{"id":6275,"date":"2015-07-16T21:04:56","date_gmt":"2015-07-16T21:04:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/?p=6275"},"modified":"2020-06-20T22:38:50","modified_gmt":"2020-06-20T22:38:50","slug":"the-self-in-vedanta-and-its-buddhist-critique","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/2015\/07\/the-self-in-vedanta-and-its-buddhist-critique\/","title":{"rendered":"The Self in Vedanta and Its Buddhist Critique"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cA formative voice sinks back into mind; mind sinks back into vital breath; vital breath to radiance; and radiance to the higher divinity. This is the soul; the Self of all that exists; this is the Real Self; You Are That<\/em>…\u201d \u2013 Chandogya Upanishad <\/em>IV.8<\/p>\n

\u201cHow transient are all component things! It is their nature to arise and fall. As soon as they have been formed, they start to decay again … [so] tend to your state of mind with diligence.\u201d \u2013\u00a0The Buddha<\/em>\u2019s Final Nirvana<\/em> VI.7<\/p>\n

By\u00a0Sigurd Arild and Ryan Smith<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Upanishads (ca. 1000-500 BCE) record the spiritual visions of the Vedic seers. They form part of the tradition of Vedanta, which predates Buddhism by some 500 years. Though Vedanta would later be considerably reformed by Shankara<\/a> (around 800 CE), what interests us here is the earlier, more primordial strands of Vedanta and the bearing they had on the initiate\u2019s self-perception.<\/p>\n

\"monk1<\/a>In the Upanishads, the self is often likened to something joyous, blissful, and divine. Briefly put, the self (atman<\/em>) is thought to be eternal, supra-mundane, and synonymous with the absolute (Brahman). As the Chandogya Upanishad<\/em> says in the passage quoted above, the soul is the self of all that exists; it is what is truly real, the absolute and the whole of the cosmos, and this is what you truly are. Hence the grand pronouncement of Vedanta, \u201cYou Are That,\u201d<\/em> meaning that the true self is not merely that of a mundane human being, but something very special that can be found within.<\/p>\n

In technical terms, this type of self-perception, acquired from \u201clooking within\u201d in an attempt to discern one\u2019s innermost self is called devata<\/em>-knowledge \u2013 an experience of \u201cthe divine within oneself.\u201d Following the American philosopher of religion Richard D. Jones, we might also say that it is an introvertive<\/em> stance: Everything that is good about the individual is thought to already \u201clie within\u201d; the task of the initiate is thus merely to discern it through self-probing.<\/p>\n

As said, the Upanishads set out to discover this \u201cinner soul\u201d \u2013 the individual\u2019s deepest identity which is at the same time held to be synonymous with the essence of all things. The selfhood of man is thus identified with something divine \u2013 something pantheistic, as it were. And the individual\u2019s innermost self is portrayed as being of macro-cosmic importance. This approach bears a certain resemblance to the method of Jung himself.<\/p>\n

Jung\u2019s Introvertive Approach<\/strong><\/p>\n

As we have previously covered on the site, Jung was strongly influenced by Indian philosophy, employing a number of its devices for his own ends. Indeed, with both his type theory and his later conception of the archetypes<\/a> Jung made use of this same introvertive technique, telling his followers that \u201cThey Were That\u201d <\/em>special something and giving them an experience of \u201cthe divine within themselves.\u201d Here is one example of Jung using the type theory to such ends:<\/p>\n

\u201c[Jung said to me] that it was right for his ideas and his psychology to be translated into feeling … that feeling was in his writings. He added … \u2018a thinking-intuitive type\u00a0 … cannot turn my ideas into feeling. [Feeling] is your function. Turn [my] ideas into feeling, into music.\u2019 He put his hand on my shoulder and bade me farewell with his blessing. It made sense to me and I felt somehow comforted.\u201d \u2013 Irene Champernowne: A Memoir of Toni Wolff<\/em> (C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco 1980) p. 8<\/p>\n

