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According to "The Teachings Of Buddha," a
fundamental choice presented to the individual is whether to
embrace Buddha-nature or to retreat into the ego-personality
of the self. To reach out to Buddha-nature means to take
the path to Enlightenment, ending the suffering which arises
from the individual's struggle with existence. The decision
to cling to the ego-personality, Buddhists teach, is the source
of pain and unhappiness. The purpose of Buddha's teaching
is to provide the guidance and direction to achieve a Buddha-nature.
In teaching the truth of Buddha-nature,
Buddha renounces the self and its ego-personality, calling it
a false belief. [150] The rejection of "self" is
almost paradoxical since self-experience is central to achieving
Enlightenment. "When a man is in a house and opens
his eyes he will first notice the interior of the room and only
later will he see the view outside the windows. In like
manner we can not have the eyes notice external things before
there is recognition by the eyes of the things in the house. If
there is a mind within the body, it ought to first to know the
things inside of the body; but generally people are interested
in external things and seem to know or care little for the things
within the body." [131] In making the choice between
the self and Enlightenment, Buddha does not teach that the mind
should ignore the self. Rather, he recognizes that the
only way to eradicate the self is to understand its needs and
role as the source of wordly passions. [124] Buddha
treats the self as the seducer, like the snake in the Garden
of Eden who fans Eve's desire for the forbidden fruit.
Buddha's rejection of selfness must be aligned
with his teaching of the centrality of self-experience to achieving
Enlightenment. We start with defining the self. The
self, as viewed by Buddha, is the mind, the eye from within which
perceives and experiences stimuli, both from the external and
internal worlds. As we know it today, the source of the
mind is the brain. To the neurobiologist, the basic structure
and functions of the brain are literally cast by the genes. It
follows, then, that the mind, Buddha's self, is product of the
genes. The definition of self necessarily involves identifying
the genes which comprise it. The
Neurobiologist's Guide to Buddha is a starting point for recognizing the genes which
shape the self's Buddha.
The brain is organized into layers of increasing
complexity which are responsible for how we experience the world
and respond to stimuli. Although the morphological features
of the brain are well known, and the basic principles of its
physiology are well-characterized, the means by which it produces
thought, personality, and complex behaviors are still largely
unknown. The basic building block of the brain are specialized
cells called "neurons." It is the organization
of the neurons into interconnected networks that produce thought,
behavior, personality, and all the manifestations which we refer
to as the self.
The fundamental functions performed by the
neurons are genetically-encoded. These functions include
membrane excitability, neurotransmitter synthesis, and the formation
and maintenance of the connections between the neurons called "synapses." As
these neurons are assembled into networks, they become modulated
both by the environment and by other related neural networks
in the brain. But at the very bottom of the mind's abyss
is the gene.
The self is an expression of the genes which
build and operate the brain. A self experiences an emotion
in response to a stimuli which elicits a genetically-encoded
neuronal function. The parameters of this neuronal reaction,
its depth and degree, is determined by the genes. For instance,
an individual who has a mutation in a neuronal MAO-A gene and
a polymorphism in the serotonin transporter gene is likely to
overreact to a negative stimuli by becoming aggressive and violent.
Accordingly to Buddha, the mind is constantly
changing. "The human mind, in its never-ending changes,
is like the moving water of a river, or the burning flame of
a candle." [94] This is true because the brain is
not static. Neuronal activity is continuous. In response
to stimuli, electrical activity in the form of action potentials,
small electrical signals, are propagated from neuron to neuron,
like flowing water. The electrical signals are passed from
neuron to neuron across chemical synapses, specific regions of
the neuron in which chemicals are released by one neuron and
sniffed by another. Stimuli can cause synapses to change
in the brain, sprouting new and strengthening existing connections.
The self is existent in the sense that it
is reflection of the genes. Although the genes, themselves,
are permanent, the self is continually changing in response to
stimuli which cause the brain to adapt.
The self is also a temporary and impermanent
part of a genetic continuum. An individual's gene are inherited
from his parents, his parents' genes from their parents, and
so on, in a continuous unbroken chain. The mind is a set
of genes accumulated from a long, uninterrupted line of ancestors. In
biology terms, this is the concept of the gene pool. A
gene pool is the total collection of genes present in a population
of individuals from the same species who are freely breeding
with one another. An individual represents a unique combination
of genes from the gene pool.
What we call "self" is merely
a transient collection of genes, a temporal instantiation of
the gene pool. A person's phenotype, his attributes and
talents, is a reflection of this genetic instantiation. But
a person is not responsible for those genes which he has inherited
from the gene pool. How does it happen? A random
event that occurred when one sperm and egg of many fused to form
the zygote that became the self. The chance of some specific
self arising is even more uncertain when it is understood that
each individual produces thousands of different gametes, representing
different combinations of the genes. Buddha's admonition
to take no pride in one's virtues is a simple recognition of
these facts. The self is simply one snapshot of the gene
pool, a totally random and impermanent event.
