Buddhist Selflessness
Hugh Nicholson
August 10, 2022 DOI: 10.4324/9781003303893-3 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Intervention | Buddhist insight meditation |
| Topics | Buddhism |
| Key points | Argues that Buddhist insight meditation can be understood through Merlin Donald's layered model of intersubjectivity as a technique that temporarily shifts practitioners from narrative-based social cognition to a prelinguistic mode resembling "primary intersubjectivity," thereby loosening the folk-psychological narratives of self and affording freedom from everyday attachments and aversions. |
Abstract
Chapter 2 begins by presenting the classic formulation of the No-self doctrine, according to which the personality is reducible to its physical and psychological constituents the way that a chariot is reducible to its parts. The chapter then develops a cognitive scientifically informed interpretation of Buddhist insight meditation, traditionally understood as a technique for internalizing the understanding of human beings as selfless persons. Drawing on a layered model of human intersubjectivity inspired by the work of the psychologist Merlin Donald, the chapter suggests that Buddhist insight meditation might be understood as a technique for inducing a temporary shift from the oral-narrative representational system that predominates in our interactions with others to a more rudimentary, prelinguistic mode of social interaction that roughly corresponds to what developmental psychologists term primary intersubjectivity . Meditation practice, according to this model, initiates a temporary break with the folk psychological narratives that structure everyday social interaction. By provisionally isolating feelings and perceptions from the larger narrative context of the self and its activities, insight meditation affords the Buddhist adept a measure of freedom from the attachments and aversions that prevail in everyday life.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on buddhism, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mental balance and well-being: Building bridges between Buddhism and Western psychology. | 2006 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience | 1995 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Buddhist and Psychological Perspectives on Emotions and Well-Being | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Too Early to Tell: The Potential Impact and Challenges—Ethical and Otherwise—Inherent in the Mainstreaming of Dharma in an Increasingly Dystopian World | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| From self to nonself: The Nonself Theory | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |