(upbeat music) - This podcast is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you and happy listening. - Anatar made simple. So Anatar, well of course this word means no self and one of the fascinating things when you're studying religion of course is that you suddenly find you're learning about geography, about history, different cultures. It includes all these things. And of course, the great thing is you start becoming expert in all these different languages, don't you? And if you do Islam, you suddenly start picking up some Arabic and Judaism, you start learning Hebrew words. Well in Buddhism, you really get two for the price of one because you have Pali and Sanskrit, these two ancient Indian languages. So you could probably all tell me what the word self is in Pali. Anybody? Atar, yes, and so no self or not self or non self, this is an atar. So I know I can speak Pali to you now fluently and say, "Anatar," and you'll all know we're talking about no self. So that's the first word on the title. And the second is made simple. Well I thought when I got the talk, well this is a great subject, you know, we'll make it simple, you'll go away feeling yes, I understand a bit of the Dharma, I understand about anatar. And of course as I start writing, it's I realize this is a complete joke. There's no way I can make anatar simple. I mean if I really understood it, I'd be enlightened. And if in the next hour I make you completely understand it, you'll all be enlightened. So really what hope do we have? I mean maybe we have a lot of hope, but it's gonna be a tough one. So we're gonna do what we can with the subject. In fact, we know how important it is as a subject to the Buddha because he gave his first sermon on the Four Noble Truths, which I'm sure you've all heard of. And his very second sermon to these five monks was on anatars and no self. And what happened, he gave his sermon, I wish he was doing the talk rather than me really, 'cause at the end of it, the five followers they all became enlightened. So that's how crucial it is as a subject within Buddhism. But simple, well, let's see what we can do. So the hand that I've got here is reproduced. So you can just see what I've chosen to do in giving this talk on anatar on no self. I'm going to try to make four simple points about anatar. So there you go, you can see from the very first one that we're going to turn first of all to the first thing that we can know about anatar. But actually, I forgot to say, on the back of your handout, we've got your text, the questions of King Melinda. King Melinda, by the way, is a Greek king. Now what's a Greek king doing in India? Well, the Greeks actually invaded India and Alexander the Great invaded India. And it's a fascinating fact this, but if he had managed to get a little bit further east, if he'd managed to cross the river Indus, he might have met a very, very old person who would have remembered the Buddha. So just imagine if that had happened and he'd talked with that person, it got lots of ideas about Buddhism, come back to Greece, come back to the west, and those ideas would have become part of Greek culture. Just imagine the difference that would be for us now would have much more of an idea of Buddhism. It's quite a fascinating idea, isn't it? Well, 300 years later, this thing happened actually. There was a Greek king called King Melinda, and he met a Buddhist monk. Now King Melinda's quite a character, actually. I think if you were living now, he'd be a sort of chat show host and he'd be firing questions at his interviewees. He had a very fiery... What a very inquisitive nature. And he'd ask really sharp questions. He was always putting the monks who lived close by, who was harassing them or the introduction to the text that he harassed them with questions. They were quite scared of him, really. So what they did is they sent a message to a monk who lived in the heartland of Buddhism called Naga Sena, and they said, "Please come and help us." He's always honored us with all his questions about Buddhism, come and help us with this king who loves debating so much. The king, by the way, at the end of your text, you're probably reading the conclusion. It says that before he talked to Naga Sena, he was a very fiery man. He had a sharp tongue. He said, "It's like a tongue of a snake of a cobra "before its fangs have been drawn." So he had a tongue a bit like a snake. It was that sharp. And Naga Sena, you're gonna learn a bit of Sanskrit now, his name means a conqueror of snakes. Now, there's probably just a coincidence, but it might help you remember the name Naga Sena. And in fact, we've got a Naga in the room. Naga Priya here is going to be talking to us later about the Sangha. So just a little bit more about Naga Sena. So on the, as we go through the talk, I'll be referring and asking you to refer to this text a little bit by little bit, and we'll see if we can understand a more of what it's saying. So let's turn now to Anatar itself. And the very first point, in the first simple points, and I'm trying to make it, the first thing that we can think about Anatar. Well, as I put on the handout, it's one of the three things we can really know. Now, it's always interesting in Buddhism that when you're talking about any subject, there tends to be a little list, or you've got the four noble truths, or what we heard earlier, that we're talking in the sequence of the three jewels. And when you're writing your A-level essays, or any essays in the future, it's always a really good thing if you can draw the subject into one of these doctrinal formulae. So if you're talking about the noble eightfold path, well, tell your examiner that you know it's part of the four noble truths. So in the same way, when we're talking about Anatar, let's start off by saying, well, how does the Buddhist tradition see this? And they say, well, it's one of the three things we can really know about life. And these are called, as anybody know, actually. The thrust, I think I heard a whisper, the three marks or the three characteristics of existence. That's good. Well, you might think life is quite complicated today. There's a lot of the universe is vast. We are all very complex creatures. There's only three things we can really know. Well, you might think that's surprising, or you might be relieved, I don't know. But here they are. Impermanence is the first, dukkah, and no self. Well, I wish in a way, we had time, just to stop and think for a moment. I wish I could get you talking among yourselves and forgetting about Buddhism and thinking, what are the three things I could really know about life? Because I bet if I just got you to, if you brainstormed it, if I had a whiteboard here and we could write them up, I think you'd come up with these three things in a way, because, well, what is it you'd say? Well, some of you might say, I usually ask this question and people say, well, no, I'm going to die. That's the thing that, is that what you're about to say? Not really, well, it's