fourth group – e.g. nyāya, vaiśes.ika, mı̄mām.sā, sām.khya, Śaiva Siddhānta, Jainism (see jaina philosophy and jainism) – they should. This entry focuses on debates between the last two groups – i.e. between, on the one hand, the Buddhists, and, on the other, those traditions that posited individual selves that remain permanently numerically distinct, there being no sense in which these selves are ultimately one. What precisely was the issue here? What was at stake in the question of whether that part of us that survives the death of the body should be termed a “self” or not? The first section provides an answer to that question by identifying key points of dispute in the debate between Naiyāyikas and Buddhists. The second section introduces the Śaiva Siddhānta view. The third deals with Bhāt.t.a Mı̄mām . sā, Jainism, and Personalist Buddhism (pudgalavāda), explicating their views by aligning them along the middle ground of a spectrum whose extremes are occupied by the traditions looked at in the first two sections. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion. Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro (Editors-in-Chief). © 2021 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2021 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/9781119009924.eopr0362 2 SE L F A N D NOT - SE L F I N IN DIA N PH I LOS OPH Y Naiyāyikas versus Buddhists In this first section, then, we will observe three ways in which the self was conceived by the Naiyāyikas, and in each case we will discern how the Buddhists denied such a conception. (Buddhism is of course an internally complex tradition, including significantly divergent views. What is outlined in this section was asserted by, for example, Vasubandhu, dharmakı̄rti, and their followers.) Self as unitary essence The Naiyāyikas conceived of the self as the unitary essence of a person. It is unitary in the sense that it is one thing over time: it endures without ceasing to exist and without its nature changing in any way. For the Buddhists, persons have no unchanging essence: we are something different in every moment. In this moment I am an association of particular mental and bodily states, and in the next moment I am a different association of mental and bodily states. By the time of the second moment, the first mental and bodily states have ceased to exist; there is nothing that continues to exist from the first moment to the second. This means that, as a person moves across a room, it is inaccurate to speak of movement; rather than there being one thing that moves, there is a plurality of things arising in very quick succession, in neighboring locations. It is like a film of a person projected on a screen, which actually consists of a plurality of separate frames, each one following the previous so rapidly, and resembling it so closely, that it produces the illusion of one continuous person. This is the Buddhist doctrine of momentariness; it encourages us to see ourselves not as unitary and permanent, but as plural and momentary. Figure 1 depicts the contrast between the Brahmanical notion of an enduring, unchanging self (represented by a line) and the Buddhist idea that what we are in one moment is not what we are in next (illustrated by circles that are distinct but touch each other, as Buddhist moments are distinct but temporally contiguous). Furthermore, the Buddhist view is that even at one point in time, persons are not one thing but an association of five: a bodily state and four mental states (feelings [vedanā], ideation [sañjñā], impulses [sam . skāra], and consciousness [vijñāna]) (see Figure 2). Thus the Brahmanical self, with its permanently unchanging essence, dissolves in Buddhism into a diachronic and synchronic plurality. Both sides in this debate, though, are dualists, in that for both there is a nonphysical part of us that exists beyond the body and senses, and that is not brought to an end by death. Only the Nyāya Figure 1 Unitary essence versus diachronic plurality. Buddhism SE L F A N D NOT - SE L F I N IN DIA N PH I LOS OPH Y 3 Cārvākas denied that. But the nonphysical part was conceived very differently: by one side as eternally unchanging, and by the other as momentary (and as fourfold even in one moment). Self as substance The Naiyāyikas and Vaiśes.ikas distinguished substances (dravyas) from qualities (gun.as), the former being property-possessors (dharmins) and the latter properties (dharmas). A thing, such as a pot or a mango, is a property-possessor, and it has five qualities – taste, smell, color etc. – corresponding to our five senses. The thing was regarded as a separate ontological entity from its qualities, as indicated by our use of language when we say, “the smell of the mango,” implying that the mango is something that exists over and above its smell. Nevertheless, a quality is inextricably linked to a substance. It cannot exist without one. We do not find a color existing alone in mid-air. There must be some substantial object to which it belongs, some substrate (āśraya) that locates it. The Naiyāyikas and Vaiśes.ikas use this principle to argue for the existence of the self. Just as colors or smells presuppose substances to which they belong, so consciousness presupposes a substance to which it belongs, that substance being the self. The argument involves