Atman
Atman, in both Hinduism and Buddhism, refers to the eternal self comparable to the Western notion of the soul. While Hindus believe that the soul represents the life-force within all human beings and animals which survives death in a cycle of reincarnation, Buddhists believe that such an entity only exist as an illusion, a doctrine referred to as anatman. In some schools of Hinduism, such as Advaita Vedanta, it is held that atman is fully identical to Brahman, the supreme monistic principle or deity. Other schools disagree with this claim to varying degrees.Visistadvaita, for instance, claims that brahman and atman are very similar but not completely identical, while Dvaita holds that the two are completely seperate.
Hinduism
Basic Formulation
While the Vedic texts describe what are largely external religious traditions of sacrifice and other ritualism, the commentaries upon these texts, the Upanishads (ca. 900 B.C.E.), turn the focus inward. Included within this new intrinsic religious perspective is a detailed discussion of the Self. Upanishadic thinkers attempt to characterize the self in a number of ways, describing it as food, will, consciousness, breath and the "fire-soul" (the warmth of life, usually related to the sun, by which the "food" constituting life is cooked) among other things, though none of these was truly satisfactory. Gradually, this notion of a vital force became deprived of specific content so it could better characterize an abstract, cosmic principle of self. This more familiar understanding of atman most likely grew out of the combination and elaboration of the early idea of life-breath and the fire-soul: like breath and warmth atman supports the ground of the person. Soon enough, Atman was no longer the breath of the warmth of life, but rather the agent beyond description which maintained each of the senses. Atman is most profoundly described as the eternal person which is never born and never dies, lasting throughout eternity. This is the true, radiant self, which "is not born, nor dies./This one has not come from anywhere..." Furthermore, it is "unborn, constant, eternal, primeval, this one/Is not slain when the body is slain." (Katha Upanishad II).
With the profession of the eternal nature of the soul came the introduction of the idea that atman is trapped within a cycle of rebirth, known generally as reincarnation. Katha Upanishad III explains that "He (...) who is unmindful and ever unpure/Reaches not the goal/But goes on to reincarnation." This idea, which may have been in currency in the earlier Vedic tradition, was merged with the idea of karma to create the idea that thoughts and actions within and individual's present life could determine the condition of their soul's future existences. The motivation of religious and moral activity, then, is to accumulate good karma in order to free oneself from the baneful material world and thereby liberate the soul from the cycle of rebirth. As the Chandogya Upanishad explains:
The self which is free from sin, free from old age, from death and grief, from hunger and thirst, which desires nothing but what it ought to desire, and imagines nothing but what it ought to imagine, that it is which we must search out, that it is which we must try to understand. He who has searched out that Self and understands it, obtains all worlds and desires (Chandogya Upanishad VIII:7:1).
Bliss, then, awaits the individual who realizes the true nature of their self.
Atman and Brahman
Perhaps the most famous claim made in the Upanishads is that atman is the very same as Brahman. In this sense, the human soul is a microcosm of the pervasive divinity that forms the ground of the universe. The ninth chapter of The Taittiriya Upanishad reports this as follows:
He who knows the Bliss of Brahman, whence words together with the mind turn away, unable to reach It? He is not afraid of anything whatsoever. He does not distress himself with the thought: 'Why did I not do what is good? Why did I do what is evil?'. Whosoever knows this regards both these as Atman; indeed he cherishes both these as Atman. Such, indeed, is the Upanishad, the secret knowledge of Brahman.
The most famous suggestion of this oneness between brahman and atman comes in Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7. within a dialogue between Uddālaka and his son Śvetaketu. Here, Uddalka advises his son "tat tvam asi", which translates to "that thou art." Scholars have interpreted this phrase to mean that all things in the universe are united by a single principle, and that the human soul or consciousness is therefore also equivalent to the Ultimate Reality. Based upon statements such as these, the three schools of Vedanta ("end of the Vedas') provided varied interpretations of the nature of this equivalence between Brahman and atman in the years that followed.
Advaita Vedanta
Advaita (or "non-dualistic") Vedanata was the first of the Vedanta schools, garnering its name from the dualism it denies between atman and brahman. Shankara (788-820 C.E.), the famous Hindu mystic philosopher who developed the Advaita philosophy, interpreted the Upanishadic connection between brahman and atman to be one of essential sameness. The Self is brahman, indistinguishable from the supreme reality from which it derives. For Shankara, the entirety of the universe except for the highest, indescribable form of Brahman, is an illusion (or maya). Perceived differences between brahman and the individual soul are created by the erroneous perception of particulars in the physical world. Once an individual eschews all distinctions of the illusory particular things, Shankara believed they could then come to realize that atman is brahman. Only then can they escape maya and merge into oneness with Brahman.
