Patti Whaley recommends Michael Tippett’s A Child of our Time ‘The Brahman and the Atman are one’ In Eastern thought, the clear distinction, coherence and uniqueness of a personality or ‘self’ for each human being is not taken as a starting point as it usually is in the West.
Each ‘self’ is an aspect of the one ‘Self’; or perhaps ‘self/Self’ is maya – an illusion.
I think this is a very different concept of selfhood, which shows up much of our Western obsession with selfhood as a wrong turn in human development – or at least a suspect one. Here are just four examples out of thousands that could be selected, both in the source materials and in the philosophical discussions which arose out of them: ‘The individual self and the universal Self, living in the heart, like shade and light, though beyond enjoyment, enjoy the result of action. All say this, all who know Spirit, whether householder or ascetic’.1 ‘He is below, above, behind, in front, on the right, on the left. He is everything. If I put I instead of He, I say, I am below, I am above, I am behind, I am in front, I am on the right, I am on the left. I am everything. I put Self instead of He, I say, the Self is below, above, behind, in front, to the right, to the left. The Self is everything. The personal Self is the impersonal Self. He who sees, thinks, knows this, loves the Self, plays with the Self, enjoys the Self, governs himself, moves himself everywhere at his pleasure. Those who think otherwise are governed by others. They lose what they gain. Nowhere can they move at their pleasure’.2 The man of Tao remains unknown perfect virtue produces nothing ‘No-Self’ is ‘True-Self’. and the greatest man is Nobody.3 And a similar denial of self is a core belief of Buddhism: ‘It is this notion of ‘self’ which causes people to experience life as sorrowful. It was from this condition, from these constraints, that Gotama sought some way of deliverance. The problems of human life with which the Buddha was primarily concerned were the kind of problems which arise with the development of individualism’. 4 1. Purohit Swami and W.B.Yeats, The Ten Principal Upanishads – Katha Upanishad, I: 3, page 31. 2. Op cit., Chhandogya Upanishad, VII: 24, page106. 3. Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu. 4. Trevor Ling , The Buddha, page 96. sof 72 July 2005 Eastern Ideas of Self A Note from David Paterson I is an Other ‘Je est un autre’– RIMBAUD There are ways of trying, though the I a friend had argued for in casual debate is not enough. ‘Be careful’, I had said. ‘You have to match the singular to all that lies outside it, gives it meaning, makes it work.