three contentions, each of which had its own supporting arguments: (i) Qualities cannot exist without substances to which they belong; (ii) Consciousness, desire, aversion, pleasure, pain, and volition are qualities; (iii) The self is the only possible substance to which these qualities could belong. The Buddhists denied the existence of a self conceived as the substance to which consciousness belongs. This was part of a more general denial of the existence of substances over and above qualities. Whereas to a Naiyāyika a mango is one thing with five qualities, to a Buddhist it is five things occurring together, i.e. at the same Nyāya Buddhism Figure 2 Unitary essence versus diachronic and synchronic plurality. Nyāya Figure 3 Self as substance. Buddhism 4 SE L F A N D NOT - SE L F I N IN DIA N PH I LOS OPH Y Nyāya Figure 4 Buddhism Self as agent. time and in the same place. This is illustrated in Figure 3, taking the large circle to refer to a mango, and the small circles to refer to its smell, taste, color, etc. The large circle can equally well represent a self, in which case the diagram illustrates that for Nyāya consciousness, etc., belong to a self, whereas for Buddhism consciousness and the other four constituents (skandha) of a person exist together, as part of a conglomeration, without belonging to anything else. Self as agent The Naiyāyikas and Vaiśes.ikas also conceived of the self as the agent of physical actions (kartr.), and the agent/subject of cognitions (jñātr.). (In Figure 4 the continuous line on the left to which all of the circles are attached represents the agent; the circles represent either physical actions or cognitions.) On the one hand it is that which, through the impulse of its will/effort (prayatna), initiates all of our physical actions. On the other it is the perceiver of our perceptions, the thinker of our thoughts, etc. The perception of a pot, say, lasts just for an instant, but its perceiver outlives that perception and is the perceiver of the next and subsequent perceptions. For Buddhists that which brings about a physical action is just that which causes it, which for them is the intention that occurred in the stream of consciousness in the moment preceding the action. The Vaiśes.ikas had compared the self as instigator of bodily movements to a puppeteer instigating the bodily movements of a puppet below. Such a notion of an agent standing above the sequence of mental and physical actions is precisely what is denied by the Buddhists. The intention that brings about my present action of touching the computer keyboard was itself caused by the previous moment of consciousness, and so on. There is no part of a person standing, unconditioned, outside this chain of mental and physical events. So Buddhists, by bringing the agent down from its lofty position, dividing it up into discrete moments of intention and dispersing them into the psycho-physical stream, replace a two-tier model with a one-tier model. How did the Buddhists dispute the Naiyāyika and Vaiśes.ika notion of the self as the agent/subject of cognition? For Buddhists the agent of a cognition (jñātr./grāhaka) is simply the cognition itself (jñāna/grahan.a). That which is conscious of a pot is consciousness at that particular moment. So if two consecutive cognitions occur to me, verbalizable as “I see a pot” and “I see a cloth,” the two occurrences of “I” have two different referents: two different instances of consciousness. Each of the three Buddhist positions that we have just observed results from applying more general Buddhist principles to the specific case of the self. The denial of a SE L F A N D NOT - SE L F I N IN DIA N PH I LOS OPH Y 5 permanent, unchanging self is a special case of the conception of the momentariness of everything. The denial of the self as a substance possessing qualities is a special case of the denial of substances over and above qualities. The denial of the self as autonomous agent is a special case of the general position that nothing stands outside the chains of causes and effects that make up the world. Śaiva Siddhānta Having observed the Naiyāyika and the Buddhist positions, we will now introduce Śaiva Siddhānta. As representative of Śaiva Siddhānta we will take Bhat.t.a Rāmakan.t.ha (950–1000), who was the most influential and prolific of the early Saiddhāntika exegetes, that is to say those writers belonging to the phase of this tradition that came to an end in the twelfth century. From then on it survived only in the Tamil-speaking south, where it was transformed under the influence of Vedānta and devotionalism (BHAKTI). Rāmakan.t.ha was Kashmiri, as were most of the early exegetes of this tradition. Rāmakan.t.ha does not think that Naiyāyika arguments are capable of establishing a self. He counters them by agreeing with Buddhist arguments against them. He agrees with Buddhists that there is no self as substance over and above consciousness, and no self as agent over and above consciousness. For him, as for Buddhists, consciousness does not require something other than itself in which to inhere. He concurs with Buddhists that the perceiver of our perceptions, the thinker of our thoughts, is just consciousness (grāhaka/jñātr. = jñāna). How then does he preserve the self? For him consciousness is the self. He equates the self and