Introduction
This is a lot of scope to take on, right? Discussing philosophy in Facebook philosophy groups, or rather not discussing it because the subject of philosophy doesn't come up much, leads me to actually not just describe what philosophy is in general, as in the last post, but also to get into some specifics. This is more like explaining some basic ideas to a friend than philosophical discussion, more of a common sense translation of some Buddhism basics than an interpretation.
This ran long. I kept thinking of one other part that might help explain another part, and altogether it's a bit much. It really starts by talking around the edges of the problem, some background, not getting into what the core issues are about until the middle. I'll copy a table of contents, subject heading / section titles here, to give a feel for that, and hopefully the organic structure will make it easier to follow rather than that coming across as scattered.
Examining convention: of course a self exists, in some sense
Getting started
Random thoughts on self, and religion as a way of redefining uncertainty
On to Buddhism, and rejection of self
What is Buddhism really trying to do?
What is self? Common sense and beyond that
What if we get rid of the acceptance of self?
Buddhism basics, the four noble truths
The crux: linking suffering, attachment, and a rejection of self
Buddhism in light of Western philosophy: examining a real, distinct self
Does all this really work?
Can the normal experience of normal experience change? An example
How this ties to morality
This subject as an approach point to Buddhism
Conclusion, and a bit on meditation
Getting started
A lot can get lost in simplifying complex concepts to make them approachable, including a lot of the deeper meaning, or even some of the basic intended function. Or maybe all of the meaning could be lost, if done poorly. Buddhism, related to philosophy, is typically interpreted related to some really specific and relatively abstract concepts, some of which are expressed as lists (here is one reference list of lists with links, and a much longer book-form version that includes 600 lists). A lot of the explanations and lists break-down terms that seem to overlap closely with Western terms, but then it's hard to be completely clear on what gets lost in translation.
I studied Sanskrit at one point--a long story--and as with any language concepts don't always match up so directly with those expressed in English. Basic concepts like happy, sad, excited, or depressed get parsed out differently, and the more abstract and vague the concepts are, as used in subjects like psychology or Buddhism, the more differences there would be. A lot of early Buddhism is in Pali instead, closely related to Sanskrit, but it's also difficult to be completely clear on what might have been altered in translation from forms prior to Pali. I'll avoid foreign terms here altogether, although any closer review of Buddhism does really involve considering some of those (maybe just not all 600 of those lists worth).
I did study philosophy, at one point. The Western philosophy study of self wasn't really close to my own academic focus, except related to studying Buddhism. I didn't cover much philosophy of mind, and it barely came up in a broad range of other Western philosophy classes. Here I'll only frame the subject of Buddhism's rejection of self, using as a start how we might interpret the concept of self within an ordinary perspective, according to common sense. I won't review either original starting points from Western philosophical thought or how those are developed in related modern philosophy.
Common sense isn't completely invalid in the study of Western philosophy but it would typically only be used as a starting point or touchstone, a comparative reference for once things start to get a bit fuzzy. Since a lot of this relates to the rejection of a self comparison back to ordinary perspective, common sense, helps clarify how it all makes more sense than it initially seems to.
What is self? Common sense and beyond that
A starting point might help, working with assumptions. Taken in the most simple way, self is just a summary version of who a person is, essentially mentally, related to their mind, perspective, especially in regards to connections to others, etc. Wikipedia gives us a similar definition:
The self is sometimes understood as a unified being essentially connected to consciousness, awareness, and agency (or, at least, with the faculty of rational choice).
Self is the consistent central element in experience, the foundational context. But is it necessarily a single thing? Do we actually experience any mental self, and could it be considered a real thing? Of course philosophers would not agree about that, and concepts that seem clear, like "real," turn out not to be, upon closer inspection. Is a thought real, or a sensation? Sort of. Since we don't experience anything in the realm of ideas or internal mental processes as directly as we do physical objects--and those mediated by senses and interpretations of senses--it would be quite different than discussing if a cup exists. Philosophers would also disagree about even that more than one might expect, about physical objects being real, but typically disagreement would be more about the form in which it is said to, to what extent our impression of an actual external object is completely objective, or could differ according to perspective, for example.
Someone more inclined towards idealism might claim that we only do experience ideas and sensations directly, not the external objects these are supposed to correspond to. Even Kant, who was no idealist, thought that we could only have indirect knowledge of noumena, of things in themselves. But what I meant in those initial questions related to how directly mental experience is or isn't the same thing as an experience of self.
To some extent we act in a consistent manner, implying an inner continuity of experience and resulting reactions, and in some sense our mind must exist, so we could argue that indirectly we do experience this self. We definitely can think, and sort of have a voice in our head, and this would normally be taken as a self talking (more or less--of course it doesn't seem quite that simple).
I have an online friend that hears multiple voices, of course due to schizophrenia, an atypical mental condition. I asked him about how that works out, if the "voices" really sound the same, or how he would tell which is "him." He admitted that part was confusing, and said that he learned to experience a primary voice, who he associated with himself, and could identify other perspectives that he saw as separate from himself. But of course they sounded the same, aside from saying different things, speaking from different perspectives. In some limited and different sense they must have all been "from him," even though it was useful for him to make that opposite distinction, that he was experiencing one real, consistent self, and also a good bit of mental noise.
Or maybe it makes sense to describe self instead as a basis for experience itself, in some form, so it would make no sense to divide experience into what is experienced and who is experiencing it, and then to expect the second to be able to describe the first. All that gets a bit messy when mapping out how it relates to that special case of someone experiencing more than one internal voice talking, which would be a bit confusing. I could go on and on with thinking through ideas in odd directions like that, but I think I'll mention a bit of common sense first, and then move on to some unusual things Buddhism says, with a good bit of background about the general context prior to getting far with the rejection of self part.
Examining convention: of course a self exists, in some sense
We have a brain, we have a mind (an idea I'll come back to), past experiences and external reality are interpreted in such a way so that we attribute both internal and to some extent even external consistency to functions of this self. Again, extreme cases of multiple personalities and such are not really relevant, since the discussion is about the ordinary case, as much as there one way people experience things. People that mentally function in different atypical ways may or may not prove or identify anything interesting about self. I suspect that such cases would be informative, in general, but I don't have any insight about what unusual cases show, or how.
Buddhism will exploit a not-so-obvious gap in the "we all have a mind" statement, that this starting point already assumes this self. The "we" in that statement is an implied definition of all people as distinct individuals, as selves, although what gets implied or doesn't isn't so clear. It's easy to capture that differently by simply claiming that "our internal self essentially is an aspect of our mind" instead. This shifts the problems around a little, but essentially doesn't change so much.
This does seem to correspond to a loose conventional take though, that mind is a function of the brain, and self is a component of the mind, although one really could arrange those concepts or "things" in a different way. Maybe it's already clear enough that language can make this even trickier, since it's including some assumptions. It would be hard to untangle what they all are, and we would need to use language to proceed, so it would be difficult to drop all of them in undertaking such a deconstruction.
