Latest / Gabriel Ellis, PhD | The Curious Mind Podcast / Hegel and Buddhism in Dialogue: Not-Self

Transcript

Hegel and Buddhism in Dialogue: Not-Self · Gabriel Ellis, PhD | The Curious Mind Podcast

• 0:02
  Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Curious
• 0:06
  Mind podcast. My name is Gabriel Ellis.
• 0:08
  I'm a psychologist, psychotherapist, and a Buddhist
• 0:11
  scholar. I'm interested in the philosophy
• 0:14
  of psychology and in this episode I want to further the
• 0:18
  dialogue between Hegel, who was a German philosopher of the
• 0:23
  early 90th century and who was a philosopher of psychology and
• 0:31
  Buddhism. The topic that I've chosen today
• 0:34
  is the overlap in both teachings on the matter of non self, and
• 0:41
  this is primarily a topic in Buddhism.
• 0:45
  And here I want to shed light on how and where we can find it,
• 0:50
  also in the philosophy and Hegel and what it can teach us in our
• 0:54
  daily life. It will be a more abstract and
• 1:00
  fundamental discussion, but towards the end I will try to
• 1:02
  give you some applications of this and why it matters when
• 1:06
  philosophers pick up and elucidate Buddhist concepts.
• 1:11
  To quickly summarize the Buddhist idea.
• 1:16
  The goal of Buddhism is complete liberation, a spiritual
• 1:21
  liberation. It has two important practical
• 1:26
  principles. One of them is ethics which
• 1:30
  means the non harm in thoughts, communication and in actions.
• 1:35
  The 2nd practical aspect is a temporary liberation of the mind
• 1:39
  in the deep meditation of the so-called samadhi.
• 1:44
  So these are the most important practical aspects of original
• 1:48
  Buddhism. There are also two metaphysical
• 1:52
  principles in original Buddhism. Here the most important is the
• 1:58
  so-called Impermanence principle that all phenomena are
• 2:03
  impermanent. This and the original Pali
• 2:05
  language is called Anicha. A second very important
• 2:11
  fundamental principle, metaphysical principle, is the
• 2:15
  teaching of not self in Pali and Atta.
• 2:19
  Now sometimes this has been interpreted as the Buddha saying
• 2:23
  that there is no self, that there is no I.
• 2:26
  But in actuality we don't find this teaching in the original
• 2:33
  Buddhist texts. What we find instead is that the
• 2:37
  Buddha points to certain categories of experience and
• 2:41
  tells us this is not I, this is not self.
• 2:46
  I have gone or dedicated at least a chapter in my PhD
• 2:52
  dissertation to this topic. I will give you a link below and
• 2:55
  when you're interested in the details you will find them
• 2:59
  there. To make it a little bit short,
• 3:02
  the majority of the ancient texts that have this as a
• 3:08
  subject. There the Buddha points out to
• 3:11
  five categories of experiences and tells us again and again
• 3:16
  this is not self. What are these five?
• 3:19
  Those five are the body. So it tells us you are not the
• 3:23
  body, you are not the feelings, you are not perceptions, you're
• 3:29
  not mental associations, anything that binds the mind
• 3:33
  together, for example, memory or intentions.
• 3:36
  And you are not even consciousness.
• 3:39
  Consciousness is not you, consciousness is not the self.
• 3:44
  So this is in very short terms. This is where the Buddha locates
• 3:51
  this principle. It's supposed to help us in our
• 3:55
  quest for liberation. It is a metaphysical aspect.
• 3:59
  And then there are some basic practices that are connected to
• 4:04
  that in the texts. But it has been notoriously
• 4:08
  difficult to interpret. And as I already mentioned, even
• 4:12
  in today's kind of interpretation of Buddhism,
• 4:16
  sometimes we mistake it as the Buddha categorically saying that
• 4:20
  there is no I, there is no self, which is not correct in the
• 4:24
  text. He mostly points to categories.
• 4:27
  As I mentioned the five you are not the body, you are not the
• 4:30
  feelings, you are not perceptions, you're not mental
• 4:33
  associations, and you are not consciousness.
• 4:37
  Now let's take a look at Hegel and his philosophy.
• 4:40
  Hegel was a so-called idealist. He tried to formulate to find
• 4:47
  one principle out of which everything is emerging.
• 4:53
  This principle for Hegel is the spirit.
• 4:56
  Now it is easy to misinterpret Hegel here.
• 5:00
  He doesn't mean the mean the human spirit.
• 5:02
  For him, spirit is an overall source of everything and the
• 5:07
  first emanation that emerges out of spirit is nature.
• 5:12
  So by this you can already see that spirit for Hegel is not
• 5:17
  some mental or psychological category.
• 5:20
  It is something that goes even beyond nature.
• 5:22
  So for Hegel, the first emanation of the spirit is
• 5:25
  nature. The next step is the soul, or as
• 5:30
  we might call it today, the unconscious.