a very common answer. Well, we know, if there's one thing we know, we know we're going to die. So, we know we're going to change, we know we're going to grow older, we know we're going to do our A levels and survive it and carry on. So, we know, perhaps also external things, we know the sun is going to set, we know it's going to rise. All of these things, of course, we can just boil down and come up with the word impermanence. Here, so that's the first thing we can really know. Now, the second thing is, it's all that life isn't always happy. And, of course, you get this word dukkah. It's a very hard one to translate and, very often, you'll see it translated as suffering. So, you might think, well, that's a bit of a gloomy way to start, we all know we're going to suffer. But, actually, of course, it is something we all really know, that we're not always happy. It's something we can just say, well, everybody knows that. So, it's again something that we really know about life. And, of course, Buddhism doesn't leave it there, it doesn't say, well, we all suffer and that's it. It says, well, we can translate it a bit differently, we can say things are just not quite right, things can be unsatisfactory. And, of course, it breaks it down even further. And, it says, well, we suffer, we suffer, because it's just ordinary pain, we might fall over, we might get earache, anything like that. And, that's just, we might cut ourselves with the knife, that's just ordinary pain, we all know that's going to happen. Well, it's already happened to us many times. Of course, we might feel actually very jolly, quite happy. But, the other thing we know is that's not going to last. Even a wonderful day like this, a wonderful opportunity at an A-level conference, well, it's going to come to an end, it's tough. So, even happy states, well, they're not absolutely satisfactory, because they're going to change. You might go on holiday, and there's that little niggle at the back of your mind. When I got back, I've got to do my revision for my exams, that kind of thing. So, it's just saying that even happy states have got this unsatisfactory thing about them, which is they're going to change at some point. And, the third thing it says about dukkah is that, well, it's because things have causes and conditions. Now, this is a bit more complicated and we'll come back to it. Basically, it's saying that everything has a cause. So, we're all here because of various causes, and we may be quite happy. We're well-fed, we're warm. We're all these causes. When if those causes change, well, our experience might change. A bit more complex and we'll come back to that. So, I can't leave the subject of suffering of unsatisfactorless, even stress, a good translation. If you want to be really modern, some people now translate as stress. We can't leave or distress, perhaps. We can't leave this subject without saying, well, why is it? Why do we start? That's why we're all interested in the study of religions. It's a fantastic topic because not only do you learn about different cultures and languages and societies and so on, but you really start tackling, well, what do we think, what do we really think, what is life, all these big, big questions? So, one of the huge questions that everybody's asked themselves is, well, why do we suffer? Why do we suffer pain and all the rest? And what does them comes up with an answer to this? And, basically, it says that there are only two reasons why we ever really suffer. And you can say, well, we either suffer because we want something, which we haven't got, or we suffer because we don't want something, which we have got, but you don't want those horrible exams. No, so you have something that you don't want, and there's only two reasons. And in a way, I challenge you to go away or maybe for the rest of the day. And just notice, if your mood drops, if you suddenly start feeling a bit miserable about something or whatever, think, well, is it because I want something, which I don't have, or is it because I've got something, which I don't want? So just play around with that idea and see if you can spot-- see if you think Buddhism's right in analyzing any unhappy state at all as being caused by those two things. And, well, if you can spot that that is the case, of course, then the question it comes in, what can we do about it? And this is where Buddhism starts talking about understanding, if we really understood things. Also, he wouldn't suffer. So it talks about the fact that we have a sort of level of ignorance. You might say that ignorance and Buddhism sort of takes the place of sin in Christianity. So it talks about ignorance. So you've got a set of three here. Now, as anybody's spotted, I've brought up yet another-- sneaked it in by the back door, another formula of three. Wanting, which we might say is craving, not wanting, which you might say is hating things, and ignorance. Does anybody know what those three are called? It's the three fires. Yes, sometimes they're called the three fires or the three poisons. And if you've seen it, it's a betting wheel of life. They're at the middle, where they're not fires, they're animals, huh? So in fact, Nirvana, that is something you won't read in books. Nirvana actually means to blow out. That's actually what it means, near out var blow. So that's blowing out. What's being blown out at Nirvana? The three fires. So you blow out craving and greed and hatred and ignorance. In other words, you transform them. So that's what enlightenment is about. It's about making-- you no longer just wanting things. You just want to give. You've transformed greed into generosity. You no longer pushing things away or hating them. You transform that into love. And ignorance, of course, what you transform that into. Wisdom, huh? So that's a little quick summary of enlightenment and what the Buddha achieved, what his achievement was, the three fires. That just sort of sneak that in by the back door in our talk on Anatol. So there we have two of the three things we can really know. Now the third is this thing, Anatar, no self. So what Earth does this mean? So now let's move on for the rest of the talk to look at Anatar itself so we can see what that means. So Anatar, if you look again at your handout, you'll see that the second point is that we have no fixed or unchanging self or soul. So what on Earth does this mean? Well, Anatar really is tackling that huge question of what we really are. Who do we think we are? What are we made up of? All those questions which you might sort of think about at three o'clock in the morning if you're lying awake or have had a really good party and everyone's gone to sleep when you're just a few of you sitting around discussing the meaning of life. That's what this question's all about. So basically it's not denying, if I say no soul, no self, it's not denying that we all exist. I mean, there you are, sitting there yourselves and here am I, Elizabeth, myself, talking. It's not saying we don't exist. No, it's