I've ran across the idea that different languages do this to different degrees, that some are set up to describe a less subject-oriented reality, but that's outside the scope of my experience, and really too much of a tangent to take on. For what it's worth I've heard that idea that some languages emphasize a subject less in relation to Japanese, a language which I know nothing about. Since I've already mentioned that I've studied Sanskrit (and now speak a good bit of Thai, just badly) I'll pass on that those two languages are structured essentially in the same way as English, they just use some parts of speech a little differently. You might wonder which differ, right?
Thai is far less specific, in general, not conjugating or using different forms of words much at all, so in part Thai speakers need to use additional words to get some of the same information across, but they also leave a lot vague. Sanskrit is the exact opposite, much, much more specific, very clear in what is being said but also almost impossible to actually learn to speak for using so many different forms of all of the words. Think of how pronouns and verbs change based on what the word is doing, in English, and then extend that to all nouns, to subjects and objects. None of this relates to self, though, so I'll get back to that.
Related to describing an inner self, in English, we have as our background a vague set of ideas drawn from early psychology that not only includes a self, it also breaks an internal person or mind down into parts. I can't give the most informed or updated definitions of these, or weigh in on how much they are accepted or rejected as a great model now, but I can discuss the old model as a starting point:
id: our inner function of desire, not personality based, only related to urges, providing direction through inclination
ego: closer to a self, a consistent personality experienced by an individual, the characteristics of how we actually are (again, as a rough take)
super-ego: the external self, the personality or character we present to others, or how the ego is interpreted as a consistent self by others, or maybe more accurately how we interpret and present the ego or internal self to others
Not quite right? This isn't offered as as set of definitive definitions, just something to talk around. I never actually studied psychology; I was a philosopher (of sorts). Of course we would expect there to be newer and more complicated models of how we really do work, divided up into more functions, perhaps. Such a thing would seemingly only be intended as a model, a simplified description of a more complex reality, a limited sketch of something intended to make working with it all easier, not a detailed blueprint, like a car design. And who doesn't like a version with more discussion of brain functions better?
As an engineer I'm comfortable with the use of models. I studied both industrial engineering and philosophy in academic programs (strange, right?). It's easy to see how leaving in or removing a lot of factors in models makes perfect sense, with lots of options for how to compensate for reality being more complicated. Mental reality isn't quite as simple as plans for a house, or designing an air conditioning system, of course. For those types of things we leave out details like friction (related to the air conditioning model, at least; a house design doesn't include so many moving parts). To compensate for model limitations like minor errors in build versus theoretical limits we just design in extra capacity at the end. Of course all this is a very different thing, making a model of what we intend to build, versus using a model to understand something complicated that already exists.
Mapping out self isn't so easy, since the basic parts aren't necessarily clear.
To what extent were these three mental elements ever intended as real? That probably wouldn't be clearly defined across their range of use and interpretation. To whatever extent such a model was useful they were real in some sense, but in general they wouldn't need to be tied to something completely consistent or permanent, or to any underlying basis for these aspects, in order for them to work as a model.
I guess in bringing up the subjects of consistency and permanence I'm starting to move towards the concept of a soul, a deeper underlying context layer, related to requiring some foundation for ordinary mind and self. I'll back up and do a bit with part of the rest of the reason for why we ever wanted to define a soul, even though it makes for another somewhat unrelated tangent. Some of what we want out of defining an underlying reality in terms of religion is relatively separate from mapping out a model for a mind, a different scope, based in a different purpose altogether.
Random thoughts on self, and religion as a way of redefining uncertainty
It seems to me that we use religion to define and work with ideas that we don't understand, not so much to explain them, but to put them in a more comfortable and familiar format. Sounds like a start of a long tangent, doesn't it? If we don't understand the nature of reality, for example what happens after we die, or what caused the universe to exist in the first place, we can postulate a God to serve as a solution to all that. Or God could just be the starting point, and more religion based teaching can go further, even if those answers could be a little vague.
100 years ago it made sense for that God to seem a lot like a man, an older male figure, but at the present time "he" might be a bit more gender neutral. In related fashion all of the models and explanations can shift based on expectations. Even without that form of a literal God, as a personality-based being that helped write divine books of guidance, we still need a first cause today, if we are inclined toward such final answers. We could interpret that need as evidence of God, even though for others it's just part of our expectation, for mapping the form of what we do know onto possible explanations for what we don't. All of this goes way beyond sketching out how a "self" exists, or what one is, but the ideas do tend to overlap in some places, and of course the common ground I'm circling back to relates to the soul.
I see the soul as being initiated as a concept and functioning in this way, as a place to put our uncertainty, as much as an explanation. We don't know how there is any permanent self that lives on after death, or really have any way of explaining how we have a consistent, well-defined self while we are alive, either. We can notice that we experience reality as a stream of events, and that stream is unified in a very limited sense, tied to a physical body that is connected to a "mental self," defined as a person by the external world.
We can't really link it all together very well, though, if we want to move past those assumptions to make other claims. It seems we are somehow a mental, internal, consistent person, so it would be natural to try and define ourselves as one. A soul helps support making this connection, although it really doesn't explain anything, it's just a different way to express that there is part of the problem that we can't solve. We give the part we can't solve a different label, and a very vague description, some category / bundle of "whatever else." It really covers the two problems at once, since a soul binds our normal self to mental experience and physical body, and it gives us a groundwork for an afterlife.
Really memory would be another way to tie it together; take away all memory of past experience and our "self" would drop out too. It's hard to imagine a case where that would still allow someone to remember how to walk, or talk, so it's back to considering mental impairments. The most dis-continuous person there could be wouldn't prove, disprove, imply, or reject a separate soul, and strange hypothetical thought-models wouldn't seem to help (about brain transplants, or what-not).
What evidence to we have that this soul exists? People refer to near death stories, or evidence related to ghosts, and so on. It's not much to go on. If you have died and came back maybe all that is more convincing. But who knows what someone's brain might interpret of some unusual stimulus during that process, at the cusp of being alive, since it covers a lot of ground in dreams, and we don't think those are real. Or do we? I don't. It you live in a haunted house ghosts could be convincing, but for the rest of us this all gets vague.
We seem so consistent to ourselves, so a self really does seem to be implied, all the time, but upon closer inspection even that doesn't really hold up. If you move to a different country and start a new job and change your habits you won't seem quite so consistent to yourself. You will react based on some similar assumptions, and be consistent to some degree, but reality itself will seem to change; "you" will change, a lot, maybe quickly.
