Nihilism is the loss of the sense of self or the same, the self becomes a problem in the same way aether is still a problem for most physicists. It is safe to gather that the nihilist has completely lost the ability to distinguish the psychophysical organism from himself because there is no self for him—he is all organism. Therefore, the words of George Grimm must feel strange to him if not something like a hard slap to his face.
“It is necessary clearly to realize, i.e. to see that the corporeal organism is something entirely different from me. If I really comprehend this, I shall as a consequence realize that the beginning and the end of this organism are not the beginning and the end of myself, but merely of this very organism. The question arises, how it comes that I possess the latter. The answer is rather simple: I am in connection with my organism merely through my will. It is only this will which procures me me an organism, and it does so in the same and only way in which I procure whatever I want to possess, namely by grasping it: because I have the will for a corporeal organism I grasp the germ prepared by my parent, I cling to it for building up a corporeal organism. This process I repeat from time immemorial and I shall, if necessary, repeat perpetually; that is, as long as I have a will for a new organism when at the moment of death my actual body is snatched away from me” (Buddhist Wisdom, p. 10).
Unfortunately, for a lot of Buddhists, Grimm’s words are a hard slap. Many who have come to Buddhism are nihilists. Buddhism has become a magnet for these nihilists who believe the Buddha taught the self is just a fictional construct, although he said no such thing. According to the Buddha, it is the psychophysical body which, if anything, is a fictional construct. We have even reified this fiction making out of it a false self (anâtman/svakâya) that seduces us; which leads us to countless rebirths of pain.
The nihilist can no longer sense the real self which transcends the corporeal organism he cuddles. This is, perhaps, a nihilism of the worst kind. This nihilist doesn’t even know he has lost everything—who is there left to tell him? When the Buddha beats the deathless drum, the nihilist hears nothing. It is such a nothing that is the most deadly.
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