The problem of nescience naturally leads to the doctrine usually known as that of non-Atman, i.e., non-ego, to which allusion was made at the beginning of this chapter. This doctrine of Buddhism is one of the subjects that have caused much criticism by Christian scholars. Its thesis runs: There is no such thing as ego-soul, which, according to the vulgar interpretation, is the agent of our mental activities. And this is the reason why Buddhism is sometimes called a religion without the soul, as aforesaid.
This Buddhist negation of the ego-soul is perhaps startling to the people, who, having no speculative power, blindly accept the traditional, materialistic view of the soul. They think, they are very spiritual in endorsing the dualism of soul and flesh, and in making the soul something like a corporeal entity, though far more ethereal than an ordinary object of the senses. They think of the soul as being more in the form of an angel, when they teach that it ascends to heaven immediately after its release from the material imprisonment.
They further imagine that the soul, because of its imprisonment in the body, groans in pain for its liberty, not being able to bear its mundane limitations. The immortality of the soul is a continuation after the dismemberment of material elements of this ethereal, astral, ghost-like entity,—very much resembling the Samkhyan Lingham or the Vedantic sûkṣama-çârîra. Self-consciousness will not a whit suffer in its continued activity, as it is the essential function of the soul. Brothers and sisters, parents and sons and daughters, wives and husbands, all transfigured and sublimated, will meet again in the celestial abode, and perpetuate their home life much after the manner of their earthly one. People who take this view of the soul and its immortality must feel a great disappointment or even resentment, when they are asked to recognise the Buddhist theory of non-âtman.
The absurdity of ascribing to the soul a sort of astral existence taught by some theosophists is due to the confusion of the name and the object corresponding to it. The soul, or what is tantamount according to the vulgar notion, the ego, is a name given to a certain coördination of mental activities. Abstract names are invented by us to economise our intellectual labors, and of course have no corresponding realities as particular presences in the concrete objective world. Vulgar minds have forgotten the history of the formation of abstract names. Being accustomed always to find certain objective realities or concrete individuals answering to certain names, they—those naïve realists—imagine that all names, irrespective of their nature, must have their concrete individual equivalents in the sensual world. Their idealism or spiritualism, so called, is in fact a gross form of materialism, in spite of their unfounded fear for the latter as atheistic and even immoral;—curse of ignorance!
The non-âtman theory does not deny that there is a coördination or unification of various mental operations. Buddhism calls this system of coördination vijñâna, not âtman. Vijñâna is consciousness, while âtman is the ego conceived as a concrete entity,—a hypostatic agent which, abiding in the deepest recess of the mind, directs all subjective activities according to its own discretion. This view is radically rejected by Buddhism.
A familiar analogy illustrating the doctrine of non-âtman is the notion of a wheel or that of a house. Wheel is the name given to a combination in a fixed form of the spokes, axle, tire, hub, rim, etc.; house is that given to a combination of roofs, pillars, windows, floors, walls, etc., after a certain model and for a certain purpose. Now, take all these parts independently, and where is the house or the wheel to be found? House or wheel is merely the name designating a certain form in which parts are systematically and definitely disposed. What an absurdity, then, it must be to insist on the independent existence of the wheel or of the house as an agent behind the combination of certain parts thus definitely arranged!
It is wonderful that Buddhism clearly anticipated the outcome of modern psychological researches at the time when all other religious and philosophical systems were eagerly cherishing dogmatic superstitions concerning the nature of the ego. The refusal of modern psychology to have soul mean anything more than the sum-total of all mental experiences, such as sensations, ideas, feelings, decisions, etc., is precisely a rehearsal of the Buddhist doctrine of non-âtman. It does not deny that there is a unity of consciousness, for to deny this is to doubt our everyday experiences, but it refuses to assert that this unity is absolute, unconditioned, and independent. Everything in this phenomenal phase of existence, is a combination of certain causes (hetu) and conditions (pratyaya) brought together according to the principle of karma; and everything that is compound is finite and subject to dissolution, and, therefore, always limited by something else. Even the soul-life, as far as its phenomenality goes, is no exception to this universal law. To maintain the existence of a soul-substance which is supposed to lie hidden behind the phenomena of consciousness, is not only misleading, but harmful and productive of some morally dangerous conclusions. The supposition that there is something where there is really nothing, makes us cling to this chimerical form, with no other result than subjecting ourselves to an eternal series of sufferings. So we read in the Lankâvatâra Sûtra, III:
“A flower in the air, or a hare with horns,
Or a pregnant maid of stone:
To take what is not for what is,
’Tis called a judgment false.“In a combination of causes,
The vulgar seek the reality of self.
As truth they understand not,
From birth to birth they transmigrate.”
The Non-Atman-ness of Things.
Mahâyânism has gone a step further than Hînayânism in the development of the doctrine of non-âtman, for it expressly disavows, besides the denial of the existence of the ego-substance, a noumenal conception of things, i.e., the conception of particulars as having something absolute in them. Hînayânism, indeed, also disfavors this conception of thinginess, but it does so only implicitly. It is Mahâyânism that definitely insists on the non-existence of a personal (pudgala) as well as a thingish (dharma) ego.