Maybe this isn't completely relevant, but one case stands out to me related to someone becoming something they absolutely could not conceive of. I watch those shows about the horrible, evil Nazis that killed all those people and the most disturbing thing they always bring up is that most were otherwise completely normal (with some exceptions; some were psychopaths going in). They would slaughter thousands of people by day and go home to their families, or to a picnic on the weekend. How could they all have done what was surely completely unthinkable to them years before? It seems to me that we really exist as context based, and that we can't fully appreciate how flexible that could allow us to be, how we could change into things that are relatively the opposite of what we see ourselves as over time. One would hope this also relates to unusual levels of positive potential as well.
So to some degree we seem to be a function of our surroundings, in addition to expressing internal capacity and learned tendencies. What we experience as a self would be uniform due to external reality tending to change gradually, as much as consistent related to an internal "self" as a factor (although it is bad form to assume what one is deriving, of course). Or maybe that's just my own take, not something everyone would agree on.
We also definitely have a "self" as a legal entity; it says so on a passport and driver's license. Our past was also based on experience as a uniform individual, and stands as evidence of it. Regardless of some transition changes, there's no way to change that experience of a self as the person that had that past, that was there, although we can revise our interpretation of the past just a little, or maybe a lot in more extreme cases. Language builds in an assumed self as well, so although it can be a bit transparent just the way we express ideas already has this self designed into it. That would occur differently for different languages, to a different extent, as I understand it, but probably as well not to chase that tangent since it isn't helpful.
On to Buddhism, and rejection of self
And that's pretty much how it works out, at least related to leaving some work to be done, although some starting points are definitely passed on (lots; maybe too many, related to all those lists). It's also not just about proposing a new self-less model that works much better, there is a good bit more to why that one isolated claim is made, which only makes sense in relation to other ideas found in Buddhism.
Buddhism essentially says that there is no continuous entity as a real, experienced self. The general move is more to why that can make sense, to serve a specific purpose, not to provide a clear, common-sense oriented better model of experienced reality. Basically self is experienced as an incorrect assumption, although to be clear that's really my own interpretation, not Buddhist doctrine. There is a somewhat detailed but still slightly vague model of how reality is experienced as if there were such a self, when in fact there's not, but this doesn't necessarily relate to clearly defining specific versions of self that get rejected (self as soul, and also self as consistent cause of an inner voice, etc.). So it's more about "how" that experience goes, not a "what" that is described as not existing.
As I take it--probably as well to be clear on this qualification, it's not like I'm the final authority on Buddhism, or there is only one take to be had--this isn't ever intended to be a better model than something else, to replace that id / ego / superego type approach with a clear and complete model of a self-less reality. Since it all came something like 2400 years prior to all those other concepts it's criticizing other models anyway, in particular the experience of common sense.
How can common sense get thrown in the bin like that? If we don't experience a self, if there is no unified "me," how can anything tied to individual reality really make sense? Obviously there is memory, and experience, and ideas, so how can these types of things continue to be accepted as real (which they are; we experience them, maybe without all the "we" assumptions holding up) without a person at the center. That's the point of what Buddhism is doing with these ideas, to work that out. In the end it's not just an academic pursuit, not just the kind of thing a philosopher would spend countless hours arguing, so that in the end a few people would accept it, or accept it as a starting point and then go on to support other related variations.
As I take it this rejection is intentionally designed to make a person question a lot of very deep assumptions, so the point is to re-examine much of basic experience and reality that goes unquestioned. Socrates would love it. But it is serious, in a sense, and the claims are that some of those assumptions will be found wanting, and it that it can be functional to change them in some specific ways. To restate to clarify, this introspection and discovery process is said to dip a lot into the "how" of things rather than the "what," so that basic functions of reality like liking or disliking things--attachment, but in a special sense--will be changed upon redefinition. In the modern interpretation of a Zen form all that gets reduced to some vague form of "just be," which may be part of the intention.
Of course there is the other possible read, that a soul doesn't exist. It's a different type of rejection, right? In a sense that almost doesn't seem to matter; it does or doesn't exist, and our understanding won't change that. There is a twist here too. People are said to exist as a continuity of desires, a function of ongoing karma (it all gets a bit complicated), so to some extent stopping the process can cease that from renewing a person to this reality.
This sounds like not much of a reward system, doesn't it? With the normal error in perspective we come back, just as a different person, and without it disappear into oblivion, so it seems as well to keep making the mistakes. In a sense it's as well to not worry about that. It's not as if any of us are in danger of becoming fully enlightened, and it makes more sense to focus on aspects or interpretations that might actually be practical than to chase after mystical stories. Somehow oblivion is a good thing, no need to worry about how, and there are always different possible versions of "Buddhist heavens" some accept to different degrees to muddy those waters (other worlds).
This sounds like not much of a reward system, doesn't it? With the normal error in perspective we come back, just as a different person, and without it disappear into oblivion, so it seems as well to keep making the mistakes. In a sense it's as well to not worry about that. It's not as if any of us are in danger of becoming fully enlightened, and it makes more sense to focus on aspects or interpretations that might actually be practical than to chase after mystical stories. Somehow oblivion is a good thing, no need to worry about how, and there are always different possible versions of "Buddhist heavens" some accept to different degrees to muddy those waters (other worlds).
You might claim: unless I'm really interested in mystical stories, then in my case that's what I want to know about. Christianity can be interpreted as a nice mystical story, and Hinduism is full of them, and modern-day new age thought contains all sorts of nonsense for one to study and embrace, so there are options. Buddhism as something applicable and practical is more like psychology, but in a practical form, so it's probably as well to stick with that, if the goal is some higher level of understanding. If someone's interest is in Buddhism as a set of nice stories then Buddhism as a formal religion is for them, maybe just not the ceremonial parts, or meditation and moral practices.
What if we get rid of the acceptance of self?
What would we do differently if we didn't think we had a self? Good question! Although there are complicated ways to frame that which work better grammatically, since that assumption is sort of built into the language. How about: how would experience be different if the assumption of a unified self at the center of experience was not made? Really this is probably skipping ahead to the end, and without a fully enlightened person to flesh that out it would only be guesswork. We can find people that claim to be relatively more enlightened, or even completely so, but such people tend to be...unreliable. We find strange examples in real life, based on interpretations like "Dudeism," people trying to "just relax," like that character in The Big Lebowski. Even if exemplars weren't so out there, how to evaluate any claims? It might be as well to not work towards finding a person of authority to map it out like that. A more genuine fellow seeker could talk a little about good guesses, or lower stages of development, maybe.
As I'm taking all this the point isn't just to believe that there is no consistent, internal self, to just accept that as an abstract point, in the way a Christian might really believe they have a permanent soul. The purpose of that idea (in Buddhism, related to what is intended) and how its acceptance is supposed to change an ordinary worldview. It's a bit more complicated, with a bit more involved than just belief or understanding, going deeper than just taking things as they come, although that really could be a valid aspect.