And of course, with regard to the archetypes, Jung postulated the Self as an archetype, much greater and better and \u2013 indeed \u2013 more divine than the mere personal ego. As noted in our essay on how Indian philosophy influenced Jung<\/a>, this duality seems to have been copied over wholesale from Vedanta, equipping it only with the scantiest of Western glossings.<\/p>\n

Thus, as said, both the theory of types and the theory of archetypes were used by Jung in ways that aimed to promote\u00a0devata<\/em>-knowledge in his followers and give them an experience of \u201cthe divine within themselves.\u201d In his own way, this is also what the Jung scholar Richard Noll concluded in his books, The Jung Cult<\/em> and The Aryan Christ<\/em>, although Noll traced these similarities to Hellenic Mystery Cults rather than to Vedanta.<\/p>\n

The Buddha\u2019s Critique of Early Vedanta<\/strong><\/p>\n

When the Buddha\u00a0founded his own teaching, he\u00a0revolted against the early Vedanta view. In fact, the rejection of introvertive\u00a0ideas such as the ones found in\u00a0early Vedanta (and Jung) would come to be a\u00a0cornerstone of the Buddha’s way of life. In his view, all such\u00a0“fixed,” inner\u00a0ideas were little more than\u00a0dogmas\u00a0and they all had to be rejected as being inconsistent with the facts of introspection.<\/p>\n

Being a consummate empiricist, the Buddha rejected unifying concepts <\/span>such as \u201cSelf\u201d or \u201ctype\u201d since, as David Hume said, they are entities that the mind “adds” to our experience and not immediately given in what we experience when we introspect.<\/span> Stripping this glossing of an added “type” or “self”\u00a0from the domain of pure experience, the Buddha concluded that\u00a0there is no permanent or substantial entity underneath the apparent conflict and multiplicity that most people experience when they introspect.\u00a0That chaos and conflict inside you is <\/em>the real “self”; it is reality itself, compounded into what most people\u00a0erroneously call a self, and it is compounded for only a very short time before the forces of reality converge to dissolve it again. There is nothing special about it.<\/p>\n

From this position, the Buddha saw major problems with the approach of Vedanta (as he would have done with Jung). If we allow ourselves to believe that there is something \u201cspecial\u201d and \u201cpositive\u201d inside of ourselves that is simply there, regardless of what we do,\u00a0this belief may lead us into complacence and inaction. Such beliefs easily run the risk of becoming\u00a0a mental clutch that\u00a0consoles us, telling us that we are already adequate as we are. Indeed, to the Buddha, the realization of one’s own inadequacy is what spurs the individual\u00a0onwards towards greater deeds. To cling to some special self \u201cinside\u201d is what makes you ignorant: Why learn or better yourself if you already contain something immensely precious? To the Buddha, such beliefs were “doctrines for fools.”<\/p>\n

Comparison of Vedanta, Buddhism, and Jung<\/strong><\/p>\n

All three of the approaches described above may be characterized as a response to mankind\u2019s existential challenges and anxieties. All mundane existence is plagued by imperfection and dissatisfaction. In addressing these problems, the Upanishads and Jung speak of their solutions in more positive terms, i.e. in coming to realize the self or \u201cbecoming whole,\u201d while the Buddha retains a more negative attitude, stressing that the\u00a0sorrowless state is only possible through the withdrawal of passions and attachments from this life. Jung, Vedanta, and the Buddha all agree, however, that salvation from phenomenal suffering lies in the realization of what is truly\u00a0real. Nevertheless, where Jung and Vedata stress the importance of making contact with one’s\u00a0innermost self, the Buddha denies the self altogether.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Image in the article commissioned from artist Georgios Magkakis.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cA formative voice sinks back into mind; mind sinks back into vital breath; vital breath to radiance; and radiance to the higher divinity. This is the soul; the Self of all that exists; this is the Real Self; You Are That…\u201d \u2013 Chandogya Upanishad IV.8 \u201cHow transient are all component things! It is their nature[\u2026] Continue Reading<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psychology"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6275"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6437,"href":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6275\/revisions\/6437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idrlabs.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}