The category of the Five Aggregates consisting of physical shape, feeling, determinate thought (e.g., this is a blue patch), inclinations and sensory consciousness is not the same category as my self or atman. Thus, to confuse the two is a category mistake. The Buddha was well aware of this. He was also aware of the fact human beings suffer from the habit of identifying their self with the Five Aggregates believing: “I am these Five Aggregates” even though they are impermanent, suffering, and actually not our true self.
A helpful example of the category mistake would be to believe that esprit de corps in the military is something like a tank, a soldier’s uniform, or a rifle. A person suffering from this kind of mistake might look all of his life for an object like esprit de corps and never find it because it is not a material thing.
To briefly sum this up, our true self cannot be described or located under the Five Aggregates. It has no such referent, in other words. It is not physical shape (1) or feeling (2). Nor is our self something thinkable (3). Nor is our self an inclination or impulse (4). And lastly, our self is not sensory consciousness (5). What all this means is that we must stop continually making a category mistake. We must accept the fact, at least, that our self is spiritually and fundamentally distinct from the Five Aggregates.
Another way of looking at this, if we take the Five Aggregates as being similar to the complexity of a clock's mechanical parts—our self is not a clock. Nor is our self a biological organ like the spleen or the brain. The difference between the Five Aggregates and the self is more like the difference between attribute and substance. In fact, in R.C. Childers’ Dictionary of the Pali Language he defines the five khandhas (i.e., aggregates) as “elements or attributes of being.”
We also must keep in mind that the Buddha does not make the factual claim that the atman or my self exists in the way an ordinary thing might exist in the example of a stone or blueberries which would place it within the category of the Five Aggregates. Instead, the Buddha states, in so many words, that I am not the Five Aggregates.
Needless to say, this position of the Buddha’s is difficult for the average person to put their brain around. They must imagine that self is something akin to Gilbert Ryle’s “ghost in the machine”; but this is not what the Buddha meant. As the Buddha realized his own self or mind, it was the very medium of existence. Everything else was its phenomena—there is no exception. For one who could disengage from the temptation to crave their aggregates there was release from their tyranny. Judging from the Mahapunnama Sutta (M. iii. 20) this is the case.
“Wherefore, monks, whatever is material shape, past, future or present, internal ... thinking of all this material shape as ‘This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self,’ he should see it thus as it really is by means of perfect wisdom. Whatever is feeling ... whatever is perception ... whatever are the habitual tendencies ... whatever is consciousness, past, future or present, internal ... thinking of all this consciousness as ‘This is not mine, this am I not, this is not my self,’ he should see it thus as it really is by means of perfect wisdom. Seeing it thus, monks, the instructed disciple of the pure one turns away from material shape, he turns away from feeling, turns away from perception, turns away from the habitual tendencies, turns away from consciousness; turning away he is detached; by his detachment he is freed; in freedom there is the knowledge that he is freed and he comprehends: Destroyed is birth, brought to a close the Brahma-faring, done is what was to be done, there is no more being such or so” (trans. I.B. Horner).
As the reader can surmise, the Buddha’s self is not Ryle’s a ghost in the machine. The Buddha’s self is more like the water and the Five Aggregates are like the waves; or to use Fa-tsang’s illustration, the Buddha’s self is gold while the shape of the gold is the aggregates.
Yet, despite the overwhelming evidence found in the Pali Nikayas that the Buddha doesn’t want us to identify with the Five Aggregates, even equating them with Mara the Evil One, many Buddhists and non-Buddhists treat the self as if it were something like Ryle’s ghost in the machine which then makes the whole notion of self easy to dismiss—and laughable. Nonetheless, the Buddha did not deny the self. In fact, before he died, he spoke of only two refuges, the self and the Dharma.
"...the Buddha’s self is gold while the shape of the gold is the aggregates."
This sounds like what John Searle called a 'rigid designator'. I do not see how this nor the wave/water example illustrate a distinction that is not like that of the ghost/machine. It seems like proponents of the ghost/machine distinction could be speaking of the same sort of identity (i.e. something other than a homunculus).
Posted by: Joe | December 21, 2009 at 09:09 AM
"We must accept the fact, at least, that our self is spiritually and fundamentally distinct from the Five Aggregates."
What is a distinction then, when it is not a distinction of/between phenomena?
Posted by: Joe | December 21, 2009 at 08:49 AM