I can try to pass on a little more explanation, talk a little more around the edges, but I can't really give someone any part of that experience. I'm not really even well prepared to give lots of good description of changes in personal experience since it's not as if I actually teach this stuff, or even study it, at least lately (so my Pali terms memorization is a bit off). To some extent I did apply the ideas to my own experience, and I've read a lot of different takes, but it goes without saying that I'm not enlightened (but I'll say it anyway though; I'm not).
Initially one would just try to map out how the ideas are working to any limited extent, to see what the meaning could be. From there the individual ideas that turn up would be applied to ordinary experience, and not just any experience, or abstract experience, but to that person's own unique and day-to-day experience. This is actually one part of where meditation can play a role, in helping someone become more familiar with experience on a deeper level, to really see what's happening. Let's start with an example concept, attachment, but we'll need a bit of placing that concept to begin to work with it. Bear in mind these are simple versions of complicated ideas, that typically one could read books on these subjects and barely grasp the way the somewhat problematic ideas fit together, so this is just a very rough sketch.
Buddhism basics, the four noble truths
It's probably a good place to make the discussion more specific. This might be familiar, the idea of attachment or desire, part of the four noble truths teaching. It doesn't work well to just pull out one concept in isolation and review it apart from the others, so I'll introduce a basic set before working with just one. Here goes, four noble truths of Buddhism (and by all means, tear this simplified version to shreds in comments, if so inclined):
1. suffering / dissatisfaction is a fundamental aspect of the human condition,
2. its cause is desire (which ties closely with a form of attachment),
3. there is a way to eliminate this condition, and
4. a description of the way or path to doing so, the eightfold path.
That last part relates to the different teachings of Buddhism related to the theory, and how to practice, about morality, about meditation, etc.
But don't take my word for it; who better to sort all this out than the BBC? Or Google search, Wikipedia, Buddhism sites, you pick it, since I'm not really going further here. The very first concept is a bit crucial, and it's not supposed to relate to suffering in any ordinary sense, but what it does mean I'll not really go into. If I could explain it clearly, once and for all, that would great, and I do have some further thoughts that will drift in as discussion points, but as well if this is of interest readers follow up a bit, or maybe an awful lot, read up for a couple of years and then find a decent teacher.
I'd have done explanations more justice a decade or so ago when I was more into all this stuff, but the general idea is that essentially we experience reality based a lot on what we want. I don't mean some vague underlying want for something in particular (self-actualization, or whatever), I mean we want lots of things, and wanting something is at the core of ordinary experience. It helps us define ourselves as selves.
Notice that this isn't identified as the one, singular groundwork of human experience (the suffering idea), but rather as one fundamental component or aspect of it. It's not as pessimistic as it sounds. If you are completely happy and fulfilled all the time then you are a walking counterexample to this basic message (which isn't completely ruled out; it's not as if someone being generally happy to an unusual degree would somehow disprove Buddhism). As for the rest this is only addressing one main source of cause for related gaps in feeling comfortable and content to a relatively ultimate degree, for unhappiness and dissatisfaction that is experienced, not claiming that those are the main aspects of our reality, that everything is terrible or anything like that.
Of course Buddhism is saying that all this about expectations and perspective not playing out well is just a bad assumption (my take), that we let ourselves head in lots of directions wanting lots of things without really thinking that through. There is really no self, and if we were more aware (which would be "self-aware" in any other framework) we just wouldn't be doing it, taking expectations in the wrong ways. We would still have goals, would still do things, and experience most of the same consistency in forms of experience, but in some fundamentally different ways. It's not so much about the goals changing, although that could happen, but really more that the form of the immediate experience could and would change.
The process is a bit like untying a knot. It's not as if there is anything real there to get rid of, one just adjusts some conditions and then what sort of never was real in a sense really isn't there in a different sense. But of course that's just an analogy; probably best to not build your own understanding of Buddhism on some sort of fundamental knot analogy. This isn't something I remember the Buddha or others saying, just trying to help place the ideas.
How would that all work? It would take time, and lots of introspection, and awareness of who we are, really "how" we are, on a level people ordinarily would never get close to touching on. It might start out bigger, like dropping some destructive habits, but all that would be beside the point of the later more fundamental shifts in perspective. Immediate perspective is said to change. I'm not even close to explaining the other basics though, about suffering and rejection of self, so lets work on linking these ideas better before moving on to countless other tangents.
What is Buddhism really trying to do?
You may have noticed a problem with this; the idea of rejecting a unified self doesn't necessarily connect with this central theme of removing a type of suffering / attachment related to a specific type of desire. I can start towards showing some linkage, but I never really will establish a solid, tight link here. Why not? One reason is that I'm not exactly the final reference for Buddhism, just someone that has been interested and looked into it, a lot. Also a more complete mapping of the ideas might well involve clarifying a lot of Buddhism in one short text, which just isn't possible. I felt it was necessary to invoke some of the main background--the basic theme of Buddhism, a good bit of what it's sort of doing, in that four truths part--to make sense of the rejection of self claim, but that judgment may have turned what otherwise could have been a clear set of related ideas into a mixed up mess. Let's step back and see what Buddhism is doing, related to some alternatives.
1. Addressing related philosophical and religious models:
Rejecting self could be an answer to the earlier Hindu model of atman, or soul, surely related to an idea about self. This is philosophy, abstract speculation about how things "really" are, but to some extent it is designed to tie back to actual reality and experience. I've not studied Hinduism that much, aside from some mixed popular reading and one three-credit undergrad class, so I just know a little about it, which I'll pass on.
There were lots of gods, but they were making points that were practical, it wasn't just about mythology. It wasn't completely mystical either, just about aligning chakras and such. I'm not saying the Hindu framework of ideas is a lot like the context of our ancient or modern philosophy, and certainly not saying that "atman" version of a soul is the same as the Christian soul, just pointing out that this could be one main reason for Buddhism going there. But it wouldn't make so much sense if that's all it was doing, it wouldn't apply to our own experience so directly, it would just be a better model to believe in, which it is nothing like how Buddhism describes itself. Lets go further with what it would mean if it were a part of a philosophical model, and not just something Krishna was going on about.
2. Working as a component in a distinct philosophical (type) model
I recently did a write-up about Kant's take on tea tasting in the main tea themed blog that I write, and it comes up that his work on aesthetics (the scope of tasting) really depends on his main works describing the nature of reality (tied to mind / rational thought / other judgment / etc.). Ethics (study of basis for morality) might be the branch of his thinking that is easiest to separate from the rest, that stands alone best, but it also ties to that other foundation.
Some of the same is surely going on here; Buddhism works as a system of ideas. It depends a lot less on that, since it's presented as a set of different approaches that each might appeal to a different kind of person (the earlier general framework or perspective for other schools of thought), or really as a set of practices that go together (the eightfold path idea again). So in a way calling it a philosophical model is not right, not a good parallel, but the more general idea that parts fit together and compliment each other does work. It's just as well to not lose the idea that it's really not presented as something one would necessarily need to swallow whole, a framework that goes together as individual boards build a house, whereas Kant was trying to map out just that sort of thing, a broad and unified description of how things are.