saying what we think of as the way we exist isn't how we usually think of it. In other words, it's saying we probably think we have a self, a person. And a bit of us, a bit of our mind will actually think that is quite, that is a thing. It's a real thing and it has its own that we have our own real existence. And but it's them saying no, you can't say that because no bit of us is really fixed. No bit of us, there isn't really an essence to us. And a lot of you might be thinking I don't agree with that and that's great. This is what we'll discuss. But this is what the idea of no fixed self means. It means you haven't got a real essence that's always the same. So let's see what the text says about this. Now Naga Saina, what she does, the king comes along and asks him who he is. And immediately Naga Saina is tackling the king. He's sort of got under the belt really because he's immediately saying to the king, well what do you think you mean when you say you and who do you think I mean when I say I? It's a bit as if someone says how are you? You know, that's a normal question. But if you went too long and said to a friend, hi, what are you? Think what, am I? No, do you mean it would take them by surprise? Well, that's what the king's doing. He's trying to, sorry, that's what Naga Saina's doing. He's trying to take the king by surprise. So let's turn over and we'll just read what Naga Saina says when he first meets the king. So the king says, how is your reverence known and what is your name, sir? It's always very polite if you meet a monk in the Buddhist texts. The king says, sorry, Naga Saina replies, as Naga Saina, I am known great king and as Naga Saina do others address me. Nevertheless, this word Naga Saina is just a denomination, a designation, a conceptual term, a current appellation, a mere name. The whole list is long, one long way of saying is just a mere name, it's just a concept. It says, for no real person here can be apprehended. That means can be found, can be recognized, or can be known. He's just saying, Naga Saina is just a name, it's just a name tag if you like, it's just a label. It's a bit like, you know, here I am, I've been introduced as Elizabeth and it's a bit like me saying, well, you know, there isn't a real Elizabeth there, it's just a label, it's just a name tag. So you're left thinking, oh, what is she then? So that's what Naga Saina wants, he wants the king to think, well, hang on, if you want, you say you're called, what does that mean, who are you then? So he's got a lot of problems with this, the king, 'cause he's thinking, well hang on, if there's a name tag, if you imagine Naga Saina or Elizabeth is just a name tag, well it must be a name tag two something, what's it a name tag two? So if I'm just saying Elizabeth is just a name tag, you say, well, what are you then? Wouldn't you? You wouldn't really understand what I'm saying. So this is what the king does, he's a clever king and he's got various objections to Naga Saina in his saying this. And I've put these in the square brackets, now I'm reducing quite a lot of your A-level text and it's a very, very good passage and you really must go and look at this, particularly because it's a sort of passage that you might find an A-level examiner actually honing in on to sort of say, oh, well, we'll see if they understand the king's problems with Naga Saina, saying what he has. And even if you don't get that, that's an essay question. Make sure you bring it in to your essays because the more you can refer to a primary text, you know, text from the Parlecan itself, the more marks you get. I mark essays all the time at university level and I give extra marks for people who are quoting primary texts. So this is great that you've got this primary text to study. But anyway, in the square brackets we find the king's problems with Naga Saina saying he's just got a, Naga Saina's just a name tag. So what are these? I've put Melinda Mox, Naga Saina. This is a summary of what you'll read. And he asks, basically if there's no Naga Saina, who is the person then who eats, who wears clothes, who lives the Buddhist life? Who is it, who acts? That means acting in the world. Who reaps the consequences of actions? That is karma. He's saying Naga Saina cannot just be a name tag. It's got to be a name tag which applies to a real thing and that thing has got to be a person. And the king argues there must be a person. He's doing it, he's arguing it in three ways. First of all he's saying there must be a person who eats and wears robes and sleeps. In other words he's saying there must be an agent of action. Just as we all got up this morning, got dressed, had our breakfast, came here, had a coffee just now, there's a person doing that, that's what the king's saying. There must be somebody doing these things. And then there's a slightly deeper level that the king's honing in on here. He says, well there must be somebody who's leading the Buddhist life. He says, you're a monk, you've chosen to lead the Buddhist life. Well this is a bit like us. We think well I am a person because it's not just that I go around eating and sleeping and getting dressed and so on. See, there are name tags out there, banging the doors. There must be people there. This is what the king's saying, there must be. People are actually banging on the doors. Who are they, there must be somebody there. So this takes us to the slightly deeper level, eh? That they've not just decided to get dressed and up. They decided to come and bang on doors. In other words they've got their own convictions, yeah? Just as we have, we think they're lousy for banging on the door, whatever like that. In other words, you've got things which you identify as a little bit deeper, more you, huh? You're you, I'm me because I love my cat, yeah? Or I'm me because I support Man United, something like that. There are these deeper levels. Or we, you know, I'm me because I've got certain ethical ideas that I think shooting people is wrong. That kind of thing, I hope you will do. And so the king is arguing, there must be someone who's chosen to lead the Buddhist life. He's arguing for a person on a slightly deeper level. And he doesn't stop there. Because he actually says there's a person there who must be experiencing the results of karma. Now this is a bit like us even going a deeper level still and saying, well it's not just that I'm a person who walks and talks, or a person who believes things about ethics and has views about my cat. No, I'm somebody who thinks when I die, such and such is going to happen to me. So he's going really, he's going really deep here, you see? And in Buddhist terms, of course, it means he's got to refer to karma. It's basically, you can summarize karma in three words you'd be relieved to know. Actions have consequences, yeah? That's how you can summarize karma. In other words, any action that you do has a consequence. It's sometimes quite hard to remember this when we're bumbling around, isn't it? Anything we do has