Buddhism

Introduction

Buddhism entails a religious teachings and practice Buddha’s that place emphasis on the significant of remaining pure in minds by avoiding evil and cultivating good deeds. This means that Buddhism involves a methodology and a practice of training the minds on significant of cultivating good deeds, wisdom and concentration. The teaching emphasizes on ensuring that human actions and spoken words should remain non-harmful to others. In other words, Buddha’s teaching focuses at bringing to an end of human suffering via promotion of human virtues. The aims of Buddha’s practitioners were not to bring unity but rather to ensure that there is purity of minds via meditation up to a point where human minds can be liberated from desires, dilutions and aversion. In addition, Buddha’s do not believe that in life there is something like fate and urges that human beings are the drivers of their own lives. Whereby, every human being has the capacity and ability to liberate themselves from any suffering that one might be going through.  Therefore, Buddha’s teachings may be categories into four nobles of truth namely; the truth about suffering, origin of suffering, extinction of suffering and eight fold path that leads to the end of suffering (Thatcher, paras.1-12). Therefore this study aims to provide an insight on some aspects Buddhism in respect to the nature of the self.

The Nature of Self

The nature of self entails the act of awareness or having some consciousness. However, the nature of the self is not specific to awareness of any kind but it tends to be very general. The nature of the self may involve certain things such: feelings, imagination, intuition, memory, thoughts to mention just but a few. This means that the preposition of awareness may not properly define the content of the nature of the self because awareness tends to have some limitation. In addition, the nature of the self is not limited to anything just the same way that human being have unlimited desire in life. For example, human being are never satisfied with what they have, they always want to work hard  to earn more money to meet their unlimited desires, in the same way that the nature of the self is not limited to consciousness or awareness as discussed. The main aim of self is the realization of individual personal identity. The Sri Raman asserted that the nature of self entails a fabrication of mind whereby, self awareness may involve realization of oneself (Leung, pp.203-255).

Some philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato tried to substantiate whether the soul, minds and the body are separable from each other and whether the soul is immortal upon human death.  Whereby, Aristotle assertions supported the eastern religion of Buddhism that the nature of the self as an activity and that self exist within human being but it is separable from the human body. Aristotle added that self when a person dies, both the body and the self perish. He further substantiated his assertion using a knife as an example. The knife was considered as the body that has a soul. Whereby, during the process of cutting an object, the soul executes the task of cutting. When the knife is destroyed the act of cutting also seizes. Aristotle used this example to imply that the act of cutting  is inseparable from a knife because if the knife is destroyed the act of cutting stop immediately and therefore, the soul (the self) cannot be separated from the body upon death, they both die together (Irwin and Terence,p.8). In addition, Avicenna the writer of an Article known as ‘Floating Man’ thought of an experiment to explain his assertions that self awareness is independent of self (soul), whereby, if a man is suspended in the air and is isolated from being into contact with everything he would still have some consciousness of self awareness. Therefore, the nature of self is independent to the body (Kalupahana and David .p.104).

On the contrary, Plato asserted that the soul (the self) and human body are separable. Whereby, the soul remains immortal upon the death of human being. His assertion was further substantiated by the western religion. Where Christians believes that there is life after death. This means that the existence of the self continue even after death. Therefore, based on the above study, it can be scrutinized that the nature of the self has both proponents and those who opposes it. The eastern religion like that of Buddhism holds that, the nature of self can be achieved via one’s personality rather than believes of purity. The self personality may include; motivation, pride, lust, aspiration, desires and hard work. On the contrary, western religion based their assertions on fate and believes rather than fact as in the case of Buddhism. Therefore, I tend to agree with Buddhism assertion because they are based on rational facts rather than fate as in the case of their counter parts (Cobben and Paul, pp.75-103).

Works Cited

Barkley, Russell A. Adhd and the Nature of Self-Control. New York: Guilford, 1997. Print.

Cobben and Paul. The Nature of the Self: Recognition in the Form of Right and Morality. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2009. Print.

Irwin and Terence. Plato’s Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Print.

Kalupahana and David J. Buddhist Philosophy: A Historical Analysis. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1976. Print.

Leung, S K. Nature of the Self: A Philosophy on Human Nature. London: Empiricus, 2000. Print.

Thatcher.C.Buddhism: The purpose of studying Buddhism is not to study Buddhism, but to study ourselves.Web.9^th November 2013. <http://www.vipassanadhura.com/buddhism.htm>.