A lot of Buddhism is described as detailed models, different parts of experience (dependent origination, types of cognition, on and on). Buddhism can't only be that, it can't be that learning philosophical schools of thought in the same way Kant thought he had nailed it is what it was all about, and only that. Why not? There is a part of the older Hindu tradition that different people need to learn and practice in different ways, that very different forms of teaching can be valid for different people, and it seems obvious to me that this carried over in Buddhism as well (just as well to be clear about when my own intuition is being used as a guidepost here).
Of course I could be way off on that; maybe no-one is getting anywhere without breaking down those teachings and complicated models, and Buddhism is lost except for the stack of canonical texts, living on only in monks and scholars that put the decades in to sort through that to some degree. For now lets assume there could be something to Buddhism based in limited, simple practice, separate from obtaining final enlightenment (again, not exactly a given).
3. As practical guidance, more what to do than explanation
Buddhism is clearly not this in terms of the sense of the Ten Commandments, but this is worth bearing in mind, that Buddhism goes there. It's harder to say if this is really more central than setting up a model of reality, but the eightfold path idea seems to point towards it all working together, to some extent. That's different than a religion, as it is typically taken, since that's more often an explanation of reality, a belief system, along with guidance on morality and a set of religious observances. But those are only the two parts; three at most. I'm not so sure effective spiritual rituals, something like the practice of magic through chanting, was ever intended, but that could match up with some aspects of other religions.
Actually with those limited aspects of religion I've just described Thai Buddhism, which I've sort of married into. Buddhism is taken as that, in one form, but to me it goes beyond that, well into the scope of psychology. This is how I accept it, but that's not a given, not at all universal, just my own interpretation. There are different branches and different schools of thought. It's a bit of an aside but Buddhism now includes magical tattoos here as well, and lots of variations related to making wishes, and being blessed, so lots of mysticism is going on.
So assuming it's the third, intended as something practical, but not the practice of magic, how can we link desire, suffering / attachment, and rejection of self? That's not so simple to make completely clear, but the close introspection and re-assessment of reality Buddhism describes / advocates is supposed to enable all three concepts to naturally come together.
The easiest approach point is a bit thin, the extreme cases of attachment leading to "ego" in the sense of somewhat compulsively defining self. Maybe another example of attachmebnt that's not about that will work better as a starting point, related to addiction, specifically smoking. One of the reasons to smoke cigarettes is to curb stress, but any smoker can attest that the need to continually smoke is a source of some stress. I don't mean stress as in not having money to pay bills (although those topics could link) but rather that going an hour without a cigarette causes physical and mental discomfort. Someone that smokes three packs a day is rarely in that situation but the constant demand is still in the background, maybe not in the form of an experienced lack but as a driving force to keep inhaling smoke along with air.
It would be natural for people deeper into Buddhism to say that the attachment leading to suffering (in the model) has nothing to do with smoking. Here I'm using it as a sort of analogy, but not really ruling out that it could also work as an example. If someone wants to smoke and then they don't it's a really special case, given physical addiction, but it clearly leads to some type of suffering (although again maybe "dissatisfaction" worked better anyway, related to translating dukkha, and if you somehow skipped the part about reading up here is the Wikipedia explanation of that, which they describe as:
translated as "suffering", "pain" or "unsatisfactoriness"...The term Dukkha does not have a one word English translation, and embodies diverse aspects of unpleasant human experiences. It is opposed to the word sukha, meaning "happiness," "comfort" or "ease."
So there is that.
Other examples about self-image work better to match the other ideas. It would be a different form of stress, but someone could feel pressure related to achieving a certain status level, or success at work, or ownership of material things, or presenting a certain image, which could go in lots of directions. My son was experiencing unhappiness in that earlier example related to expecting to buy some candy or something such, and then not adjusting well to the opposite expectation.
Buddhism related to rejecting self is more about immediate experience, the present moment, but of course to some extent these background issues color that experience (all of it, not just when something is annoying because it's just out of reach like that). Of course I've not really linked suffering to attachment so clearly, and really never will, but self to attachment not at all. But I will get back to that.
There would be no way to completely drop out "self," to exist other than in some form related to a continuous biological entity, but one could certainly go far to shifting how they embrace that background. The links could be clearer but all of this is said to tie together into a clearer model of reality, to some extent, or maybe better yet as an approach to reality, a different perspective.
One more tangent: becoming a monk is a huge shift related to all that (more on my own experiences in doing just that here). I don't see that as a necessary condition for advanced Buddhism practice, of course, or see judging levels of attainment or practice as a necessary or necessarily good thing. It might work better to see those monastic guidelines as spelling out the potential for a middle ground, by defining the other extreme. But one take on Buddhism is that a good way to make all this link is to experience reality fundamentally differently, to give up self in a radical way, with a huge lifestyle change.It's hard to spell out examples, or the extent of that. Reducing a dependence or focus on intoxicants is clearly defined in Buddhism and all major religions as a good thing, and related to that monks can't drink alcohol at all. De-emphasizing self-image could be useful for reducing ego in the ordinary sense and as a pursuit of Buddhist ideals, of course adjusted for personal interpretation, and monks' rules go really far towards essentially wiping out such concerns. Without issues like what to wear or having hair to wear in any style big parts of self-image become no issue at all.
Rather than fill in a lot more gap between those concepts lets shift focus a little and examine the degree to which these ideas, as already developed, may or may not make sense, how it might conceivably tie together.
The crux: linking suffering, attachment, and a rejection of self
I'd mentioned as an example that possibly by becoming a monk one can bring all this together. He (not so much "she," given how the traditions go, but maybe) would be supported by additional introspection, and guidance from studying Buddhist teachings, and aided by dropping lots of ordinary aspects of defining self (like ownership of almost anything, more directly related than it might seem at first). But what about back in the real world? An example might help.
Recently one morning my son was upset about his mother not giving him what's basically an allowance to buy a snack at school, really upset. He hadn't always brought this in the past, since they do feed him there, and since he comes back home and can eat a snack, but it's easy to see why he'd want that. It's not just about eating some version of a 7/11 cupcake, but it relates to him having the same degree of freedom his friends do. Of course he has money in a piggy-bank or wherever (he's 7, not far along with all that), so it's about his control over it too. He couldn't let the idea drop.
Eventually at school something would've shaken it out of him, that routine would have directed him towards his studies, or what the kid next to him was up to, but until that happened he was in distress, more or less really suffering. If he could've shrugged off the idea he could've taken up his battle with his mother the next day, or did whatever chore he'd been supposed to do but didn't, however that went, but in the short term changing his mind would've lightened his load related to all that.
