This aggregate involves our responses to perceptions and includes instances of our will, intentions, and dispositions or inclinations. For instance, I may see a scrumptious chocolate cake (a perception) and be led to a desire for cake (an intention, or intentional state). This aggregate
includes states such as desires, fears, hopes, likes, dislikes, loves, hatreds, expectations, etc. These are intentional states, to use a philosophical term. Intentional states are so called because they have an object towards which they intend; that is, they are mental states that are directed at or about something, be it a person, place or thing (e.g., a particular desire is always a desire for something, a fear is a fear of or about something). The connection between an intentional state and the object towards which it intends can involve an attachment to self, that is, an egoistic concern for one’s self. In so doing, the connection is said to be karmic, or generate karma, and cause suffering. The attachment to self or ego within inten-tional states will be elaborated in the next chapter in its discussion of cravings. The Buddhist understanding of karma will be discussed later in Chapter Eleven.
5. Consciousness
The last aggregate – consciousness – includes states of awareness, includ-ing the awareness of the other aggregates. There is a difference between having perceptions and desires, and being aware of having perceptions and desires. The latter is not itself a perception or desire, and the aggre-gate of consciousness includes these states of awareness. To elaborate, there is a difference between perceiving a tree, and my being aware of perceiving a tree. Both are introspectible contents of my mind. I can notice the perception as a content in my mind, and I can notice that I am aware of the perception as a content in my mind. The awareness of other mental states is a mental state itself and one of which we can be introspectively aware. These states of awareness are included in the aggregate of consciousness. It is in the aggregate of consciousness that reflection and higher-order awareness (i.e., being aware of being aware) are included.
The Buddha and David Hume
These aggregates are the sorting categories for the contents of our minds.
They are supposed to encompass all that we encounter in our conscious minds and that we associate with our sense of self. The Buddha contends that our sense of self is no more than a composite product of these aggre-gates. Whenever we are aware of ourselves, whenever we look within and observe, we find only one or more of these aggregates at work; one or more of bodily states and processes, sensations, perceptions, volitions or intentions, or instances of conscious awareness. We observe that these aggregates are in constant flux, and we observe nothing else – nothing enduring and stable – outside of or underlying these aggregates. There is no agent or owner or subject or soul encountered as existing apart from these aggregates. There is, in other words, nothing to ground a belief in and attachment to a permanent self. Whether or not the classification of mental content in terms of the five aggregates is exhaustive of all pos-sible mental content, or whether or not it fits well with contemporary classifications of mental content, is beside the point of this argument for No Self. What matters for the argument is whether anything that can be observed or experienced can serve to justify a belief in, and attachment to, a permanent self or soul. The Buddha, carefully carrying out these observations, concluded not.
This line of argument is empiricist. It is making a judgement about what can be known to exist based on what is or can be observed, and the line of argument is very similar to that of another empiricist, David Hume. Hume stated:
For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep, so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. And were all my perceptions
removed by death, and could I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate, after the dissolution of my body, I should be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is farther requisite to make me a perfect non-entity. If any one, upon serious and unprejudiced reflection, thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continued, which he calls himself; though I am certain there is no such principle in me.1
Hume noted that in introspective awareness, we observe nothing other than various mental states: beliefs, thoughts, emotions, feelings, memories, etc., all of which he grouped under the term ‘perceptions’;
we observe nothing that stands as owner or agent to these mental states.
We do not encounter the believer behind a belief, the thinker behind a thought, the viewer of an inner image, etc. Even when we recall a memory, or conjure an image of ourselves, that is just to encounter another thought, another mental object or image, and not a self that stands behind the thought or image. Descartes contended that so long as I am thinking I can know that I exist, for it seemed to him that thought is impossible without a thing having the thought. Hume, relying on an empiricist methodology, attested that we do not encounter or experience any such “thinking thing.” Basing his judgement of what exists on what can be observed or experienced, he argued that the sense of self we have, and are familiar with, is simply a composite or bundle of various mental states, without a permanent self or “owner” standing behind this bundle and its states. This has since been known as the “bundle” or “no owner”
theory of self.
The Buddha argued in a similar empiricist fashion to Hume (although this is not the only Buddhist line of argument for the doctrine of No Self, as will be seen in Chapter Eight). It is an argument realized in
1 Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature 1.4.6. Italics are Hume’s.
the course of mindful, inward awareness or meditation. The Buddha, as Hume, also noted that these observed processes are always in flux.
Hence, not only is there no agent observed behind any given mental state – no thinker observed behind the thought – but also, there is no justification for the claim of a permanent entity if all that is observed or experienced is impermanent. If everything experienced comes and goes from the mind’s awareness, then there is no empiricist basis for the judgement of a permanent or abiding self. This connects the doctrines of No Self and Impermanence, which will be discussed more fully in Chapter Nine.
Importantly, the Buddha, and here he differs from Hume, held that the realization of No Self had practical consequences. He advocated that his followers realize fully, which is to do more than just to come to believe, the lack of the existence of a permanent and independent self. It is held that for all of us who are unenlightened, the sense of being a self, in the substantive sense indicated, is strong and entrenched. It is part and parcel of how we see the world; how we interact with others; and how we think of our own ambitions, desires, plans, etc. Overcoming the suf-fering that is said to come with this attachment to self involves significant psychological change. The Buddha famously asserted: “If a man should conquer in battle a thousand and a thousand more, and another man should conquer himself, his would be the greater victory, because the greatest of victories is victory over oneself.”1 In the Buddhist conception, the pervasiveness of this attachment to self – its presence throughout our thoughts and behaviours, cravings and aversions, accounts for the perva-siveness of suffering. But suffering is also held to be eliminable because it is held that this attachment can be overcome, since it involves identify-ing with a non-existent entity. Fully realizidentify-ing that this abididentify-ing self does not exist involves not just a change in belief, but a wholesale reform of thoughts, intentions, desires, behaviours, and more.