a consequence. And Buddhism will go so far as to say, if you do a really good action, you'll have a good consequence. If you do a bad action, you'll have a bad consequence. And those of you who got teachers present, I'd encourage you to go home and say to your teachers, show us the first two verses of the dhammapada. Because the dhammapada just summarizes karma really beautifully in those first two verses. So make sure your teachers show you those if they haven't already. Now, the king is being really clever here. Because when he says to the dhammapada, well, there must be a person there who's reaping the consequences of karma. If nagasana denies that, the whole of Buddhism collapses, because Buddhism is so centrally bound up with karma. So it's a very clever point for the king to make. So let's see what continues then with the text there. So basically, the king is on to a winner here, and he goes on. He says, what then is this nagasana, this person? Or perhaps the hairs of the head nagasana, is he just his hair? Or his nails, or his skin, or his teeth, and so on? So what he's doing, he's picking out 32 bits of the body. Now, if you were studying to be a doctor in ancient India, you'd probably sit there and learn that the body has 32 parts. Nowadays, I expect it's millions, isn't it? But in those days, they broke it down into 32. So he's saying to nagasana, what is a person made up of? Well, is it just the material body? Is it just your physical bits? Now, this is a materialist argument. If nagasana says, yes, I'm just the same as my physical body, he'd be admitting that all he believed in was his material for material senses. There are materialists around today. I mean, some of you here might be materialists. Some people who is an ultra-modern, scientific point of view, you just believe that you are the processes of chemical reaction. Even your emotions, they're just chemical reactions in the brain. So you're just the physical being. So what happens when you die? If you're a materialist, what do you think happens when you die? Well, if you're just your material being, if that's all you are, that stops, doesn't it? So you must stop. So a materialist view is also a nihilist view. Nihilism means nothing. So the view that everything just stops. Now, the Buddha denied nihilism. It's very crucial this. And of course, nagasana does, too. So when the king says, well, are you the same as your physical body, these 32 parts, nagasana replies, no great king. So let's go on. What nagasana is going to ask now is, well, if you're not just your physical body, maybe there's more to you. And Buddhism says that, actually, we can break down all the bits of us into just five, what they call heaps or bundles. It's not a very grand word, but that's all it is, the five heaps, the five scandas. Hands up those who know the five scandas, a few of you. Who's heard of it, but perhaps a bit unsure of what they are. Right, that's really good, because what I'm going to do now is just a little sort of experiment. When you're revising, it can sometimes help if you talk to other people to tell them things. Well, when you're revising the scandas, try this little experiment out on them, OK? So what you do is you get your family or your friends, and you say to them, you sit them down, and you say, right, tell me, everything, what do you think you're made up of? What are you? Now, anybody want to shout out anything that they feel they could-- yeah? Right, consciousness. So right, here's somebody who says, what do I have about me? What do I include on my bits of me? What do I have? I have consciousness. Anything else? What would anybody else like to call out? Feelings. All right, thoughts and feelings. So you've got thoughts and feelings. What else do you have? That's you. You've got a body. Anything else? Goes on up in here. You've had thoughts of mind, yeah. Sorry? Or a sort of nervous system and all those chemical reactions. Yep. And then someone said, a mind. Anybody else? Sometimes people say to me, habits or wishes things that they're always wanting, kind of deeper drives impulse as even, you know, instincts. The instinct that would make you go like that or something fell on your head. Shall I write down instincts in that way? What we have to do then is you get this list from whoever you're talking to. And see if that list is the same as these five scandas. So let's just-- I'll just see if we've got anything similar. So here's what Buddhism says. It says we've got form. So somebody did get this when they said they've got a body. And also when you said you've got the chemical reactions. In a way, that's a physical thing, isn't it? So it's all part of our physical body, our physical makeup. And then somebody said they've got feelings and emotions. And of course, the here we are. We've got that down as feelings. And the next one is perception, which in fact, I think when somebody said mind and thoughts, you know, you might find your family or friends. So well, we've got intelligence. That's a bit of us. So I think this is what Buddhism would categorize here as perception. You can perceive things and also sort of understand what they are. You can distinguish between them. And then you have these deeper impulses, habits. Oh, did I put-- yeah, instincts, things like that, which come from a much deeper, deeper level. So Buddhism says that's a particular heap or bundle that we have. And finally, consciousness, which you've got as well. So what we're going to turn to next in the text is these five scandas. Nargassayna is being challenged by the king and the king saying, well, what are you? If you're just a name tag, he's dismissed the fact he's just his physical body. So the next thing, the king asks. He says, because the king knows a bit about Buddhism, so he says, well, are you these five scandas? Or is form this Nargassayna? Or feeling or perceptions or impulses or consciousness? So there you go. You can see now the king is coming up with the five scandas and saying, well, if you're not a person, as you say you are, well, maybe-- well, rather he's looking for a person, isn't he saying, what is this Nargassayna? He's saying, well, maybe you're one of these five scandas. Now, if I just-- in a way, it seems perhaps a bit daft to us to break it down and say, well, is there a person who's just form or just feelings? You might think, well, the king's being a bit pedantic here, of course, Nargassayna is going to say he's not just one of them, because in a sense, we're all of them all together. But I was thinking about this, and I thought, perhaps it's not quite as daft as all that, because if we just think for ourselves about these five heaps for a moment, maybe we'd think that one or other of them that we found we related to more. In other words, we might identify more with our body or our feelings, or instinct, or consciousness, or perception, mind, and just out of interest, and just pause and think about that. What do you-- if there's one of them, you identify yourself with more. I