I see this as related to a more general point, to part of what Buddhism is doing, or telling us we can do related to ordinary perspective, although the connection to self--where this was all supposed to be going--will take a bit more fleshing out. It's not as if ordinary life is always so awful but the general point, to me, has always been that the underlying stress adulthood entails (or in his case, childhood) could be reduced by adopting a better perspective.
A friend recently cited another nice example on an online Buddhism discussion group. A Thai man that had lost both legs in an accident was recently interviewed and he was quite happy with his circumstances, which he attributed in part to Buddhism. Being bitter and resentful wouldn't bring his legs back, so he made the most of how his life was going to go. Another person with a bad back injury from sports (rugby, I think it was) was bitter and depressed about it, regretting he'd ever heard of the sport. People experiencing that degree of loss are a special case but in both cases perspective alone shifted how happy they could be under limitations brought on by physical accidents.
This suffering and attachment could relate to different types of things, not necessarily just how we would use those concepts (especially bearing in mind those surely aren't great translations anyway). This idea of self is being used a bit differently as well, broadly, and also in a number of different senses. It works well in an unusual sense to say we see our physical selves as having two legs, from the example, but of course even in that example "self" and self-image related more to mental perspective.
This last link is difficult, how self and attachment tie together. It's too simple to say that both a conception of self and momentary experience relates to expectations, and attachment to ideas is related to expectations, and suffering relates to attachment, but that is sort of the general dynamic. The smoking example really doesn't work, tied back to this, that I want a cigarette but somehow if I don't exist in some permanent form all that resolves better. It does hang together better in my son's example. His identification of his normal form of experience tied to freedom to spend money, to eat what he wants, and losing that caused him suffering. It's easy to extend this to other adult self-image related issues, about owning a certain car, or having a certain job, although the ideas still don't mesh into a clear pattern based on making some loose connection.
I'll drift back more to how this really ties together, but first it might help to explore a little about how external reality might not be as plain as it appears, not so separate from perspective. For that I'll turn to a very unlikely reference, Western philosophy (at least an example from it, not delving into "Kant said x" and such.
Buddhism in light of Western philosophy: examining a real, distinct self
This gets messy, so won't get far down this path. Related to Western philosophy and what is real there are really two very broad subjects to delve into, related but sort of separate. Ontology, or the study of what is real in the world (in a special sense) and epistemology, consideration of the form us knowing things can take or generally does take. The second relies on the first, but both get complicated enough. Let's start with a summary version example that drags all this well into the light of everyday thinking:
Three umpires are sitting around talking:
The first umpire says "There's balls and there's strikes, and I call 'em like they are."
The second umpire says "There's balls and there's strikes, and I call 'em like I see 'em."
The third umpire says "There's balls and there's strikes, and they ain't nothing till I call 'em"
The first umpire exemplifies the Enlightenment view that there are objective truths about the world, and that they are waiting to be discovered... If the pitch goes through the strike zone, it is a strike, even if the umpire calls it incorrectly. There is a fact-of-the-matter in every situation.
The second umpire shows us the subjective view of truth. Anything that we say about the world is mediated by our senses, and we do not have access to the truth the way the first umpire does... Our conception of truth is only as good as our instruments.
The last umpire shows us that balls and strikes are meaningless on their own and are completely dependent on the umpire to exist.
This is based on a 1996 essay by Stanley Fish, (a modern Western philosopher!), extended a bit to the form of a summary of alternate positions. The first idea is that reality is real, independent of us. The second is that reality is based on our judgment, defined by it (although as phrased there it's really more about truth, not as directly about reality, but I've seen the same example shifted a bit to cover that scope). The third gets a little stranger yet, something related to reality being something we actively participate in creating, perhaps not just about truth and definition but about things in general.
Maybe it's as well to leave the labels out of this, and just work from there on what Buddhism is trying to say, although it's a bit novel compared to these positions, and even more complicated.
A part of this is about Buddhism saying we play a role in creating our own reality, through interpretation. It's not typically something we're completely aware of, but the general idea is that we can do a lot to shift perspective, much more than to just lighten up or be more positive.
To take this in a slightly different direction, in Buddhism not just self is not real (not as we tend to naively see it in the first case) but individual things are not distinct and independent. This seems to lead back to Buddhism as an abstract philosophical position, not tied to everyday experience, but the opposite seems clearly intended, even for this point. Other people are not distinct from us; our role in their realities mix us as entities. For family or other close roles this is easier to see in application but the intent seems much more global. It applies equally to anyone else in passing, or not physically present, extending past human relation concerns.
It can start to sound like pantheism but it's not that. The point isn't that rocks are alive, and everything is connected, as much as that reality isn't as distinct as it appears, and interpretation plays a role in what seems real, or is real, according to our perceptions. This gets into interpretation a little but we can instead see ourselves in non-static terms, related to a relationship to other non-independent things instead of as a distinct, separate self.
There would be such a thing as Buddhism interpreted strictly as philosophy, and different people within that scope would take up different unusual positions about what Buddhism and the Buddha really means. It's sort of as well to not go there. Keeping it simple, the point is that we see ourselves as completely separate from everything else, existing as a distinct entity, even if we do change over time, but Buddhism is claiming that's not how things are.
Philosophers take this to strange places. Lets take up an example, about definitions and essential elements. If we replace the motor of a car, it's still the same car, of course, just one piece is different. What if we replace half the parts of the car, or over time replace every single component of the car? The example gets a bit tripped up in practicality thinking through how one might replace the frame of the car, and this serves as a possible example there may be essential components to a thing, a core essence. It's easy to see how the opposite conclusion works from the same example, considering other things where we could replace all the parts, and achieve the problem the example tries to set up, that continuity is observed over time, with no core physical essence.
Buddhism isn't doing this, or at least this type of re-definition would only be a small part of a bigger picture, at most. It's more about things being interconnected, in reality, than messing around with definitions, perceptions, and boundary conditions. People aren't distinct selves, some core function or extension of souls or minds, they are connected to their environments, and exist as a conjoined element of those. That's already making it complicated enough, going far enough in for purposes here.
Does all this really work?
Does it all work? It's not so obvious that someone could experience fundamental reality differently, and could understand the main assumptions underpinning it in a more fundamental way. Personally experiencing this happening would make for pretty good evidence that it can happen, but showing it is possible seems beyond the range of what an analogy can do, or what an argument can do.
Did that last idea just ring a bell, about arguments? I've essentially just said: this isn't philosophy, at least in it's most common modern form. Philosophy is about working on narrow problems, and arguments, very narrow explanations within a limited scope, not about advocating shifts in worldview.
