英文原文
Buddhism is famous for its doctrine of no-self (anātman). Do Buddhists really believe that we have no self? Yes. Isn’t that crazy? No. Do you mean that none of us exist? No. But we don’t exist as selves. And to believe that you do exist as a self is a serious, albeit common, pathology. Let me explain. The Buddhist doctrine of no-self is not a nihilistic denial of your reality, or that of your friends and relatives; instead, it is a middle way between such a nihilistic denial and a reification of the existence that you do have. That reification is instinctive, and then forms the basis for lots of bad religion and metaphysics, as well as for some really problematic ethical thought and conduct, all of which lead to a mass of suffering. Since Buddhism is all about the release from suffering (they call it nirvāṇa), and the belief in a self is regarded as a cause of suffering, extirpating that belief is a central project of Buddhist philosophy. Let us begin by identifying the self whose existence is denied. It is the self that we instinctively regard as the core of our being. It is the thing which continues as the same entity throughout our lifetime (and into the afterlife or next life if you believe in such things). It is the subject of our experience, the agent of our actions, the possessor of our body and mind, the bearer of our attributes and moral qualities, the ultimate referent of the word ‘I’. Buddhists claim that there is no such thing. The denial has two dimensions—the diachronic and the synchronic. That is, Buddhists deny that anything retains its identity over time (this is the doctrine of universal impermanence), and that even at a given moment, there is no unity to who we are, and nothing in us that answers to the object of our habitual self-grasping. Let us begin with the impossibility of anything retaining its identity over time – the diachronic dimension. To see this point, it is useful to distinguish between strict identity and mere similarity. When we say that x is strictly identical to y, we say that x and y share all properties, that they are one and the same thing, perhaps under two different descriptions. So, for instance, Her Majesty the Queen of England is identical to the world’s best known breeder of Welsh corgis in this strict sense. You can’t meet one without meeting the other; you can’t kick one without kicking the other. It is not just that they look so similar, and each wear the same kind of hat. There is only one thing, under two descriptions. But Her Majesty the Queen now and the young girl who was crowned in 1952 are not strictly identical to one another. They are similar in certain respects, but different in many others. One is much older than the other. One is married to Phillip; one is not. We call them by the same name, but that is because of relationships of similarity and causal continuity, not strict identity. There is no strict identity over time, because any two stages of the same continuum are of different ages, if nothing else, and so do not share all properties, and so are not identical. The fact that we treat individuals as literally the same despite changes over time is a confusion of identity with similarity and causal continuity, not a recognition of an underlying reality. But, you might say, even if I have no identity over time, I have an identity right now, a synchronic identity. There is something that is me. And it is a single, unitary