consciousness, or to put it another way, he characterizes consciousness as the nature (svabhāva) of the self. The view that consciousness is the nature of the self may appear to some as not so different from the view that it is a quality/property of the self; talk of a thing’s “properties” in English can seem more or less synonymous with talk of its “nature.” But in Indian philosophical discourse, whereas the relation between a thing and its nature was held to be identity, sameness (tādātmya), the relation between a thing and its qualities (gun.as) or properties (dharmas), was held to be inherence (samavāya). A thing and its nature are the same thing; a thing and its qualities/properties are not – the latter belong to the thing, but are of a different nature. This understanding of consciousness as the nature of the self means that Rāmakan.t.ha holds consciousness to be permanent, not momentary, as it is for both Buddhists and Naiyāyikas. (Rāmakan.t.ha’s view may remind some readers of either Sām . khya or Advaita Vedānta; for an analysis of the differences of his view from both of these, see Watson 2010.) Although consciousness, for Naiyāyikas, belongs to a permanent self, it itself consists of discrete, momentary instances, as for Buddhists. The difference between the three views is represented in Figure 5. On the Naiyāyika view, there is a self that is separate from consciousness. On the Buddhist view, there is no self. For Rāmakan.t.ha, there is a self but it is just consciousness. Rāmakan.t.ha crosses out the line but joins up the dots into a line. He travels 6 SE L F A N D NOT - SE L F I N IN DIA N PH I LOS OPH Y down the path of Buddhist argumentation quite a long way: he reduces the self to the stream of consciousness. But he then argues that the stream is unchanging. So between Buddhists and Naiyāyikas, the debate concerned the existence or nonexistence of a further entity. Between Buddhists and Rāmakan.t.ha there is agreement about what exists; it is just a question of how to classify that – whether as something plural or unitary, changing or unchanging. For Rāmakan.t.ha it is unitary and unchanging, but it is not a static entity like the self of the Naiyāyikas. It is dynamic, yet constant – dynamic in that it is a process, the process of the shining forth of consciousness, and constant in that (i) the light of consciousness pours out always in the same form, and (ii) there are no breaks in the process. Consciousness as envisaged by Rāmakan.t.ha, then, differs in two ways from consciousness as envisaged by Buddhists: it is differentiated neither qualitatively nor numerically. Consciousness, on the Buddhist view, divided as it is into dissimilar discrete entities, each one ceasing to exist before the next one comes into existence, resembles a light forever going on and off, and each time producing a different colored light; consciousness for Rāmakan.t.ha resembles a light that is permanently on, forever sending out light of the same color. This constant pouring forth of the illuminating light of consciousness is precisely what the self is, just as the sun is nothing more than a constant pouring forth of light. The middle ground We could place the positions so far considered at either end of a spectrum. At one end we have the Ks.an.ikavādins, the Buddhist proponents of momentariness, according to whom persons are different – not only qualitatively but also numerically – in every single moment. (It should not be thought that in this Buddhist position there is no account of continuity. While everything is momentary, discrete streams of consciousness form a unit at least in the sense that each moment in the stream is causally connected to the next moment in a way that it is not connected to anything outside the stream.) At the other end we can place Nyāya and Śaiva Siddhānta, whose proponents held that what we are is a self that is not only unitary over time, but also qualitatively unchanging. Were there any Indian traditions adopting positions in the middle ground between these extremes, maintaining that a self is numerically identical but qualitatively changing? There were: Bhāt.t.a Mı̄mām . sā and Jainism. Nyāya Buddhism Self Consciousness Figure 5 Rāmakan.tha’s difference from Nyāya and Buddhism. Rāmakan.t.ha SE L F A N D NOT - SE L F I N IN DIA N PH I LOS OPH Y 7 Bhāt..ta Mı̄mām . sā The originator of the Bhāt.t.a Mı̄mām . sā tradition, Kumārila, explicitly rejects the prevalent presupposition that qualitative change entails numerical change. He attributes the following objection to an opponent: surely if the self is transformed, it cannot be eternal (Ślokavārttika 1978, ātmavāda 21). He responds that if non-eternal (anitya) means just being liable to transformation (vikriyā), he has no problem calling the self non-eternal. But the self is certainly not subject to destruction (uccheda, nāśa); for the self to be modified (and to be non-eternal in that sense) is not for it altogether to cease to exist, but rather for it to “assume another state” (avasthāntaraprāpti). Some aspects of the self are permanent and some (its states or qualities) are impermanent. Examples of the former are its consciousness (caitanya), its existence (sattā), and the particular substance (dravya) that comprises it; examples of the latter are its pleasures and pains. It is compared