3. Selflessness
The middle way is not only a path between extreme lifestyles and practices (such as wrong conduct and wrong moral discipline), but also between extreme views (such as eternalism and nihilism). In deep meditation, Siddhartha came to understand the true nature of reality. What he discovered were the two aspects of the middle way, each with its own special function: on the one hand, the ultimate aspect corrects the extreme practice of hedonism and the extreme view of eternalism; and on the other hand, the conventional aspect corrects the extreme practice of asceticism and the extreme view of nihilism.
| Non-existence | The Middle Way | Existence |
|---|---|---|
| No-self-at-all (nihilism) | Ultimate Selflessness   Conventional Self |
Inherent Self (atman) |
The essential point of the middle way is the union of the two truths. (Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Great Treasury of Merit: How to Rely Upon a Spiritual Guide, p. 252, © 1992)
Sitting under the Bodhi Tree, Siddhartha applied the two truths of the middle way to every philosophical question, including the nature of the self. He came to reject the existence of an atman, understood either as a self-supporting, substantially existent self existing independently of the five aggregates of body and mind or, more subtly, as an inherently existent (or objectively findable) self that exists somewhere within the aggregates or even as the collection of those aggregates. Instead, Buddha taught anatman (literally, ‘no-self,’), but by this he merely meant “no atman.” The doctrine of ‘selflessness’ is too often overapplied because first we try to translate atman simply as ‘self,’ and so then we think that anatman is meant to negate every notion of self!
It is important to distinguish the inherently existent self, which does not exist, from the self merely imputed by conception on the aggregates of the body and mind, which does exist. The inherently existent self is to be negated, but the existent self is not. The existent self performs actions, experiences their effects, takes rebirth in samsara, experiences suffering, and experiences happiness. It is the very basis of both samsara and liberation. Among both non-Buddhists and Buddhists there are many different views on the nature of the self, but only the Madhyamika-Prasangikas identify it correctly, because only they identify the negated object of subtle selflessness correctly. (Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Ocean of Nectar: Wisdom and Compassion in Mahayana Buddhism, p. 294, © 2003)
The Sanskrit word atman denotes an independent or inherently existent self, so it is best translated in a way that carries these connotations, rather than just the misleading single word self, which is an oversimplification. Similarly, anatman should also be rendered into English as a phrase: “no independent self” or “no inherent self.” However, with the doctrine of no-self, Buddhists do not go so far as to mean a rejection of the conventional self, which will be explained below. Thinking that we can affirm nothing at all when we negate atman causes us to over negate and leads to nihilism. However, Buddha never negates the middle view, only the two extremes flanking it. Each of the extremes is only a half-truth: eternalism is conventional truth without ultimate truth, and nihilism is ultimate truth without conventional truth.
As they are both aspects of the middle way, then for a Buddha conventional self is none other than ultimate selflessness. Though at first they may seem to be contradictory, ‘self’ and ‘selflessness’ in this sense are in fact “two truths”! The middle way, by definition, excludes both extremes of an inherently existent self and utter self-negation. The negation of an extreme returns us back to the middle; and as there are two extremes, the middle way is thereby seen as twofold: neither one extreme nor the other. This is why enlightened beings teach the doctrine of ‘neither self nor nonself,’ which is to say, neither eternalism nor nihilism.
Ananda Sutta: To Ananda (on Self, No Self, and Not-self) - Then the wanderer Vacchagotta went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, exchanged courteous greetings with him. After an exchange of friendly greetings and courtesies, he sat to one side. As he was sitting there he asked the Blessed One: “Now then, Venerable Gotama, is there a self?”
When this was said, the Blessed One was silent.
“Then is there no self?”
A second time, the Blessed One was silent.
Then Vacchagotta the wanderer got up from his seat and left.
Then, not long after Vacchagotta the wanderer had left, Ven. Ananda said to the Blessed One, “Why, lord, did the Blessed One not answer when asked a question by Vacchagotta the wanderer?”
“Ananda, if I—being asked by Vacchagotta the wanderer if there is a self—were to answer that there is a self, that would be conforming with those priests and contemplatives who are exponents of eternalism [the view that there is an eternal, unchanging soul]. If I—being asked by Vacchagotta the wanderer if there is no self—were to answer that there is no self, that would be conforming with those priests and contemplatives who are exponents of annihilationism [the view that death is the annihilation of consciousness]. If I—being asked by Vacchagotta the wanderer if there is a self—were to answer that there is a self, would that be in keeping with the arising of knowledge that all phenomena are not-self?”
“No, lord.”
“And if I—being asked by Vacchagotta the wanderer if there is no self—were to answer that there is no self, the bewildered Vacchagotta would become even more bewildered: ‘Does the self I used to have now not exist?’”
Buddha intuitively understood what the wanderer meant by his two questions. By asking a question and then its exact opposite, Vacchagotta believed he was covering every possible point of view, but in fact he was merely going from one extreme to the other. That is to say, Buddha knew that these questions had eternalistic and nihilistic slants. Many people have taken Buddha’s silence to mean that such questions are unanswerable. But this is not always the case, since his chief disciple Ananda asked too, and Buddha explained. The difference is that Buddha could—in a way that Ananda would understand—qualify the differing concepts of self. While Ananda would not be confused by the seeming double-talk, Buddha chose to save Vacchagotta from further confusion.
Notice that Buddha remained silent towards Vacchagotta on both sides of the issue of self: he could not affirm conventional truth without being mistaken for being an eternalist, nor could he affirm ultimate truth without being taken as a nihilist. Since Vacchagotta did not speak the ‘language’ of the middle way, he and Buddha had no frame-of-reference by which Buddha could answer and not be misunderstood. It is for this reason that Buddha chose silence, since any answer would have been taken the wrong way, thereby unintentionally reinforcing either eternalism or nihilism, at least in Vacchagotta’s mind. To free us from the limitations of binary language, Buddha always has a “neither-nor” answer for every “either-or” question we might ask.
The extreme of existence is a falsely imagined mode of existence that is superimposed onto phenomena whereby phenomena are held to be more concrete than they actually are. For example, a mind grasping at an inherently existent I, or a mind grasping at a permanent I, is grasping at the extreme of existence, or the extreme of permanence. The extreme of non-existence is a falsely imagined non-existence of something that exists. For example, if we make an exhaustive analytical search for our I and fail to find it, we may wrongly conclude that the I does not exist at all. Such a mind conceiving the non-existence of the I is grasping at the extreme of non-existence, or the extreme of nothingness. Although the I cannot be found under analysis, and therefore lacks inherent existence, it nevertheless exists conventionally. The I, therefore, is free from the extreme of existence in that it is not inherently existent, and free from the extreme of non-existence in that it is not completely non-existent. Moreover, the I is not a permanent unchanging entity that survives death unchanged, nor is it completely annihilated at death. Therefore, the I is free from the two extremes of permanence and nothingness, and so extreme view is mistaken. (Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Understanding the Mind: an Explanation of the Nature and Functions of the Mind, pp. 217-218, © 1993, 1997, 2002)
Read next Emptiness & Interdependence.