Of course it's all in perfect step with what Socrates was getting at, so it would seem familiar and reasonable in early Plato dialogues, but it's nothing like 20th or 21st century philosophy. It's not really psychology either, most likely, not that I'm the right person to judge that. At best this would be within the scope of self-help to us, no different than Dale Carnegie explaining how to convince others through use of language, or Tony Robbins saying whatever he said (be confident! or something like that).It's obvious enough that almost no one has the patience to follow this sort of approach today. How many people can read a two or three thousand word article about these ideas, this writing? If you've read this far that's amazing. Actually applying the ideas would take much, much more review of background ideas, and even then that's just a starting point for the actual application. Who could spend a couple hours a week sitting in meditation listening to the noise that is their own mind in order to sort out patterns in it, or to build up a capacity for further self-analysis? Even if someone tried they would run into problems.
There really is no getting away from the "self" assumption in our conceptual inventory, even when the actual word doesn't come up like that, as it keeps doing in using ordinary language. Self-analysis, self-awareness, self-actualization; it might be possible to break apart and express these concepts without explicitly stating there is a self but it would be harder to stamp out the implication.
I could claim that all this really is possible, and practical, but I can't imagine how someone would really argue that, build a case for it. It's not even supposed to be something dramatic or self-defining in a limited sense, like explaining why some people can become alcoholics, but instead just one element of everyday reality, among others.
Lets try to use another example to clarify where we are on all this. If someone were to get a flash of insight and say this is tied to a negative part of experience related to us seeing sex used in advertising all the time, that experiencing an unusual level of desire is inherently not a good thing for some reason, that might not be wrong, but it's not even that separated from the rest of experience, not so isolated. This desire and this attachment that are part of this ordinary model of self isn't necessarily about vice (not that sexual desire is necessarily a bad thing; it's normal enough), but rather a component of ordinary reality, somehow built into the normal fabric of how things are. It must be the case that to some extent some people are "natural Buddhists" more than others, naturally more easygoing and cheerful and accepting, while others really do get bent out of shape about what they aren't experiencing more, but really that sort of assumption skips ahead to conclusions when we haven't really spelled out specifics of the underlying context just yet, and really won't completely get there.
So on back to considering some basic, background context level desires, a range a lot more immediate and constant than wanting to own a new car. At times we want time to go by faster, or not to go by fast, we want to eat something, or own something, or to be seen a certain way by others, or to see ourselves in a certain way. These types of desires are all built into the fabric of who we are. To some extent these are cases of ordinary, basic, non-destructive desires defining us as who we are, nothing like a drug addiction. The point of Buddhism, related to this narrow scope of ideas, is that desiring something is a process that doesn't stop, and it's fundamental to who we are, so much so that it defines us.
The way that's expressed is a little odd though. It's not that wanting something defines us, but that assuming we exist in a certain way, actually different than how we actually are, and then expressing ourselves through desiring something along with that assumption defines us. Different, just not much different. Or maybe not clear at all. The premise is that to some extent we could change some assumptions, and both mental perspective and behaviors, or part of it all at least. Accepting the described assumptions framework makes any sense would take some looking into, that we might start to even understand this. The next two steps of accepting that fundamental perspective and experience of reality could change, how we relate to everything, and then actually changing it, would seem to be impossible. One more difficulty: there's not so much overlap with common sense going on here. It's not necessarily a deal-breaker but that doesn't help.
I can say for sure that very, very few people would ever consider these ideas to enough extent to get past the first step, to get some idea if things are really like that or not (we assume a self that isn't real, desire is a fundamental part of our everyday perspective, etc.). Is a perceived self really tied to the experience of desire as a fundamental context for reality, both well described as a set of errors? Who knows about that. Vanishingly few would go further and actually apply them, and make that work, assuming that is possible.
We might step back (many steps back so far) and consider the difference if this were prescriptive versus descriptive. Of course I mean that this framework of concepts (assuming it is that) could be a model for reality, or guidance for a practical perspective change. Maybe the two don't need to be completely separate, but it seems useful to bear in mind all this could be one or the other, or the two might instead be mixing. Or maybe it's something else entirely. It seems harder to imagine what, but worth throwing out there. Of course once anything "spiritual" gets drawn into the mix we can choose to throw any scope of ideas in the bin.
This would be a good place to stop, really, but I wanted to touch on a couple of related ideas before that, just dropping it. Buddhism seems to be set up as parts of a whole, to me, so only covering part can miss what's really going on.
Can the normal experience of normal experience change? An example
Let's do another tangent. Could a person become aware of some aspect of normal experience that they previously had absolutely no conscious experience of? Absolutely, without a doubt. But then this is my take, so I would need to justify that a little to convince you, or maybe I never could. I couldn't know what every reader is or isn't consciously aware of, and even if I were writing this for one person I probably couldn't explain something completely unknown and drag it into the light of day for one person using a bit of text alone. So this may not be convincing, and may seem a little abstract, and certainly won't apply in the same way for different people, but I'll give it a go all the same.
This leads on to the subject of probability, related to ordinary experience. In a decision theory class we covered in detail how in making a decision--essentially any type of decision, although I guess there could be counter-examples--people ordinarily assign probability to outcomes and then make a decision based on what they expect to happen. It's not conscious; they sort of just rough this out. How many people are even relatively aware they are doing this? Maybe without more explanation many wouldn't know what I'm even talking about, or accept it if they could piece together some vague idea. I would expect that I've lost some people already because it's too obvious that this is how it works to them.
An example might help clarify: suppose that you have two choices for restaurants, two places you haven't been, on vacation or something such (this does come up). In a sense you just "go with your gut" in choosing, but since you can't know if either is going to make you a great meal, or if the atmosphere and all the rest will be nice you'll have to guess. Price maybe you can see on two menus hanging outside the two doors, aside from not having picked a dish yet. To some degree you have to draw on past experience and project into the future which will be a more positive experience, although maybe for some that just reduces mostly to inclination to actually eating a certain type of meal, to that one factor, the food to be consumed. Since you would need to know what both experiences would be like to some extent you would need to use probability to make an assessment, about the individual aspects of the experience. You wouldn't understand this calculation step, working with probability, breaking apart individual factors, you would just do it.
So that's the example, that everyday experience draws on use of probability, which is not a conscious process, but someone could become relatively much more aware of this process if they wanted to, if they knew their own judgment process and mind better. Remember the point was to explain how experienced reality could change, not to show it could in any significant or meaningful (or useful) way. It's just an analogy. I'm claiming that someone could become more conscious, in a sense, that with greater self-awareness (to use that part of ordinary framework Buddhism is rejecting) one could know what's going on in their mind better, and could "see" this evaluation step much more clearly. Extended and changed around some maybe this could apply to self, and other types of desire and then to choices, but tied more to framing perspective context than to all that.
Someone could reject all of this example--the analogy, not back to the self model and issues yet--on more than one level. They might say they use Yelp instead, or Trip Advisor, so they sort of know about restaurants, and aren't making just an individual decision as I described, but really that changes nothing. Interpreting Yelp also relates to evaluating what scores and other write-ups really mean, and in the end you just can't look ahead to what your perspective will have to be after the meal, no matter what. An idiot waiter could change all that, or a cook having an off day. To some extent you are also evaluating if the restaurant has systems in place (processes, one might say) to offset that possibility, mapping all sorts of past experiences and related factors against your own inclination (what you'd like to eat for dinner, for example) and it comes back to a bit of guesswork on your part.
