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Our Sense of Self is an Illusion
Where Psychology, Philosophy, and Mysticism agree
“Why are you unhappy?
Because 99.9% of everything you think, and everything you do, is for your self, and there isn’t one.” Wei Wu Wei
A post written by philosophy professor (), claims that Buddhism is wrong. According to its author, the claim of Buddhism is false when it asserts there is no self. In his words: “This is nonsense.”
By extension, the mystical traditions of other religions, those of Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Taoism, and so forth, must be wrong because they arrive at the same position: the no self, or the dissolution of the ego in non-dual unity with Spirit or God.
Douglas Giles states that Buddhism’s “no self” is derived from the belief that thoughts are not real. This is a mistake pointed out by the sages, to confuse illusion with nonexistence. To Buddhists, ; they are just not what they seem to be.
Any meditation practitioner wet behind the ears wrestles with endless mental chatter, or what Buddhists call the “monkey mind.” This is the propensity of a mind to jump from thought to thought, like a monkey swinging from branch to branch.