just wanted-- I've never done this before. I'm just really interested. Who here feels they identify themselves mostly? I mean, other things will come in, but mostly they are their body. Anybody? Who-- I've got one. It's probably a few people. Oh, you look what you look like. That's who you are, sort of thing. Hands up again. Right. Very, very few. So who would say their feelings? I'd put myself in here, actually, so I tend to think of myself quite often as my feelings. Who-- yeah, I've got a few more on that one. What's the next one? Perceptions. Who would say they are their intelligence? They're their mind. Hmm, hmm. So some of you identifying with that. Let's see if hand over there, isn't it? Yeah. And impulses, these deeper instincts, deeper drives, view and consciousness. And some of you don't identify with any of those. It's fine, you're in the same position here as Naga Saina. But-- so it's an interesting little exercise. And it's a sort of thing that's going to help you remember the five scanners when you come to do it. You go back to your families and ask them, what do you think you're made up of, and see if they come up with anything like these five scanners, these five heaps. So the king has asked Naga Saina if he is any of these individually. And Naga Saina said, no, he's not. So what happens then? We're carrying on our search for this person Naga Saina. The king then says, then, is it-- is this thing called Naga Saina? Is it the combination of forms, feelings, impulses-- sorry, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness? And Naga Saina says, no. So the king thought he was being rather clever here. He thought, well, maybe, though he's just all of them together. And Naga Saina says, no, he's not. I have to say, I find this quite puzzling. I have to think quite hard about this one. I was thinking, well, Buddhism does say that we're made up of the five scanners. That's what we are. So why is Naga Saina denying that he's them all together collectively? Now, you might want to come back at this and have better ideas than I did, but some of the other speakers might, in fact. But what I felt-- what I thought was probably being said here is that if you have these five things, which is the person, and you say, right, these five things, these five heaps that I've got, this is Elizabeth, well, what happens? We've suddenly got six. We've suddenly got an extra thing. So I think this is why Naga Saina denies it. He's saying, you can't say, I am those five things collectively. I am. Naga Saina is-- if you suddenly got a sixth thing, which is Naga Saina, so that's what I think is being said here. So Naga Saina denies it. It's like confused some of you. He certainly needs a bit of thinking about. So let's look back at the text, how does the king carry on? He says, well, if there isn't a person, there isn't a thing which is either the scanners individually or the scanners heaps collectively, then is this cell somehow outside the combination of forms, feelings, perceptions, and so on, the five scanners? And of course, Naga Saina says, no. So now you, some of you, might even like to argue this. I imagine that when I first started talking, even you'd had this idea. You say, well, there is a bit of me somewhere, and it's just a bit invisible. It's sort of special. It's unknowable. It's somehow more than just those five scanners. There's a bit of me in there somewhere. That is myself or my soul. Is there anybody who had that creeping idea when we-- not creepy, but creeping, that little idea as we spoke? Perhaps you would have done if you'd thought about it a bit more. So if you had, a Buddhist would say, well, if you really think there is a soul, you have a soul inside there that's special, that's different from the scanners, show it to us. If you show it us, we'll believe you. That's how a Buddhist argues that. We can't see it. We can't know it. How can we know it? What method have you got for telling us it's there? That's how a Buddhist argues. So Naga Saina says, no. There's nothing that's outside this combination of scans. No special, unknowable bit that I can-- you can say that's the self. So the king says-- he's a bit in despair here. He says, then ask as I may, I can discover no Naga Saina at all, and he basically accuses Naga Saina of lying when he said that he was Naga Saina at the beginning. And the king said, there really is no Naga Saina. King has just-- according to the king, Naga Saina has just disappeared in a puff of logic. He's deconstructed himself entirely. He's denied-- he's just said he's a name tag, but he's denied that he's the same as his 32 parts of his body. He's denied he's the same as these five scanners. He's not them all put together, and there's not a special bit somewhere hidden away that is a real person. How does this relate to this idea of the fixed self that we saw at the very beginning of this section? Well, we've learned that Buddhism does break the body us down. It's a lot of different bits, lots of different bundles and so on. But it's basically says that all of these bits-- the 32 parts of the body, the five scanners-- well, none of them are fixed. They're all changing. It's a very difficult question, this one, about the soul and the self, because so many religions actually say, we have a soul. And many of you will be brought up with this belief that you have a soul, a sort of essence. And there are many different ideas, even within Christianity, about what it means to have a soul. Some of you who may believe this will say, well, there's a bit of me that's eternal. This is called eternalism. After death, it'll survive. Now, the Buddha, you might remember he denied nihilism. He denied it would stop. He also denied it would go on forever. He denied it was eternal. This is another way we call Buddhism the Middle Way, because he's finding a middle way between these two extremes of nothing and of eternalism. That's one idea about the soul. Another is that the soul is unchanging. You see, you might say, well, things happen to me sort of on top. But underneath, there's a bit that's really special, and that's just me, and that never changes. It can't be retouched or affected by the world. You can't suffer. If you've done Hinduism and read the back of Agita, you'll find this is what Krishna's arguing about the soul. This is an unchanging bit. In fact, some forms of Christianity have this. It's somehow in our culture, too. We might say the self stays-- because things stay as they are-- if you're born a bad person with a bad soul, you're going to be a bad person in your life. That's quite a common idea in our culture. They're just born bad. That's how they're going to be. This, for a Buddhist perspective, would be a form of damnation, just to say, you're always going to be the same. So one idea about the soul is that it's something unchanging. And another one is that it's the basis for all our experience. In other words, we have all these experiences of life. We see things. We learn things. All these different