Essentially, the words of the Buddha and those of Socrates are teaching the same thing when it comes to identifying with what we are not in the belief that this is what we are. Yes, we all believe this psychophysical body is who we are. We work hard to feed and shelter it. But for the Buddha and for Socrates this lump of flesh is not who we really are. First, here are the words of the Buddha taken from the Catuṣpariṣatsūtra. It is about the five skandhas or aggregates.
“Therefore then, O monks, whatever material form there is, past, future or present, inside or outside, gross or subtle, low or eminent, far or near, “all this is not mine, I am not this, it is not my self”. In this way it must be seen, in truth, by means of correct discriminative knowledge (prajñā).
And whatever sensation there is and whatever conception, whatever psychic conformations there are and whatever consciousness, past, future, or present, inside or outside, gross or subtle, low or eminent, far or near, “all this is not mine, I am not this, it is not my self.”
Now here are Socrates’ words taken from the Phaedo (83d – e):
“Because every pleasure and every pain provides, as it were, another nail to rivet the soul to the body and to weld them together. It makes the soul corporeal, so that it believes that truth is what the body says it is. As it shares the beliefs and delights of the body, I think it inevitably comes to share its ways and manner of life and is unable to reach Hades in a pure state; it is always full of body when it departs, so that it soon falls back to another body and grows with it as if it had been sewn into it. Because of this, it can have no part in the company of the divine, the pure and uniform.”
Both the Buddha and Socrates are telling us that we are wrongly attached, or riveted, to what we are not. This might we hard for some Buddhists to accept who have been wrongly taught by their teachers to believe that the Buddha denied a self which is incorporeal.
But truth be told the Buddha taught us that our psychophysical body is not our true self or ātman. The psychophysical body is really anātman (not our self). This would be the same as Socrates teaching Cebes not to regard the corporeal body as his soul. For otherwise the soul of Cebes will soon fall back to another body and grow with it as if it had been sewn into it.
https://www.scribd.com/document/240315078/William-Bodri-Socrates-the-Enlightenment-Path
Posted by: jb | December 27, 2017 at 05:01 AM