• 5:32
  The next one is consciousness. And then there is a series of
• 5:36
  further emanations until finally the spirit that has been there
• 5:41
  all along finds its self understanding.
• 5:45
  It's complete self penetration, incomplete freedom in the final
• 5:51
  step of self realization. So in that in that sense
• 5:55
  liberation is for Hegel the most important thing and the I the
• 6:00
  consciousness. We as humans, we are stuck
• 6:03
  somewhere on the path between being a natural phenomenon on
• 6:08
  the way to liberation, but not yet as the fully self realized
• 6:13
  spirit. Now in this path, one of the
• 6:18
  first stages where consciousness emerges from the soul is
• 6:23
  something that is called in German unshawn and which I would
• 6:28
  loosely translate as the level of viewing.
• 6:32
  This is where the first conscious impressions, the first
• 6:37
  conscious sensations appear. As I said, this is at the
• 6:42
  beginning of consciousness and a necessary aspect here is at
• 6:47
  attention. What happens at this first level
• 6:51
  of consciousness is that what has been implicit in the soul in
• 6:56
  the unconscious, is being thrown out into the realm of
• 7:01
  consciousness and it has connected with it's held
• 7:05
  together by a, if you like, a cord or a string of attention.
• 7:12
  So something is thrown out and then I view it.
• 7:16
  Hence the level of viewing. I view it with a cord of
• 7:21
  attention. And here is already a surprising
• 7:25
  but also a very self-evident aspect of not self that everyone
• 7:31
  who has tried to attempt meditation knows.
• 7:35
  What happens is we close our eyes, we try to focus on
• 7:40
  something, which means we try to apply attention to, or
• 7:45
  mindfulness if you will, to a meditation object, for example,
• 7:49
  like the breath. And then we get distracted.
• 7:52
  And here I have a quote from Hegel that describes exactly
• 7:56
  that at the very base of the formation of consciousness,
• 8:01
  where he already locates an aspect of not self.
• 8:05
  I read now a loose translation of myself from paragraph 447 of
• 8:12
  Hegel's Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• 8:18
  So this my loose translation goes as this attention requires
• 8:22
  an effort. When a person wants to grasp one
• 8:25
  object, they have to abstract from everything else, from the
• 8:30
  1000 things moving in their head, from the other interests,
• 8:35
  even from their own person. They have to suppress their
• 8:39
  vanity, which hastily judges. In order to do that, they must
• 8:44
  rigidly immerse themselves in the matter without delving into
• 8:50
  reflections. So here I think it's a pretty
• 8:52
  good description of what happens when beginners or intermediate
• 8:58
  meditators sit down to meditate. The thoughts come to their mind,
• 9:03
  memories, hopes, expectations, wishes, comments, and so on.
• 9:07
  Or we can call it in short, the self, the person, a lot.
• 9:13
  Many of the aspects that constitute me as a person try to
• 9:17
  distract me from paying attention to the meditation
• 9:22
  object. So in order to muster, in order
• 9:26
  to bring up any kind of attention to an object, what I
• 9:31
  actually have to do is to practice, not self.
• 9:35
  I have to push all the self aspects that inevitably try to
• 9:40
  corrupt my attention. I've put to push them to the
• 9:43
  side in order to focus on one object.
• 9:49
  The second aspect, where not self comes in with Hegel is his
• 9:53
  understanding of feelings. Feelings also are the one some
• 9:58
  of the first emanations of consciousness.
• 10:01
  In fact, a large part of feelings still lies in the soul
• 10:07
  and the unconscious, and the problem in that, for Hegel, is
• 10:12
  that they're too close to circumstances, to random
• 10:18
  circumstances that trigger those feelings.
• 10:21
  Again, keep in mind that for Hegel, the spirit is complete
• 10:25
  freedom, and complete freedom means also complete freedom from
• 10:30
  outside circumstances. So feelings that are in the
• 10:36
  first stages, immediately triggered by something that
• 10:39
  happens outside, by the weather, by somebody saying something, by
• 10:44
  my family, by language, by society, by work, by my physical
• 10:49
  constitution. All of this triggers feelings.
• 10:53
  And because feelings are so easy to be triggered, mechanically
• 10:59
  triggered, they are far away, yet from the self realizing,
• 11:04
  completely free, completely self determining spirit.
• 11:10
  So in that sense, for Hegel, feelings are not self, or as we
• 11:16
  canmore accurately say, feelings are not the spirit.
• 11:20
  Feelings are at the beginning of personhood and even more than
• 11:27
  the thinking mind, the understanding mind even more
• 11:30
  than them, feelings are far away from the self realizing
• 11:36
  liberated spirit. So here again, just in a
• 11:39
  phenomenon of feelings, we have an application of not self in
• 11:44
  the teachings of Hegel. As an last example that I want
• 11:49
  to bring, let's look at how Hegel understands the Spirit
• 11:54
  itself. As I mentioned, for Hegel the
• 11:57
  spirit is absolute freedom, So is the I.