stimulus around us, stimuli around us. But underneath it all, there's something which is the basis for that. It's a bit like the analogy I thought of. It's a bit like if I had a whiteboard here or a blackboard or something. I could write lots of things on it, with lots of different colors and streams and thoughts and ideas. But underneath it all, there's just this whiteboard, which is like the basis for it. And some people think of themselves like that. There's a sort of pure essence underneath it all. And all the experiences go on top. That's a bit more complicated. Those are some ideas about the soul. And in Hinduism, that was around at the time, those particular ideas, that we had this soul, this separate self. And of course, that soul, when you died, while it came back, it was reborn in the world of Sanghsara of life and death. And it said that if your soul could release itself somehow from this, then that would be liberation. So when the Buddha said there is no soul, partly he was just denying the Hindu idea at the time. So this is a point worth making in those essays on Anatar. He's basically just denying a concept. If it hadn't been around if he'd been born in the West, he probably wouldn't have come up with his no soul doctrine. He's just denying a common Hindu idea at the time. Now, what's the Buddhist problem? Now, we've known, we've studied a little bit, what's the Buddhist problem with describing a soul or a self in that way? Can anybody spot what the problem is for a Buddhist in saying that you have this unchanging, fixed eternal soul? Yeah? Where does it come from? That's actually a really good answer. Yes, there's a question of what produced it? What was its cause? So that's good. What's another problem with having the idea that you have this soul that's eternal and unchanging? Yes? Yes, brilliant. It's contradicting something we really know about life. Nothing is permanent. Everything's changing. So we cannot say that there's a fixed essence or soul because it's all changing. Thank you. So this is just the importance of impermanence in Buddhism. Some people might say, well, what do Buddhists believe? And some Buddhists might just come down with one word, impermanence. Buddhism says, if there's a bit of us that's unchanging, if there's a bit of us we think is fixed, and it's really important, then we limit ourselves. We're stuck. We can never really change. That means we can never develop the qualities of the Buddha. Limitless love, limitless compassion or wisdom. We can think we can never change. If we think we are, just imagine how awful it would be if you had to think that you're the same as you are now, always, there's no possibility of growth or development. You couldn't study. You couldn't improve in knowledge. You'd never be able to pass those exams. You'd just be stuck. So Buddhism says impermanence is really important. It might be at the core sometimes of unhappiness, but it's also absolutely vital to the fact that we can change. So it concludes, and I'm going to conclude the second part, with that there's no fixed or unchanging soul or selfiness anywhere. We just can't find one. So the third simple thing that we can know about Anatar, we are attached to our idea of a self or an ego. Now, what happens when I'm teaching Anatar sometimes to my students? Well, is this happened to me, actually, last autumn? They were quite keen on that idea of having a soul or a self. And one of them said, no, I really still think there's a special bit of me inside there. I can't just be broken down into these bundles and changing heaps. And another one I thought very craftily, she said to me, well, I do believe I've got a soul. It's just that I believe it's always changing. So I wonder what I replied. Well, to the one who said that, which I was a very good, very good comment, I said, well, maybe you're using the word soul, where one of the Buddhist, a Buddhist would say, one of the scandas. Maybe actually you're using that word. But a Buddhist would just say, well, that's just one of the scandas. Maybe it's consciousness, or your feelings, or your deeper impulses. So that's how I replied to that. But the other one, that sense of, well, no, there really is a me. I just know it. There's a special bit of side in it. There's a me, which is a real. That's harder to deal with. And how does Buddhism deal with it? Well, it says, yes, we know-- that's what Buddhists would say-- we know that we all think we've got a special bit of me. But the trouble is we're making a mistake. Actually, it doesn't really exist. It's just that we're really attached to that idea. We just really love the idea of there being a bit of me that's just always there. In other words, we've got this idea of a person, that person who got up this morning, drank coffee, ate, bangs on doors, or whatever. And we have ideas about her life. I love my cat. I support Man United. You have this identity. You have beliefs about what's going to happen after death. Do you remember those were the problems such the King had with neither Sena, saying he was a new name tag. So you've got this identity. And all the time, we're just building up different parts of our identity. What colors we like, what we like to eat, what discos, what bands we like, that sort of thing. And we have our experiences. We have continuity of experience. It was me who wrote this talk and is giving it now. Surely, there must be a me there who's doing all this. You know, and I can remember way back in the past. I have this continuity. I have this memory. And that gives me the idea of a me. And then there's language. What does language do? All the time, it sets up that idea. I'm Elizabeth. This is me, myself. I am. And we speak in those terms. We have to. That's the way that language works. And they're all you. You must all be different beings, different entities. So all the time, we're building up this sense of identity, of a me mess. And Buddhism says, well, that's fine. It's natural. That's the way the mind works, because we're wanting that. We need it for security. It's really scary to think there's no bit of me that's fixed. I'm always changing. We need something to hold on to. So we hold on to our identity. And we're really attached to it. That's what Buddhism says. That's what when you think, oh, there's that special bit of me. Buddhism says, we're just making a mistake. We're just mistaking the name tag, the label, for the real thing. We look at the name tag-- which is, my case is Elizabeth-- and we mistake it. I mistake it. I look in the mirror. I mistake it for me and Elizabeth, who likes the color blue and likes roast potatoes and chocolate pudding and things like that, and has beliefs. And in my case, practices, meditation, and things like that. So that's what we're doing. What we have here is a very, very famous passion passage. Again, if you might well get this as an essay at an A level, and if you don't, bring it into your essays to show that you know this example from a primary text. So Naga Seine