Self
Self – (Tib. བདག་, dak Wyl. bdag). The Dalai Lama says: “I was at an interfaith meeting in India where the question ‘What is the self?' was posed. Here we arrive at the real demarcation between Buddhist and non-Buddhist thought. Non-Buddhist Indian traditions all accept some type of soul theory, some notion of an independent self that owns the body and mind. The Buddha’s teaching emphasizes that there is no independent soul or independent self. That is, Buddhism rejects any notion of a self that is independent of the physical and mental elements of the individual. We accept a conventionally existent self that is designated in relation to the mind and the body. Of course, when it comes to identifying the exact nature of the self, there is a wide range of positions even within the Buddhist tradition.” [1]
And Ju Mipham says: “That which we label as the agent of our actions or the experiencer of happiness and suffering, and which we assume to be the self, the individual, the agent and so on, is actually nothing more than a presumption of selfhood, made on the basis of the five aggregates. When we examine this with wisdom, we do not find any intrinsic ‘individual self’ either as identical to, or distinct from, the aggregates.” Khenjuk
References
- ↑ * Dalai Lama, From Here to Enlightenment, Snow Lion 2012. ISBN : 978-1-55939-382-9
Alternative Translations
- ego
