Science, the Secret You, and the Buddha

This week I managed to watch the Horizon documentary 'The Secret you'. In this show the presenter professor Marcus Du Sautoy went in search for the 'I 'inside of us all; that consciousness that tells us that we exist. He examined some of the latest research into consciousness and found that disturbingly there is no 'I'; it is all just an illusion created by our minds. This all fitted in nicely with Du Sautoy's atheist view of the world and for him the final proof that there is no soul. What he may not have realized is this is exactly what the Buddha found out over two and a half thousand years ago.

One of the most important things that the Buddha discovered he called annata which means 'no self'. This may confuse people who might think that the Buddha talked about reincarnation of souls, but this is not a Buddhist teaching. The Buddha did talk about rebirth but certainly not of souls and not even of consciousness. The Buddha talked about how one thing caused another just like one domino causing another domino to fall; our actions will always create another action and this is what rebirth means - at least that is my understanding of it.

The Buddha emphasised again and again that if we look inside of ourselves we will find nobody at home; it is all just an illusion. This flies in the face of other religions and is why many feel that Buddhism isn't a religion; they claim that it is just too nihilistic. Well that it is not what the Buddha meant to teach us at all; it is meant to be liberating. You don't have to believe in God or gods to feel liberated from suffering. The Buddha realised that the more we attach onto the idea of being an individual self the more we will suffer; the more we can let go of this the less we will suffer. I think it was Ajahn Chah who said if you let go a little you will feel a little happiness, if you let go a lot you will feel a lot of happiness, and if you let go completely then you will know complete happiness - nirvana.

The idea of no-self is something the mind fights against when we hear it, and even if we begin to accept it. We want to be souls that will go on living for eternity and hopefully meet again those who we have lost, but the Buddha would say that they are not selves either. I like the idea that we are all waves on the sea and when our time is up we go back to the sea- that is just me though, and I'm no Buddha.

I believe that science is proving the Buddha to have been right all those years ago, but maybe I am deluding myself. I don't believe what the Buddha wanted people to just believe in things because he said them; I don't believe he wanted people grasping onto his teachings as some holy thing that needs protecting. The Buddha could have been wrong, but what he said makes perfect sense to me.