One last point: in decision theory you learn that you are judging decisions, based on what you know, not final outcomes, which involve some degree of probability. It's not as if this point is going to make all the rest of what I'm saying click but I suppose it is sort of related, I just won't get around to clarifying how since there's already too much to cover.
How this ties to morality
Let's start with considering the role morality plays in Judaism and Christianity. In Judaism it was expressed as rules, the Commandments and others, basically God telling people what to do. Christianity and the New Testatment shifted that into positive terms, in a different framework, with more talk of compassion and such. The rules didn't change a lot, maybe softening a little, but the emphasis shifted from not doing the wrong thing to doing positive things, more related to being a certain type of person. Buddhism extends this to morality further into momentary perspective, further diffusing the role of pursuing a single person's interests within the limitations of restrictions.
The actual moral code in Buddhism does get to be a bit strange, especially in relation to there being a code of conduct for most people and a very detailed set of 227 restrictions for monks. The basic set of guidelines isn't so different than any other moral code, similar to where Judaism and Christianity leave the basics, or really not so different than where Kantian derived ethics lands, or utilitarianism (although the latter aren't so easy to define as a derived list of rules, not really set up that way). The five layman-applied precepts are set up exactly that way, as follows:
The Five Precepts:
1. Panatipata veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami
I undertake the precept to refrain from destroying living creatures.
2. Adinnadana veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami
I undertake the precept to refrain from taking that which is not given.
3. Kamesu micchacara veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami
I undertake the precept to refrain from sexual misconduct.
4. Musavada veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami
I undertake the precept to refrain from incorrect speech.
5. Suramerayamajja pamadatthana veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami
I undertake the precept to refrain from intoxicating drinks and drugs which lead to carelessness.
Why leave in the Pali form, since no one reads Pali these days? In all Thai ceremonies, and used as a daily prayer, Thais do repeat these, in Pali. They know what they are saying, promising, essentially, except they don't tend to completely skip drinking alcohol, and they're almost never vegetarians, so they don't interpret number one that way, and 3 and 4 can be seen as optional. Really these are open to some interpretation, so the rule against alcohol could be interpreted as a restriction against becoming drunk and out of control, not against having a couple glasses of wine with dinner.
All that is getting way off topic though. The point was more that morality is really set up to integrate with these other teachings and approaches to everyday life, to momentary perspective even, but most of that gets lost in the later translation into a list of rules. I guess someone could take my word for this on that first point or just not see any connection.
This subject as an approach point to Buddhism
Does it seem clear enough that maybe this isn't the best topic for an introduction to Buddhism? Something simpler might be better. As an approach to Western philosophy morality works well, the study of ethics, much better than considerations of self or fundamentals of reality (metaphysics). I said a little about that in the last post, enough to get started. I thought issues related to self might work better as an example for a next level of looking into Buddhism, in a way, because that's more like a philosophical problem, comparable to breaking off a small part of experience and sorting through what's there. As I kept writing I brought in some related tangents, other ways of approaching the same topics, and maybe it became clearer, or maybe a reader would experience the opposite.
Of course any such project can be a messy business, defining some of reality in a lot more detail, and it's not for everyone. Socrates might have claimed that "an unexamined life is not worth living" but for the average person there really is no other option, probably not so different in his day than now. For those few of us who do question existence and reality some are badly prepared for the task, and only encounter poor sources of guidance and information, so it leads in random directions. After awhile one might well believe that the earth is flat, or that aliens bio-engineered people, crazy things, nothing interesting, plausible, or useful.
If one were well suited and prepared for the task, and careful, and sought out the best possible sources and guidance, how might that go? Hard to say. If someone did have a better than average understanding of human existence it might not work very well to communicate that. Buddhism sort of requires a leap of faith to follow the ideas far enough to get any sense of whether they really work or not. Maybe all of this is the key to understanding how things really are, or maybe it's pretty far from that.
Conclusion, and a bit on meditation
Why did I pursue these ideas, not just here, but in general? Parts did make sense, and did map onto what I was experiencing, so I kept going. I took it all up so long ago I don't even remember what the starting point was. Maybe Zen; that school / interpretation covers the same ground but doesn't make such a mess of explaining it; one just exists in the moment, except for those puzzles (koans). Of course it was part of a project to get to assumptions, to examine underlying reality. I hope that it seemed a little like that in reading this.
It seemed to work to me, to an extent. It's not as if it all snapped into place and I was suddenly a very relaxed, positive person. I was always generally calm and optimistic. The pieces just gradually fell into place, to a limited extent, and how I saw ordinary reality did shift over time. It's probably easier to see others making basic mistakes in approach that make their own lives harder, spinning their wheels a bit, one might say. For your own perspective often the subject matter is too close at hand, built into the context of experienced reality, and it's not always so simple to see which parts we contribute that may be adding to problems rather than addressing external issues. This is where the meditation aspects come into play. It's hard to see your own life from any distance, unless there are ways to set aside time and effort to do that, to see what is going on. The experience of that is unusual. I'm no yogi but I'll offer some thoughts on it anyway.
The analogy one often sees is meditation as a process of stilling disturbed waters, representing calming the mind, in order to see clearly what is there. The waves represent thoughts and inclinations, desires and attachments, essentially mental noise in general, and calm water represents an unclouded perspective.
The application of Buddhism might be described as more one of taking away complications and misunderstanding rather than adding any other descriptive model for reality or described approach.
It's interesting how the process works physically, how mind and body relate. It's counter-intuitive, but it's nearly impossible for the average person to remain seated and still for ten minutes. But don't take my word for it; set an alarm and try it, with no shifting about, no changes in posture, not leaning on something. A normal mental state is noisy, and a normal physical state is not calm either. Internal stresses require constant physical adjustment. I won't go into how I interpret that so much, what it means, how to resolve it, and this part is really just an aside, since I'm talking about mental changes here.
In sitting quietly your mind shows you what is in mental queue, which stresses, concerns, desires, or obsessions are "running" in the background. It's not possible to just delete those, but with time and proper attention they can be resolved, to an extent. I won't go into a description of what a mind that is completely calm is like; one can read a book on Zen to hear nonsense-based musings on that. I probably don't have such a different normal perspective than anyone else, for what that's worth. More direct experience to even a limited degree is nice though, easier and simpler. It's even something we can help others with, although that part isn't so simple either.
I hope this has been interesting, although it's a lot to hope for that it might actually help someone. Maybe it could at least be a comfort that there are fellow seekers out there considering ideas that may or may not make any sense, trying to sort things out based on some old versions of obscure thinking.