THINKING — JANUARY 23, 2023
Give yourself (and others) a break.
by Jonny Thomson, Big Think, January 23, 2023
KEY TAKEAWAYS
A life is never complete. Like a constantly flowing river, you cannot stop it to measure it or judge it. A key difference between Buddhism and Hinduism is the idea of anattā — or "no soul" Using this Buddhist philosophy, we can learn to let things go and be more forgiving.
Jonny Thomson
Since you woke up this morning, you’ll have changed. Physically, billions of cells will have been replaced in a Sisyphean cycle of death and rebirth. Mentally, you’ll have more memories, more experiences, and more knowledge about the world (however narrow or insignificant it might seem). Time is measured by change — it’s the transfer of energy into different forms. When we talk about time, we’re really just documenting the ways in which the world has changed.
Daoists like to compare life to that of a river flowing: We are moving ever on, eddying and weaving our way to whatever estuary we end up at. And like a river, we cannot stop a human life to judge it in its entirety. You cannot pause existence to say, “Right, this is what this person is and this is how we must value them.” Like some sentient Heisenberg principle, we can never measure a life, because it’s always in motion.
It’s a fact and wisdom that’s very old indeed.
The breath of life
Buddhism took form within the culture and theology of Hinduism. Many key aspects of Buddhism overlap or resemble those of Hinduism. For example, both believe in karma (where actions have far-reaching, reactionary consequences), as well as dharma (cosmic laws to the universe). Both agree that the end goal of all existence is moksha — a liberation from the earthly cycle of rebirth.
One of the key differences, though, is about the nature of a human. In Hinduism, we have ātman — often translated as “the soul.” People reading this may have biases regarding Judeo-Christian ideas of “the soul.” But in Vedic traditions, ātman means something subtly different.
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In this way, ātman is more like the ancient Greek idea of pneuma than a Judeo-Christian “soul.” Pneuma means the “spirit of life” or creative force. It was imagined to be the breath of the divine that gives humans our unique humanity. It’s about a force that invigorates and gives intelligent purpose to all that you do.
Anatta
Buddhists, though, do not believe in ātman. For Buddhists, there is no “self” at all: a concept called anattā. The idea that we have some unified identity is more the result of illusion and conditioning than fact. That thing we call “me” is in such a state of flux that it cannot be grasped at all. You are, today, a very different person than who you were last year. Things in life are in a near constant swirl. Your beliefs, values, relationships, wealth, and health will come and they will go. The self is ultimately a construct.
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We are each different subjects of our being, encountering the world in our own unique way. What anattā suggests, though, is that there doesn’t need to be some essence or filament to our experiences. Of course, we have experiences (phenomenological content), but it’s just that there is no substance underpinning it (ontological entity).
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