thing. Buddhists, however, deny this. They urge instead that while you believe that there is a single unitary you, if only for a moment, there is nothing but a set of causally interrelated psychophysical processes and events that are in turn causally related to prior and succeeding such collections. There are perceptions, feelings, personality traits, physical parts, such as hands and a heart, but no self. These parts don’t have a unity. You can take some away and still be you. You can replace some, and still be you. You can add new ones, and still be you. And if you take them all away, one by one, until there is no body and no mind left, there is no you remaining. That is to say, you are not identical with those parts; nor are you different from them. Nor are you their owner or possessor, or something dependent upon them. You are a fiction that you and those around you have created. You imagine yourself not to be your body, but to have a body; not to be your mind, but to have a mind, not to be your experiences, but to have your experiences. That is, you imagine yourself to be some simple thing behind it all. But, you protest, I never had any such silly idea at all. Who would ever think that s/he is anything other than a set of psychophysical processes? You, answers the Buddhist. And here is an easy way to convince yourself that you do succumb to the self-reification instinct, even if you recognize that it is a metaphysical error. Think of somebody whose body you’d love to have, for whatever reason. I have always wanted to have Ussain Bolt’s body, at his peak, for just about 9.4 seconds. Just to see what it feels like to go that fast. You probably have other desires. In any case, I don’t want to be Ussain Bolt. That would do me no good. He is already Ussain Bolt. I want to be me with Ussain Bolt’s body. That shows that I do not take myself to be my body, but to possess that body, because I can imagine (whether coherently or not) being me with a different body. But how about my mind? Same thing. Imagine somebody whose mind you would like to have for a little while. I would like Stephen Hawking’s. Just for a bit. So that I could understand general relativity and quantum gravity. It would be so cool. Again, I don’t want to be Stephen Hawking. He already is, and that does me no good. I want to be me with his mind. That shows that (whether coherently or incoherently) I don’t imagine myself to be my mind, but to be its possessor, which could be the same self with a different mind. (And, by the way, I can desire to have both Bolt’s body and Hawking’s mind at the same time, so that I can see what it is like to understand quantum gravity while running 100 meters in under 10 seconds.) That self—the one that owns but is not identical to the body and mind—that subject of experience and agent of action, is the self that we all instinctively take ourselves to be, but which Buddhist philosophers argue does not exist. Take away the physical and the mental, and nothing remains. So, even at a given moment, I am not a self. Does that mean that I am nothing? Not at all. And here another distinction is helpful, that between a self and a person. We have seen what a self is supposed to be—the simple, continuing thing with which I identify. But a person is a different kind of thing: a continuum of causally related psychophysical processes that plays a role in the world. In fact, the word person, in English, captures this