Reason 3 of 10
You are not an illusion. You are someone God made and knows by name.
The Buddha taught that nothing in a person is a self (anatta). The Bible says you are a real person, made in God's image, known before you were born, and called by name.
What the Buddha taught about the self
In the Discourse on the Characteristic of Not-Self, traditionally the second teaching the Buddha gave, he takes the five parts of a person in turn (body, feeling, perception, choices and consciousness) and says of each that it is not-self. When asked directly whether the self exists, he stayed silent, because yes would side with the eternalists and no would side with the annihilationists.
“Mendicants, form is not-self. For if form were self, it wouldn’t lead to affliction. And you could compel form: ‘May my form be like this! May it not be like that!’ But because form is not-self, it leads to affliction. And you can’t compel form: ‘May my form be like this! May it not be like that!’
Samyutta Nikaya 22.59:2.1-2.5, The Characteristic of Not-Self (tr. Bhikkhu Sujato) · context
“Worthy Gotama, does the self survive?” But when he said this, the Buddha kept silent. “Then does the self not survive?” But for a second time the Buddha kept silent.
Samyutta Nikaya 44.10:1.3-1.6, With Ānanda (tr. Bhikkhu Sujato) · context
“Ānanda, when Vacchagotta asked me whether the self survives, if I had answered that ‘the self survives’ I would have been siding with the ascetics and brahmins who are eternalists. When Vacchagotta asked me whether the self does not survive, if I had answered that ‘the self does not survive’ I would have been siding with the ascetics and brahmins who are annihilationists.
Samyutta Nikaya 44.10:2.3-2.4, With Ānanda (tr. Bhikkhu Sujato) · context
Why it cannot be lived
Not-self is meant to free us from clinging. But the whole Buddhist path is addressed to someone: someone who must practise, take responsibility for deeds, be reborn according to them, and finally be freed. If there is no one there, who is suffering, who is practising, and who is freed? Buddhist schools have argued over this for two thousand years; one early school, the Pudgalavadins, even taught a person that is neither identical to nor different from the parts, and other schools condemned them for it.
Love needs a someone too. We do not love a bundle of processes; we love a person. The Bible's picture is that persons are real because they are made by a personal God, and they last because he holds them.
27God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:27 (WEB) · context
13For you formed my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. My soul knows that very well. 15My frame wasn’t hidden from you, when I was made in secret, woven together in the depths of the earth. 16Your eyes saw my body. In your book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there were none of them.
Psalms 139:13-16 (WEB) · context
1But now Yahweh who created you, Jacob, and he who formed you, Israel, says: “Don’t be afraid, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by your name. You are mine.
Isaiah 43:1 (WEB) · context
What Jesus offers instead
Jesus does not tell us to dissolve the self. He tells us to lose our self-centred life for his sake and find it, renewed, in him. The self is not the problem; sin is. In Christ a person becomes a new creation, still themselves, made whole.
25For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, and whoever will lose his life for my sake will find it.
Matthew 16:25 (WEB) · context
17Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new.
2 Corinthians 5:17 (WEB) · context
20I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. That life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me.
Galatians 2:20 (WEB) · context
30But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31Therefore don’t be afraid. You are of more value than many sparrows.
Matthew 10:30-31 (WEB) · context
Other Buddhist texts
Heart Sutra (Prajnaparamita Hrdaya), Mahayana; Chinese version attributed to Xuanzang, 7th century Summary, not a quotation
Teaches that the five parts of a person are empty, and that emptiness is no different from form.
Nagarjuna, Mulamadhyamakakarika, chapter 18 Summary, not a quotation
Argues that the self is neither identical to nor separate from the parts of a person, and that all things are empty of inherent existence.
What Buddhists answer
Buddhists answer that not-self does not deny the conventional person, only an unchanging soul behind experience. In everyday speech there is a person; in ultimate truth there are only changing processes. Mahayana teachers go further: all things are empty of inherent existence (the Heart Sutra and Nagarjuna's Middle Way verses).
Why that answer falls short
The two-truths answer concedes the point: we cannot speak, act or love without persons. If persons are merely conventional, then so are responsibility, love and liberation, and the path becomes a way of believing that the one walking it is not really there. The Bible does not say persons are unchanging, but it says they are real and lasting because God made them and will raise them.
Where scholars and traditions differ
- Scholars debate whether the early discourses deny any self at all, or only deny that the five parts are the self (for example Thanissaro Bhikkhu reads not-self as a strategy, not a metaphysical claim). Both readings agree there is no self to be found in a person.
Sources
- Earliest source Samyutta Nikaya 22.59 (Anattalakkhana Sutta); Samyutta Nikaya 44.10. Translation: Bhikkhu Sujato (CC0), SuttaCentral.
- Kathavatthu 1.1 (the debate on the person); Leonard Priestley, Pudgalavada Buddhism (Toronto, 1999).