Reply To: Determinism

#50266
taryal
Participant

Nihilistic view: ‘I’ don’t exist

Eternal view: ‘I’ exist

Ultimate view: ‘I’ neither exist nor don’t exist

Without exposure to Buddha’s teachings, sentient beings can only come up with the first two views of existence. The ultimate view transcends both these views and that is the view perfected by an Arahant/Buddha. It would not be possible to develop that view by starting with “there is no self, just causes and conditions”. A sentient being (satta) is an everchanging lifestream that has the eternal view, i.e. the view of an unchanging essence (self). Of course this is a wrong view that is not beneficial to have but it is not beneficial to adapt to the other extreme view of no self either. A sotapanna removes the wrong view of a self (sakkaya ditthi) but the perception of a self will only be removed at the arahant stage. So till the arahant stage is attained, one can say that there is a dynamic self.

Of course in the ultimate reality, the idea of “self” is not relevant. But to an unenlightened mind that hasn’t transcended the views of “existence” and “non-existence”, it would be unfruitful to declare “there is no self, therefore I’m a zombie”. I like to use concepts from Science, sorta like an analogy to intuitively visualize this issue. In classical mechanics, it is assumed that Gravity exists. The equations developed based on this assumption work brilliantly for daily objects like cars, projectile, planets, etc. But when we are dealing with really fast particles like photons, this model no longer works. We need to transcend this and enter the realm of Theory of Relativity which is much more real in the ultimate sense. Einstein proved that the concept of “gravity” here is no longer relevant. So even though we know that Gravity does not exist in the ultimate sense, it works for daily objects so we use them. It would not be beneficial to say “there is no Gravity in the ultimate sense so therefore Classical Mechanics is fake”.

I think the issue with pathfinder’s analysis is that firstly, he doesn’t quite realize that there is a third way of looking at existence (which is different from both “I exist” and “I don’t exist”). He understands that the former view is wrong but is erroneously leaning to the latter. This happens when one tries to look at the world from an arahant’s perspective without actually being an arahant. We must say that there is a dynamic self till we get to that level even if that isn’t fully accurate in the ultimate reality. Secondly, he is equating mental entities (citta) with matter (suddhathaka). Material phenomena are indeed deterministic which is why they are relatively easy to study. Scientists are able to conduct experiments involving inert matter to produce repeatable results. But mental phenomena are not reproducible. Why do you think scientists struggle so much to explain the mystery of consciousness? A human mind is extremely complex and even the best that a Buddha can do is predict not determine.