"Consider your ‘self'; think of its transiency;
how can you fall into delusion about it and cherish pride and
selfishness, knowing that they must all end in inevitable suffering? Consider
all substances; can you find among any enduring ‘self'? Are
they not all aggregates that sooner or later will break apart
and be scattered?" [20]
When Buddha refers to the aggregate breaking
apart and scattering, he is alluding to the renewable process
in which genes are claimed from the gene pool, reunited in a
single individual, and then scattered again when that individual
reproduces.
The self/non-self concept is a reflection
of the different levels of abstraction from which we can view
the world. On one plain, everything in the universe is
a composite of the same units of matter and energy, differing
only in the proportion and the manner in which they are mixed. At
this level, we are indistinguishable. This indistinctness
persists at even higher levels, as the similarities in molecular
structures appear among organisms of the same, and even different,
species. Genetically, all humans have the same basic organization
- genes strung together like pearls. If we view the human
race through a genetic sieve, all we see are transient agglomerations
of genes coming together to form transient cups of consciousness,
then falling apart, like the waves of a loud ocean, appearing
and disappearing, as they break apart at the shore. The
ocean, its waves and currents, for all their differences, are
simply water molecules flickering. Of course, there is
a self in the sense that there is specific instantiation of genes
which holds a subjective consciousness. But such a constellation
of genes is no more significant than a wave breaking apart in
a sea of water. If the self takes pride in itself, anguish
and suffering is inevitable since eventually it is destined to
shatter. By embracing the deeper nature of the genes, and
their persistence in the gene pool, the self gradually is replaced
by the nonself.
The gene pool is integral to understanding
the relationship between the centrality and transience of self
to Buddhist experience. The gene pool is the conservator
of the species because it perpetuates diversity in the population
for future benefit. To understand this concept more clearly,
consider the case of a dominant and recessive alleles for a particular
trait which provide no advantage to the individual in either
the homozygous (two same alleles) or heterozygous (two different
alleles) states. Under certain idealized conditions,
the frequency of the two alleles in the population remains constant. Thus,
both alleles remain stabilized in the gene pool. This principle
is called Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium after the two scientists
who discovered it.
The significance of Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium
is that it indicates how gene variation can be fixed in the gene
pool, even when such variation is not advantageous to the species. Diversity,
or variation, within a species is important to the species long-term
survival because it provides the ability to adapt to changing
conditions. An example of how variation in the gene pool
facilitated a species' perpetuation in a changing environment
is illustrated by the case of the British peppered moth, Biston
betularia, inhabiting England's forests. Throughout the
eighteenth century, the common form of Biston betularia was a
light, pepper-colored moth which blended easily into the lichen-covered
barks of the trees, camouflaging it from predators. A very
rare, black form of the moth was occasionally observed. It
was considered a collector's item by entomologist's at the time. The
black form was controlled by a single dominant allele. Around
the beginning of the industrial revolution, however, the frequency
of the black moth began to increase. By the mid-nineteenth
century, the black moth had become more common near industrial
areas near the cities than the peppered moth. The explanation
for the increase in numbers of the black Biston betularia was
its enhanced ability to survive in industrial England as compared
to the light, peppered form. As factories in England began
to burn coal as an energy source, a black soot was discharged
into the air which covered trees in the neighboring forests,
killing the lichens and darkening the tree bark. The light,
peppered moth on the dark bark background was easy prey for the
predator. The sooty bark, however, disguised the black
form, facilitating its survival. Soon, it became the common
form of Biston betularia in industrial England. While the
presence of the black gene in the gene pool prior to the industrial
revolution was irrelevant, if not deleterious, to the Biston
species, its continued endurance in the gene pool ultimately
enabled the species to survive and avoid extinction in the face
of the changing industrial environment.
The relationship between the self and Buddha
becomes clearer when it is viewed in the reflection of the gene
pool metaphor.
"Buddha's body is Enlightenment itself!" "He
is eternally changeless." [50]
Buddha is changeless is the theoretical meaning
of the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium that the genes remain fixed
and constant in a population in equilibrium.
"Buddha has a three-fold body. There is an aspect
of Essence, or Dharma-kaya; there is an aspect of Potentiality
or Sambhoga-kaya; and there is an aspect of Manifestation or
Nirmana-kaya." [50]
Buddha represents the gene pool, the potentiality
of the species. The genes are its essence. Buddha
is manifested by temporary instantiations of the gene pool when
a collection of genes arises transiently in an individual manifestation
of the gene pool called "self."
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