Visistadvaita Vedanta
Visistadvaita (or "qualified non-dualistic") Vedanta refers to the school which acknowledges a limited equivalence between atman and brahman. While Advaita claims that atman is brahman, Visistadvaita founder Ramanuja (1017-1137 C.E.) held atman to be merely like brahman, representing an incomplete part of the whole. That is, atman is a part of the body of God, while God provides the life force of each individual atman. Ramanuja's conception of atman has its own independent form and is subordinate to brahman. While brahman (conceived of in personal or impersonal form) is infinite and represents the cause and effect of the universe, the soul is limited and infinetesmal in relative size. Although a soul maintains its own will, it is ultimately dependent upon Brahman for its creation and preservation. For Ramanuja, a soul's union with Brahman and its subsequent liberation from the world is attained through intense personal devotion to god, or bhakti rather than Shakara's prescribed realization of equivalence. Liberation entails the experience of the divine power of brahman, though the individual self is not dissolved into brahman as in Shankara's estimation.
Dvaita Vedanta
Dvaita (or "dualistic") Vedanta denies any equivalence between brahman and atman. Rather, brahman (which is almost always perceived in the form of a personalized god, rather than the impersonal form) is totally seperate from and superior to the physical universe and the souls within it. Founder Madhva (1238-1317 C.E.), denied the Advaita teaching that all human beings are essentially divine, instead construing the divine as completely separate from humanity and the physical world. Like Ramanuja, Madhva claimed that souls are real entities, existing independent from human perception, although they depend upon the will of the divine. All souls are independent, not only from each other but also from God, even though God is simultaneously responsible for each soul's existence and continuity. Brahman and atman are not the same, though they are vaguely similar, in Madhva's estimation, much as reflections of the sun are like the sun itself. Madhva also prescribes bhakti as the means by which to attain salvation, though the physical world and the distinction between all souls within it remains even after salvation has been reached.
Buddhism
Unlike Hindus, Buddhists do not believe that within human beings and other life forms there is a permanent, indestructable and absolute entity which remains constant. Nor do Buddhist believe in the similar view found in many other religious traditions which states that each person has a soul distinct from others which survives after death for purposes of judgement by a higher being. Therefore, Buddhist reject the related doctrines of atman, souls, of selfhood, instead believing that such ideas are fabricated by humans in order to deny their impermanence. Buddha taught that the idea of an eternal self is a misleading belief which is ultimately harmful, producing negative notions of "me" and "mine" and thereby providing the psychological basis for desire, attachment, and hatred. In short, Buddha described the self as the root of all evil, and characterized the attachments it creates as detractors from one's attainment of Nirvana. This denial of the self marks Buddhism as unique among the other world religions.
Buddhist thinkers further characterized the unchanging self as no more than an illusion created out of psychophysical factors which are in flux from moment of moment. These psychophysical factors are known in the Pali Theravada traditions as the five skandhas, which make up what is referred to as the human personality, but by no means suggest a permanent ego or self. These elementary psycho-physical states are: form, feeling, cognition, volition and consciousness. Beyond these ever-changing states there is no self. Since there is no permanent self, there also cannot be said to be any distinction between persons, evident in Buddhist descriptions of samsara as an indvisible unity in a constant process of change. Thus, some Buddhists claim that just because there is no Atman is not a direct statement that atman does not exist, but rather an assertion that it exists solely as a cognitive fallacy.
Thus, Buddhism cannot be said to wholly deny the existence of atman. Within the Mahayana branch of Buddhism, for example, a number of passages within the highly influential Tathagatagarbha sutras suggest that an eternal "True Self" exists in stark constrast to the impermanent and illusory self which is perceived as an epiphenomenon of the five skandhas. This True Self is none other than the Buddha himself in his ultimate enlightened nature. The essence of this Buddha-self (or Buddha-dhatu), is uncreated, immutable and present in all living creatures. The Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra, which discusses this principle in the most detail, warns that this True Self must never be confused with the mundane and ever-changing worldly ego, which conceals the True Self from view. Furthermore, some contemporary Buddhists do not accept the English translation of atman or atta as "self" in the sense that we know it. Instead, these Buddhists refer back to early Buddhism where they claim the individual self is held in great esteem as the agent and benefactor of salvation, albeit not as divine entity or as a microcosm of the universe.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
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