to a snake coiling into different positions, or a piece of gold that is remoulded from a dish to a necklace to an earring. The snake itself and the gold-atoms stand for its unchanging aspects; the different positions of the snake and the different shapes of the gold stand for its changing aspects. Kumārila and those in his tradition refer to the self’s pleasures, pains, etc. not just as its “states” (avasthā), but also its “qualities” (gun.a) or “properties” (dharma). In that case, how is this view different from that of the Naiyāyikas? In both cases we have an unchanging substance (dravya) with changing qualities/properties. It is different because Kumārila has a different take on the relation between substances and their qualities; he specifies the relation not as difference/separateness (bheda), but rather as both difference and nondifference/separateness and nonseparateness (bhedābheda). This closer connection, or blurred boundary, between a substance and its qualities means that – unlike for the Naiyāyikas – modification of the latter does entail modification of the former. Kumārila has no problem accepting that the self is modified. Jainism Jains affirm something like the same view. They distinguish between the essence (bhāva, jāti) of the self and its modes (paryāya). But the two sides of this distinction are (unlike for the Naiyāyikas, and just as for Kumārila) not completely different/separate from each other; they are rather different aspects of the same thing. So one and the same self-substance is permanent and unchanging when viewed from one point of view, and impermanent and changing when viewed from another. Its permanence must be indexed to one aspect of it, namely its essence; if it were completely permanent (sarvathā nityatve), it could not be transformed, so the good conduct which causes someone to cease transmigrating would not be able to have any effect on it. There is much similarity between the Bhāt.t.a and the Jaina views, as brought out by Uno (1999). But one dissimilarity is that for the Jainas the self, though immaterial, 8 SE L F A N D NOT - SE L F I N IN DIA N PH I LOS OPH Y changes its size; it occupies the same dimensions as the body with which it is currently associated (svadehaparimān.a). It is thus subject to contraction (sam . haran.a) and expansion (visarpan.a). For both the Bhāt.t.as and the Jainas the self is one numerically identical thing that changes. Although these two traditions allow more change in the self than any of the other self-theorists, they only allow so much. In order to appreciate this point, consider the example of the boat that over time has had all of its parts replaced. This would not serve as a valid analogy for a Jaina or Bhāt.t.a self, because the boat’s numerical identity – if it is even considered numerically identical – consists not in its being the very same substance, composed of the same stuff, but in other factors such as continuity of structure and an uninterrupted spatio-temporal path. For Kumārila the stuff out of which the self is composed is eternal (that is the point of the gold analogy with its eternal gold atoms), whereas in the case of the boat there is nothing that continues to exist throughout the entire span of its life. Both the boat and a Bhāt.t.a/Jaina self are “one thing that changes,” but such a definition is not sufficient to capture the Bhāt.t.a or Jaina conception of self, for selfhood was taken by both to require a strong sense of numerical identity. Yes, the self can change, but to count as a self it must also be numerically identical in the strong sense of being the very same substance, composed of the same stuff, with no change whatsoever in its essence. With that we reach the limit of the self-theorists; any attempt to preserve numerical identity but in a weak sense – analogous to that of the boat – will count as a Buddhist view rather than a self-view. We have reached the point on the spectrum we are delineating where we pass from the self-views to the Buddhist views. Personalist Buddhism We have so far been using such expressions as “the Buddhist view” to refer to that of such thinkers as Vasubandhu, Dharmakı̄rti, and their followers, who held that everything is momentary. That is because it was this branch of Buddhism that was argued against by non-Buddhist Indian philosophers, when they set about proving a self. But there were Buddhist traditions that qualified the doctrine of the universal momentariness of conditioned things, for example the madhyamaka and the Personalists (Pudgalavādins). We will not deal here with the former, but we will with the latter. We can place the Personalists between the Jains and those Buddhists who assert universal momentariness. The Personalists felt that the unqualified denial of a self on the part of their fellow Buddhists was not true to the Buddha’s teaching, especially those places where he rejects both the view that there is a self and the view that there is not. They thus postulated a “person” (pudgala) that cannot be said to be either the same as or different from the psycho-physical constituents (skandha). If the person were the same as the constituents, they reasoned, then it would be as momentary as them, and memory, rebirth, and moral responsibility would be difficult to account for. If it were independent from them, then