says, well, first of all, he finds out that the king came by chariot. It's a reasonable thing to do. How did you get here? By car, by train, by bicycle, no by chariot. It's rather a shame that none of you came by chariot, actually, because he says, Naga Seine says, well, if you've come on a chariot, then please explain to me what a chariot is. And here's the pole of the chariot. And of course, the king says, no, that's not the chariot. So Naga says, well, is it the axle, or the wheels, or the framework, or the flagstaff? Is that the chariot? He's breaking it down individually. And of course, the king says, oh, no, that's not the chariot. So then Naga Seine says, well, in that case, I can't see any chariot at all, and your majesty has told me a lie. So a moment ago, the king accused Naga Seine of lying when he said he was a person called Naga Seine. And now Naga Seine is rather clever. He's cleverer than the king. He's turning it back, and he says, well, you're lying. When you say you came in a chariot, then, because I can't see a chariot. But the king says, I have not, Naga Seine, has spoken a falsehood. For it is, independence upon the pole, the axle, the wheels, et cetera, that takes place, this denomination, this chariot, this designation, this conceptual turn, a mere name. So it's got the king to say that the chariot is just a name. It's a convenient label. You can't say I came around, I got here by wheels, and driving wheels, and doors, and engines. You have to say I came by minibus. It's just a convenient label of people's conversations would go on forever, and people would think you were mad. So he's just saying, well, it's just a label. Everybody knows, if you put all those things together in a certain way, you end up with a chariot, and that's how I came. And there's a quite an interesting little bit of word here. It says it's independence, eh? This name, this lame tag comes out independence on the pole. This is the very Buddhist language here. It means one bit depends on another. So if you have a wheel, it's got spokes, eh? And the spokes, the wheel, actually depends on the spokes to be a wheel. If it didn't have the spokes, it would just be a hoop, useless hoop. So things have come about independence on one another. In fact, all these bits of the chariot, they're put together in a certain way, so each bit depends on another, which is quite interesting, because it comes back to that little thread we've had, that everything has a cause. It's all sort of connected in some way. Everything has a cause, and they're operating independence. We're all here for a number of myriad of causes and conditions. I mean, if you sat down and thought of all the reasons why you're here now, it'd be a fantastic number. But if any one of those changed, you know, you may not be, or a different you would be here. So in other words, this idea that things come about independence on other things, it's really crucial to Buddhism. So let's just look at the very last line of the text. Naga Sena shows the king, the word Naga Sena, it's just the same as the word chariot. They're both convenient name tags for referring to bundles of bits and parts. So Naga Sena says, "It is just so with me, independence on the 32 parts of the body and the five scanners that takes place this denomination Naga Sena, this designation, this conceptual term, current appellation, a mere name in ultimate reality the person cannot be apprehended." In other words, Naga Sena has come about who he is, independence on all his parts of the body and of the scanners and so on. And we've put all the bits together in a certain way and we've called it Naga Sena. But if one bit changed, he would change. So in other words, all the bits Naga Sena holds, all those bits of him are all changes. They're like, they're all, we call them heaps, isn't it your scanners? They're all sort of processes, processing along. That's what we are, we're a bundle of parts. In some ways, you could say, well, like a river, we're just a flow of all these different bits. You know, a river, if you look at a river, you'll see it's made up of the banks and of reeds and of water and of pebbles and stones and fishes. All those things make the river. You can't just stop at any one moment and say, that's the river. 'Cause in a sense, it relies on this flow to be a river. And he says, well, that's what a person is like. Now, that's the end of the text that I've given you. And when you read your text, you're going to come across three really good examples for understanding what it means to say, we're not a real person, we're just a flow. And one of them is this idea of being a, whether there's a difference between you as a baby or you as a grown up. This is one of the examples you'll read. Just quick hands up, who thinks they're exactly the same? They are the same person, essentially, as they were when they were a baby. And there were three, say. Anybody like to claim that they're got a continuity that's so strong that they're the same in essence as that baby at three? Who thinks they're completely different from that three-year-old? A few of you do, right. So if you're completely different, how is it that you can relate to your memories of being at school, of having parents, of perhaps even having things around. In a sense, you can't have a complete separation. There's got to be some continuity there, hasn't there? Otherwise, you could rob a bank today and tomorrow, you could say, well, no, it wasn't me who robbed a bank, it was a completely different person. He wouldn't stand up on a court of law. Does that make sense? Do you agree with that, those who said they were, there's no continuity? So this is one example Naga Seine gives. He says, well, of course, you're not exactly the same as that three-year-old, or you'll still be todling around, not being able to take notes and so on. And you're not completely different, there's continuity. And the second example he uses is like a flame. If you look at a candle, if you light a candle at midnight, is that the same flame as at six o'clock in the morning, or is it a different flame? What would you say? Some would say it's a different flame. Some would say it's the same. It's very hard to argue, isn't it? It's a bit of a false question. In a way, the flame is just depending on having oxygen and fuel, isn't it? It's his process, which is just depending on those things. And in the same way, so is a person. We're just this flow, which is dependent on all the different factors which take us through life. And the third example he gives, I won't go into it now, is of milk and yogurt. But if anybody's ever tried making yogurt, you discover that you mix yogurt into the milk, and one day it's milk, and the next day it's yogurt. So you can't say, well, it's different. The yogurt's different from the milk, 'cause it's got this continuity. So it's like this kind of flow or a process. Now none of us, in talking about a flame, or talking about yogurt, is going to start saying, oh, but there's a real essence