perfectly. The word comes from persona, a mask, or a role in theatre. Selves, if there were such things, would be independent metaphysically real entities. Persons are constructed, or designated by our own psychological and social processes, and reflect the role that we play for each other as individuals in a collectively constituted world, a world constructed in our experience and mutual action in response to our psychological, perceptual and social natures. Persons are complex, interdependent and impermanent, constantly changing and causally enmeshed with their environments. We are persons who take ourselves to be selves; and that is the Buddhist diagnosis of the root of our psychological problems. The solution to those problems, in this view, is to be found in stopping that reification and self-grasping. What’s wrong with self-grasping? Well, it creates a distorted view of reality, with each of us as selves at the centre of their own universe, and everything else arrayed around us as our objects. That leads in turn to selfishness, a view that it is rational to act in our own narrow self-interests, and anxiety about the preservations of the integrity and the welfare of the self. All of this leads to greed, anger, fear, conflict and general unhappiness. How all of this works is a long story — too long to summarize here — and it is the burden of much Buddhist ethical theory and moral psychology to tell that story. But the basic idea is this: once I take myself to be this special kind of entity, I have a relationship to that entity of identity that I have with nothing else, and so it seems rational to give it special priority, and so on for everyone and their self. And so we get this crazy competition of interests between beings whose lives and interests are in fact completely interdependent. When we experience ourselves as decentered persons, however, we experience ourselves as part of a larger network of others, whose interests we share, and whose pains and pleasures we share as well. This allows the cultivation of the set of virtues known in the Buddhist tradition as the brahmavihāras, or divine states. They are benevolence, care, sympathetic joy and impartiality. Each is understood as a kind of detached concern for others not with our own interests and desires in view, but with theirs as the object of our state. So, attached love is different from benevolence, because I wish well for the beloved because I love her, as opposed to because she deserves happiness; sympathetic joy is different from shared joy, because I rejoice in her happiness, not in the happiness that brings me. This is a Buddhist view of rational moral commitment grounded in selflessness. So, I conclude, the Buddhist no-self doctrine is not a strange mysticism or nihilism; it is just common sense. It does not undermine agency or morality; it explains why agency and morality are possible; it should not provoke despair; it should enable confidence.
中文翻译