it would be as eternal and unconditioned as a Sām . khya or Naiyāyika self (ātman), and hence all the problems SE L F A N D NOT - SE L F I N IN DIA N PH I LOS OPH Y 9 that Buddhists see with such an entity ensue: it cannot enter into a mutual relationship with psycho-physical reality, it would seem to be already liberated and so makes the religious life redundant, etc. (Eltschinger and Ratie 2013, 84). The Personalists regarded their view as taking the proper middle way between the two extremes of eternalism and annihilationism. They compared the relationship between the constituents and the person to that between a tree and its shadow, or fuel and the fire rising from that. As Eltschinger and Ratie (2013, 73–75) perceptively note, four aspects of the analogies seem to have been intended. (i) The shadow is neither the same as nor different from the tree, and the fire is neither the same as nor different from the fuel. (ii) The shadow and the fire exist, but in a less substantial and determinate way than the tree and the fuel. (iii) There is no shadow without the tree and no fire without the fuel. (iv) The shadow and the fire are caused by, respectively, the tree and the fuel. The person, then, is a kind of emergent phenomenon thrown up by the constituents; it cannot exist without them, but it is not reducible to them. It is not difficult to distinguish this “person” from the self of the Naiyāyikas, Śaiva Siddhāntins, etc.; but there is some overlap between it and the self of the Bhāt.t.as and Jainas. As the former is neither the same as nor different from the constituents, so the latter is neither the same as nor different from (or rather both the same as and different from) the self’s qualities, such as its pleasures, pains, and cognitions. In what way, then, are the two concepts distinct? (i) A Bhāt.t.a or a Jaina self is not caused by its qualities. (ii) It can exist without them – in the state of liberation and between incarnations. (iii) It is not less substantial or determinate than its qualities. (iv) It is a substance; the person is not. (v) It is eternal; the person is neither eternal nor momentary. The “person” of the Pudgalavādins thus falls between an enduring self-substance (as upheld by the Bhāt.t.as and Jainas) and the transient constituents (skandha). See also: advaita vedānta; BHAKTI ; buddhism; cārvāka; jaina philosophy and jainism; mı̄mām.sā; nondualistic śaivism of kashmir; nyāya; sām.khya; upanis.ads; vaiśes.ika; vais.n.avism, philosophical REFERENCES Eltschinger, Vincent, and Isabelle Ratie. 2013. Self, No-self, and Salvation: Dharmakı̄rti’s Critique of the Notions of Self and Person. Beiträge zur Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte Asiens 75. Sitzungsberichte (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse) 837. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Ślokavārttika. 1978. Ślokavārttika of Śrı̄ Kumārila Bhat..ta With the Commentary Nyāyaratnākara of Śrı̄ Pārthasārathi Miśra. Edited by Dvārikādāsa Śāstrı̄. Prāchyabhārati Series 10. Varanasi: Tara Publications. Uno, Tomoyuki. 1999. “Ontological Affinity Between the Jainas and the Mı̄mām . sakas.” In Dharmakı̄rti’s Thought and Its Impact on Indian and Tibetan Philosophy: 10 SE L F A N D NOT - SE L F I N IN DIA N PH I LOS OPH Y Proceedings of the Third International Dharmakı̄rti Conference, Hiroshima, November 4–6, 1997, edited by Shoryu Katsura, 419–431. Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Denkschriften 281. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Watson, Alex. 2010. “Rāmakan.t.ha’s Concept of Unchanging Cognition (nityajñāna): Influence from Buddhism, Sām . khya, Vedānta.” In From Vasubandhu to Caitanya: Studies in Indian Philosophy and Its Textual History. Papers of the 12th World Sanskrit Conference. Volume 10.1, edited by Johannes Bronkhorst and Karin Preisendanz, 79–120. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. FURTHER READING Chakrabarti, Arindam. 1982. “The Nyāya Proofs for the Existence of the Soul.” Journal of Indian Philosophy, 10: 211–238. Duerlinger, James. 2003. Indian Buddhist Theories of Persons: Vasubandhu’s “Refutation of the Theory of a Self.” London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon. Ganeri, Jonardon. 2012. The Concealed Art of the Soul: Theories of Self and Practices of Truth in Indian Ethics and Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kapstein, Matthew T. 2009. “Śāntaraks.ita’s Tattvasam . graha: A Buddhist Critique of the Nyāya View of the Self.” In Buddhist Philosophy: Essential Readings, edited by William Edelglass and Jay L. Garfield, 320–333. New York: Oxford University Press. Matilal, B.K. 1989. “Nyāya Critique of the Buddhist Doctrine of Non-soul.” Journal of Indian Philosophy, 17 (1): 61–79. Oetke, Claus. 1988. “Ich” und das Ich. Alt- und Neu-Indische Studien 33. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden. Siderits, Mark. 2003. Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy: Empty Persons. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Siderits, Mark, Evan Thompson, and Dan Zahavi 2001. Self, No-self? Perspectives from Analytical, Phenomenological, and Indian Traditions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Taber, John. 1990. “The Mı̄mām . sā Theory of Self-recognition.” Philosophy East and West, 40 (1): 36–57.