of milk, or yogurt, or there's a real essence of a flame that is always the same. We just say, well, it's a process, of course it is. So Buddhism just says, well, it's the same with a person. You won't say there's a real essence to a flame that's just a process. Well, how can you say that about the person? So that's just a highlight. When you go back to your text, look at those three examples that Naga Sena gives for this idea of being a flow and not being a fixed person. So just before we move on to the next stage, can we see why it is that we make this mistake? We've said we're really attached to this identity we have. What is it that causes us to have this mistake? It's here, this is word ignorance. Basically it's saying we don't really understand what we are, which is why we make this mistake of having this identity and becoming so attached to us. So this ignorance is said to be so deep. It's not enough, I mean, if we all really, really understood that, we'd all be enlightened on the spot. So it happens at a very deep and existential level, this sense of ignorance, and if we could break through that, then we'd break through to enlightenment. So this takes us very, very briefly to our fourth point, which I'm not going to go into much, so we have a bit of time for questions. But if we understand no self, it means spiritual growth. So why, you might, by this time in the talk, you're probably thinking, why on earth does it matter that we have a self, you know, it's just a boring subject that I don't have much interest in? Well Buddhism said it's really important that we do all have an interest in this idea of a self, because it answers one of the key questions, why do I suffer, why do people suffer, and how can we stop? I can't really talk about this from the point of view of enlightenment, but what we can do is think about it almost in a sort of psychological way. How would it help us to think more in terms of having a fixed self, not being one unchanging person? I've just got a very few examples which might just help us think this through and see how we might see the understanding what we are, what we exist of, what we made up of, how this can help us with our own, well, with the idea of spiritual growth. So the first thing is, I'm just gonna make five, very quick points in the space of two minutes, that if we have idea that we're always the same, you often hear this, people say, oh, that's just how I am, that's just what I'm like, it's too bad, or your mum will say all that, he's just like that, or she's just like that, there's this idea of having fixed views. This can be very unhelpful, it can make us quite sad, you know, like you might think you're really bad at revision, you really bad at exams, and you carry that view around with you, and it does affect how you are. So if you can begin to change that view, you can begin to loosen your own ideas of yourself. You might think, well, I really hate my nose, that's a view I have, I can't bear it. Well, you can't do much about the shape of your nose, but you can start changing how you feel about your nose. So in other words, just like you're loosening up the ideas we have about ourself. The second thing is, we tend to be kinder to ourselves and to others if we're not so fixed in our views. So for example, you might have a friend who's just really annoying you, and they just really get up your nose. But if you start thinking, well, they are just made up of all these causes and conditions, you know, they're like they are because of causes, because of conditions, and you think about them in a much more fluid self, they're not just like that as a person, they got, they're much deeper, they're this flow that's produced this particular behaviour. When you start being much more sympathetic, you might even find out that, you know, they hamster died last week or something and they're just having a tough time and you're just much more understanding. So the idea of having a, being much more of a flow, being much more fluid in yourself makes us kinder, makes you kinder to yourself as well. And in this, of course, we're much more willing to learn. So if you do a bad essay and you feel really angry and you hate your teacher or you can't teach it hates you and all these things that can happen if you get a bad mark for an essay, well, in a sense, you're just operating with fixed self, you're having an ego, you're protecting yourself on an ego level. I can see a few nods, people have done this. And, well, with the idea that you are much a changing person, you can do something about that. You can begin to take responsibility for your own change. You can begin to decide, well, I can change, I can actually do something about that and you can begin to develop a vision as to what you'll change into. And in that, when you're doing that, what happens is you bring about a change of values. So you might have very materialist values. All you want is new clothes, new things. Or all you want, perhaps, just to be liked, to be loved. That's quite a common one in our society. We just want someone who's gonna love us forever. Well, thinking about our self or our soul can help change values. You might think, well, if there's a fixed me that wants to be loved, that's just the wrong view. It can never quite happen. I'm always going to change. And even if I do find someone to love me for the whole of this lifetime, we're both going to die, that sort of thing. So you start thinking, well, maybe I'll shift my values. Maybe I'll start thinking about how can I love others? There's a much more rewarding, something much more satisfying in life. And this is what Buddhists would do and they'd think about life. They'd say, well, let's try and find more rewarding, more satisfying things that we can really base our experience on. Actually, it's the shortest way anyway to be liked. It's just to like other people. So let's just change my orientation. Let's change my values. So again, just having an idea of no fixed self helps in that way. And finally, well, if we really think about not being fixed, not having a fixed soul, we live according to Buddhism. We live in the way that things really are. We're not fighting impermanence. We're open to change and transformation. And once you agree, and this is really important, once you agree you can change, then you can start doing things about it. You can take responsibility for how you are. It's the start of the spiritual life in whatever way you want to frame it, in whatever religion you want to follow it. That's the start of any spiritual life. So that's the end of the talk. And I have to say that it isn't a simple subject. So if you found that bits of it have been confusing, that's right as the way things are. It's what I'd expect. It's hard to get to grips with. And we'd be enlightened if we will understood it. So thank you. (upbeat music) - We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebutestaudio.com/community. And thank you. 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