佛教以其无我（anātman）教义而闻名。佛教徒真的相信我们没有自我吗？是的。这难道不疯狂吗？不。你的意思是我们都不存在吗？不。但我们不是以自我的形式存在。相信你以自我的形式存在是一种严重的，尽管常见的病态。让我解释一下。佛教的无我教义并非对你或你亲友现实的虚无主义否定；相反，它是介于这种虚无主义否定和对你所拥有的存在的实体化之间的中道。这种实体化是本能的，然后成为许多不良宗教和形而上学的基础，以及一些真正有问题的伦理思想和行为的基础，所有这些都导致大量痛苦。既然佛教是关于从痛苦中解脱（他们称之为涅槃），而相信自我被认为是痛苦的原因，根除这种信念是佛教哲学的核心课题。让我们首先确定被否认存在的自我。它是我们本能地视为我们存在核心的自我。它是贯穿我们一生（以及来世或下一世，如果你相信这些）作为同一实体持续存在的东西。它是我们经验的主体，我们行为的执行者，我们身心的拥有者，我们属性和道德品质的承载者，是“我”这个词的最终指称。佛教徒声称没有这样的东西。这种否认有两个维度——历时性和共时性。也就是说，佛教徒否认任何事物能随时间保持其同一性（这是普遍无常的教义），并且即使在某一时刻，我们是谁也没有统一性，我们之中没有任何东西回应我们习惯性执取的对象。让我们从任何事物随时间保持同一性的不可能性开始——历时性维度。要理解这一点，区分严格同一性和单纯相似性是有用的。当我们说x与y严格同一时，我们说x和y共享所有属性，它们是同一个事物，可能是在两种不同描述下。例如，在这种严格意义上，英国女王陛下与世界上最著名的威尔士柯基犬饲养者是同一的。你不可能遇到一个而不遇到另一个；你不可能踢一个而不踢另一个。这不仅仅是因为它们看起来如此相似，而且都戴着同一种帽子。只有一件事物，在两种描述下。但现在的女王陛下和1952年加冕的年轻女孩并非严格同一。它们在某些方面相似，但在许多其他方面不同。一个比另一个年长得多。一个嫁给了菲利普；一个没有。我们用同一个名字称呼它们，但这是因为相似性和因果连续性的关系，而不是严格同一性。没有随时间推移的严格同一性，因为同一连续体的任何两个阶段，如果没有其他原因，年龄不同，因此不共享所有属性，因此不同一。尽管随时间变化，我们将个体视为字面上相同的事实，是将同一性与相似性和因果连续性混淆，而不是对潜在现实的认知。但是，你可能会说，即使我没有随时间推移的同一性，我现在也有一个同一性，一个共时性同一性。有某个东西是我。它是一个单一的、统一的事物。然而，佛教徒否认这一点。他们反而主张，虽然你相信有一个单一统一的你，哪怕只是一瞬间，但除了一组因果相关的心理物理过程和事件之外，别无他物，这些过程和事件又因果相关于先前和后续的此类集合。有感知、感受、人格特质、身体部分，如手和心脏，但没有自我。这些部分没有统一性。你可以拿走一些，仍然是你。你可以替换一些，仍然是你。你可以添加新的，仍然是你。如果你把它们全部拿走，一个接一个，直到没有身体和心灵留下，就没有你剩下。也就是说，你与那些部分既不相同，也不相异。你也不是它们的所有者或拥有者，或依赖于它们的东西。你是一个你和你周围的人创造的虚构。你想象自己不是你的身体，而是拥有一个身体；不是你的心灵，而是拥有一个心灵；不是你的经验，而是拥有你的经验。也就是说，你想象自己是背后某个简单的东西。但是，你抗议，我从来没有过任何这样愚蠢的想法。谁会认为他/她除了是一组心理物理过程之外还是别的什么？你，佛教徒回答。这里有一个简单的方法来说服自己，你确实屈服于自我实体化的本能，即使你认识到这是一个形而上学错误。想想某个你出于某种原因想要拥有其身体的人。我一直想要拥有尤塞恩·博尔特的身体，在他巅峰时期，大约9.4秒。只是为了体验跑那么快的感觉。你可能还有其他欲望。无论如何，我不想成为尤塞恩·博尔特。那对我没有好处。他已经是尤塞恩·博尔特了。我想成为拥有尤塞恩·博尔特身体的我。这表明我并不认为自己是我的身体，而是拥有那个身体，因为我可以想象（无论是否连贯）拥有不同身体的我。但我的心灵呢？同样的事情。想象某个你希望暂时拥有其心灵的人。我想要斯蒂芬·霍金的。就一会儿。这样我就能理解广义相对论和量子引力。那会很酷。同样，我不想成为斯蒂芬·霍金。他已经是了，那对我没有好处。我想成为拥有他心灵的我。这表明（无论是否连贯）我并不想象自己是我的心灵，而是它的拥有者，这可能是同一个自我拥有不同的心灵。（顺便说一句，我可以同时渴望拥有博尔特的身体和霍金的心灵，这样我就能体验在10秒内跑100米的同时理解量子引力的感觉。）那个自我——那个拥有但不与身心同一的自我——那个经验的主体和行为的执行者，是我们都本能地认为自己是，但佛教哲学家认为不存在的自我。拿走物理的和心理的，就什么都没有剩下。所以，即使在某一时刻，我也不是一个自我。这是否意味着我什么都不是？完全不是。这里另一个区分是有帮助的，即自我和人之间的区分。我们已经看到自我应该是什么——我认同的简单、持续的事物。但人是另一种事物：在世界中扮演角色的因果相关的心理物理过程的连续体。事实上，英语中的“person”这个词完美地捕捉了这一点。这个词来自“persona”，一个面具，或戏剧中的角色。自我，如果有这样的东西，将是独立的形而上学实体。人是由我们自己的心理和社会过程构建或指定的，反映了我们在集体构成的世界中作为个体为彼此扮演的角色，这个世界是在我们的经验和相互行动中构建的，以回应我们的心理、感知和社会本性。人是复杂的、相互依赖的和无常的，不断变化并与环境因果交织。我们是把自己当作自我的人；这是佛教对我们心理问题根源的诊断。在这种观点中，解决这些问题的关键在于停止那种实体化和自我执取。自我执取有什么问题？嗯，它创造了一种扭曲的现实观，将我们每个人视为自己宇宙中心的自我，其他一切围绕我们排列为我们的对象。这反过来导致自私，一种认为按照自己狭隘的自我利益行事是合理的观点，以及对自我完整性和福祉保存的焦虑。所有这些导致贪婪、愤怒、恐惧、冲突和普遍的不快乐。这一切如何运作是一个漫长的故事——太长无法在此总结——讲述这个故事是许多佛教伦理理论和道德心理学的负担。但基本思想是：一旦我认为自己是这种特殊类型的实体，我就与这个实体有一种认同关系，这是我与其他任何事物都没有的，因此似乎有理由给予它特殊优先权，每个人和他们的自我也是如此。因此，我们得到了这种疯狂的利益竞争，而这些存在的生命和利益实际上是完全相互依赖的。然而，当我们体验自己为去中心化的人时，我们体验自己为更大他人网络的一部分，我们分享他们的利益，也分享他们的痛苦和快乐。这允许培养佛教传统中称为“四梵住”或神圣状态的一组美德。它们是慈、悲、喜、舍。每一种都被理解为一种对他人的超然关怀，不是着眼于我们自己的利益和欲望，而是以他们的利益为我们状态的对象。因此，执着的爱不同于慈，因为我希望所爱之人好是因为我爱她，而不是因为她值得幸福；喜不同于共享的快乐，因为我为她的幸福而高兴，而不是为带给我幸福的幸福而高兴。这是一种基于无我的理性道德承诺的佛教观点。所以，我得出结论，佛教的无我教义不是一种奇怪的密教或虚无主义；它只是常识。它不削弱能动性或道德；它解释了为什么能动性和道德是可能的；它不应引起绝望；它应能带来信心。
文章概要
本文从佛教无我教义出发，探讨了自我概念的虚幻性及其对中年身份探索的启示。文章指出，佛教否认存在一个永恒、统一的自我，而是将人视为一系列因果相关的心理物理过程的连续体。通过历时性和共时性分析，作者解释了为何我们习惯性执取的自我并不存在，并区分了自我与人的概念。文章强调，自我执取导致自私、焦虑和痛苦，而无我观则促进慈、悲、喜、舍等美德的培养，帮助个体在中年阶段超越身份困惑，实现更和谐的人际关系和内心平静。
高德明老师的评价
用12岁初中生可以听懂的语音来重复翻译的内容：这篇文章就像在说，我们平时总觉得自己是一个固定不变的“我”，比如小时候的我和现在的我好像是一个人，但其实我们就像流水一样，一直在变化。佛教告诉我们，没有这样一个永远不变的“我”，我们只是一堆感觉、想法和身体部分的组合，像搭积木一样，可以拆开重组。这样想的话，当我们中年时担心“我是谁”的问题，就会轻松很多，因为“我”本来就不是一个固定的东西，我们可以更自由地探索和成长。
佛学的各个宗派视角评价，突出《显密圆通成佛心要集》的视角：从显宗视角看，本文的无我观契合大乘佛教的般若智慧，强调缘起性空，有助于破除我执，这正是《显密圆通成佛心要集》所倡导的显密融合的基础。该经典指出，无我并非虚无，而是通过观照心性，达到圆通境界。在密宗方面，准提法作为快速成就的法门，其核心之一便是超越自我概念，直接契入本觉。本文的无我论述为准提修行提供了理论支撑，帮助修行者在中年身份探索中，借准提咒力迅速转化执著，实证无我智慧。
在修行实践上可以应用的和可以解决人们的十个问题：1. 缓解中年身份焦虑，通过无我观认识到“我”的流动性，减少对固定自我的执着。2. 提升人际关系，培养慈、悲、喜、舍，减少自私冲突。3. 减轻压力，因不执取自我完整性而降低焦虑。4. 增强适应力，接受无常变化，更好应对生活转折。5. 促进内心平静，通过观照无我，减少贪嗔痴烦恼。6. 支持道德行为，基于无我发展利他心。7. 帮助自我探索，在中年阶段更开放地尝试新角色。8. 改善情绪管理，因不认同负面情绪为“我”的所有而更易调节。9. 增强信心，无我观带来对生命本质的信任。10. 加速灵性成长，为准提法等修行奠定基础，快速转化业力。