• 12:03
  Is the soul. For Hegel a reflection of the
• 12:07
  Spirit, yes, but only as a root. It is not fully realized yet.
• 12:15
  The I, the unconscious and the consciousness, they're all just
• 12:19
  transitory states of the implicit spirit to self realize
• 12:28
  itself. In other words, coming from
• 12:32
  nature, where the spirit is completely, completely implicit,
• 12:37
  the spirit is creating the soul, the eye and consciousness in
• 12:43
  order to understand itself. And on the latest stages, it
• 12:48
  develops more and more degrees of freedom until it is finally
• 12:51
  completely free from circumstances, until it is
• 12:54
  completely free determined. So in that sense, everything
• 12:59
  that happens in consciousness is not spirit, is not the fully
• 13:04
  realized liberation. Everything that is in
• 13:07
  consciousness, everything is that is the unconsciousness.
• 13:10
  Anything that we can legitimately call I in a
• 13:15
  convenient or even developed way cannot be taken as a legitimate
• 13:23
  definition of the free spirit. So, and this is the third aspect
• 13:28
  that I want to bring where in the teachings of Hegel there is
• 13:32
  a strong application of a non self not self teaching.
• 13:40
  Now does that mean that the Buddha would subscribe to
• 13:43
  Hegel's view on the spirit and not self?
• 13:47
  Probably not. I think if we look at the
• 13:50
  conceptual level, Hegel is closer to the old Indian monism
• 13:56
  or Advaita teachings. But nonetheless there are so
• 14:01
  many similarities here that I think it's fair enough to draw
• 14:06
  those similarities between Hegel's non self and to map them
• 14:10
  out on the Buddhist not self. So how is that relevant to us?
• 14:16
  It is relevant in that Hegel's philosophy is very detailed.
• 14:21
  It is difficult to comprehend, but if you're interested in
• 14:24
  details, you don't have to pick up the original texts in
• 14:28
  translation. You can find interpretations of
• 14:31
  his philosophy of consciousness and his philosophy of spirit.
• 14:37
  The detail in which Hegel goes, where he develops his steps and
• 14:42
  layers of the spirit on its path to self realization are much
• 14:48
  more detailed than the teachings of Buddhism if we look at the
• 14:53
  textual basis of the Buddhist texts.
• 14:56
  And we don't want to rely on living teachers today who gives
• 15:01
  us on their interpretation of the texts.
• 15:05
  The Buddhist texts are very repetitive, but unfortunately
• 15:08
  they are more inspirational as they are super detailed on the
• 15:13
  higher levels of meditation and Buddhist metaphysics.
• 15:19
  And here is where Hegel and his teachings helps us.
• 15:24
  He shows us that in contrast to the Buddhist texts which bring
• 15:30
  in the not self teaching on a very advanced level and
• 15:35
  sometimes even close to liberation only Hegel shows us
• 15:40
  that actually in very mundane mundane phenomena such as
• 15:44
  attention and concentration, already there is a necessary
• 15:49
  aspect, there is a necessary part of not self included.
• 15:54
  So whenever we already attempt to meditate, even though we are
• 15:58
  not aware of it, what we're actually doing is to practice,
• 16:02
  not self. Equally, Hegel helps us to
• 16:05
  understand that one integral part in in the function and the
• 16:10
  efficiency of psychotherapy. Meaning where we work with our
• 16:18
  feelings and we try to integrate them into our personality and we
• 16:23
  try to free ourselves from the impact of negative feelings on
• 16:29
  our well-being. What we're actually doing is
• 16:33
  again to apply an aspect of not self to psychology to our own
• 16:40
  mundane mind. And this is another example for
• 16:45
  showing that the fundamental aspect of Buddhism of not self
• 16:51
  is not only relevant for high fancy spirituality, for
• 16:56
  philosophy, for high concepts and abstract considerations.
• 17:01
  No, it is working already in therapy.
• 17:03
  So whenever when we concentrate we apply not self, whenever we
• 17:09
  work in therapy or therapeutic paths on our emotions, trying to
• 17:15
  understand them, trying to integrate them, we are applying,
• 17:19
  not self. And here I think we can use
• 17:23
  Hegel to understand how fundamental aspects of Buddhism
• 17:28
  are not only helpful in aspiration and philosophy and in
• 17:33
  high meditation, but they are equally already functional on
• 17:37
  mundane levels of the mind. So they describe actually
• 17:42
  fundamental aspects of mental development, not just high
• 17:47
  spiritual aspects. Well, this is it for today.
• 17:52
  I hope you found it interesting. Please let me know if you have
• 17:56
  specific questions for the topic that I had today.
• 18:01
  I understand that it's quite abstract both on the Hegel part
• 18:05
  and the Buddhist part. We'll try to answer those
• 18:08
  questions in the following content.
• 18:11
  Thank you for our attention, but goodbye.