As discussed, we cannot escape suffering as understood in the first two groupings of the First Noble Truth without escaping our mortality 1 Dhammapada, Ch. 8, 103.
and our embodied existences. However, we can overcome suffering as understood in the third grouping because attachment to a sense of self (as being something that exists separately from the ever-in-flux psychophysical aggregates) is alleged to be an unnecessary and elim-inable attachment. That is, suffering according to the third grouping is not caused by our embodied and mortal natures, but by psychological attachments and cravings that keep this sense of self in place. The undo-ing of these attachments and cravundo-ings thus serves to undo the cause of this suffering. This is to undo a delusion for which we are ourselves ulti-mately responsible and to which we are closely attached. To overcome this, careful and honest self-examination is advocated in Buddhism. It is asserted that if we look carefully at our psychophysical states, we will find no self that stands independent from these states. But again, the objective is not simply to amend this belief. In the Buddhist view, even upon amending the belief in self, the attachment to self may persist in our desires, hopes, aversions, behaviours, and more (this is to speak to the affective component – as opposed to solely the cognitive component – of our attachment to self, and it is the harder component to dislodge). That we can explicitly hold a belief in no self but, quite easily, demonstrate the contrary attachment in our behaviour and intentional states is telling and important for Buddhism. It means that an attachment to self can be much more entrenched than we recognize, and can persist even after the belief in a permanent self is explicitly rejected. In the Buddhist view, our attachments to self – and thus the roots of suffering in the Buddhist conception – run very deep.
Concluding Remarks
Serious questions can be raised concerning why attachment to self should be construed as suffering, particularly because it seems that such an attachment can bring many apparent benefits. For starters, attachment to self can bring about pleasures that would not otherwise be experi-enced, for often we will pursue and indulge in comforts, not simply for
the pleasant feelings they arouse, but for the pleasantness they arouse to our sense of self. Chocolate has a very nice taste, but the pleasure I gain from eating chocolate is not just the taste to the palette, but the pleasure of satisfying a self through the palette.
Also, the attachment to self carries survival advantages for an indi-vidual. For instance, a person may avoid the prospect of bodily harm not only out of a desire to avoid the accompanying pain, or out of instinct, but also out of conscious thoughts of self-preservation. With an attach-ment to self, the conscious aversion to pain is not simply an aversion to the sensation, but an aversion to causing oneself pain and harm, and this adds impetus to averting pain and harm. We can readily conceive of attachment to self as being an adaptive mechanism which is naturally selected, for it provides further incentive for self-preservation. Another example: worrying over a school grade can be worrying for one’s self, and display attachment to self. Presumably, suffering in the form of worrying over a grade can be eliminated by stopping the worrying. This may be difficult, but Buddhism offers techniques for mental discipline that can be used for this. But to eliminate the worrying is to eliminate something that can be seen to have value: the worrying for one’s self may lead one to work harder, to be more careful, and thereby it can lead one to succeed. The concern for self and furthering self-interest can, in other ways as well, lead individuals to strive and succeed. The elimination of attachment to self may eliminate suffering in the Buddhist conception, but it is not without consequence and the loss of much that we at present value. While Buddhism does not advocate for abandoning a sense of self, it does prescribe overcoming attachment to self in the specific sense of something permanent and independent of the ever-changing aggregates.
But as just described, this attachment can be a source of pleasure, benefit and survival advantage.
The first grouping of the First Noble Truth gave us examples, such as sickness, old age and death, which we readily associate with suffering.
The second grouping was also in line with an intuitive understanding of suffering for it is clear that unsatisfied desires are often frustrating. With the third grouping, we arrive at a conception of suffering that is supposed
to lie deeper, and that can account for both the necessary elements of the pervasiveness and eliminability of suffering in the Buddhist conception (and thus the third grouping yields the only understanding of suffering among the three groupings that fits the Buddhist conception; it is, to emphasize, the only potentially eliminable suffering). But in doing so we have also veered further away from an intuitive and obvious under-standing of suffering (and even if we look to the other connotations of
‘duhkha’, involving unsatisfactoriness or sorrow, it is still far from clear that attachment to self must imply the pervasiveness of these qualities).
If we begin to question whether the Buddhist conception of suffering is really suffered, we question whether there really is motivation for, or benefit to, taking up the Buddhist path (which is described as having its point and purpose in the end of suffering). The Buddhist concep-tion of suffering, involving an attachment of self to the ever-changing aggregates, may be better described as a spiritual suffering (and this may be a suffering that we do not readily recognize as such without being of the appropriate mindset and preparation, and perhaps it is only really recognized as suffering upon its alleviation). Indeed, the very pervasive-ness of suffering in the Buddhist conception may explain why we may not recognize it as suffering: we lack the experience of being without this sort of suffering, and so may not recognize that we suffer in this way because we lack a contrasting perspective. Still, if we are to call it a kind of suffering – spiritual or not – there should be a recognizable reason for calling it so. This concern will be further attended to in the next two chapters, on suffering and craving and the end of suffering respectively.