Expert: Joe McSorley - 12/15/2008

Question
compliments to you Joe. firstly, how dose the Buddhist define a person. in the Buddhist concept of person, is a person defined as an individual independent of the community or is a person defined in relation to the community the person is born, trained and with other persons around

Answer
Dear Daniel-Mario,
  The Buddhist definition of a person precedes the conditions of both family and humanity though it arises in those conditions.  To be a person there must first be a sense of self that sees itself as a part of or alienated from family and community.  One of the classic definitions of the self in Buddhism is “that which is living/dying”.  To paraphrase this I would say that ‘which knows it is alive and will eventually die”, it knows this as a subject/object duality, that it ‘is’ and one day will no longer ‘be’.  An animal does not have this awareness of that which is born and will ultimately die and therefore does not have the anxiety of musing over its death.
  I think my teacher, Dr. DeMartino, put it best in “Zen and Psychoanalysis” in his chapter “The Human Situation and Zen Buddhism”:

“Human existence is, initially, self-conscious, or in the designation here to be preferred, ego- conscious existence.  Man is not simply born into human existence.  The infant is not yet human: the idiot never quite human; the “wolf child” only quasi-human; the hopeless psychotic perhaps no longer human.
  Not that the infant, the idiot, the “wolf-child” or the psychotic is ever sheer animal.  The pre-ego-consciousness state of the infant, the abortive ego-consciousness of the idiot, the retarded ego-consciousness of the “wolf-child”, and the deteriorated ego consciousness of the psychotic all derive their particular determination from what would be the norm of their developed and unimpaired being.  This norm is that ego-consciousness which ordinarily first appears between the ages of two and five in a child born of human parents and reared in a human society.  Foregoing at this time any phenomenological account of its onset and development, let us rather proceed immediately to an analysis of its nature and to an examination of its implications for the human situation.
  Ego-consciousness means an ego aware or conscious of itself.  Awareness of itself is expressed as affirmation of itself, the “I”, or, as I shall continue to call it, the ego.  Affirmation of itself involves the individuation of itself, the ego differentiated and discriminated from that which is not itself – “the other”, or simply its own negation, “not-I” or  “non-ego”.  Affirmation of itself also entails, however, a bifurcation of itself.
  Affirmation of itself includes itself both as affirmer and as affirmed.  As affirmed it performs the act of affirming itself.  As affirmed it is an existential fact presented to itself.  The awareness and affirmation of itself in which it indeed emerges or appears is at once both and act undertaken by the ego and a fact given to the ego.”

   The person is that which knows itself to be a person, as distinct from others, both things and persons, can regain this self-consciousness as in waking from sleep or another seemingly unconscious state. It knows that it is but does not know who it is at its root and this is the basis of human anxiety.  It is a subject that can only know itself objectively.  When it becomes this bifurcated “I” then it views itself in relationship to family and community.  Without an I you cannot have ‘my family’ or ‘my community’ there has this self that experiences these things.  The world is the world because I stand outside of the world to objectify it and call it the world.
  So, it is after the “I” is formed that it now identifies itself by what it proclaims itself to be and what it proclaims itself not to be.  I am of this family and not that one; I am of this ethnic group and not that one.  It knows everything that is not itself but does not know itself.  Anything that you perceive is not you for it must be separate for the perception to happen; that which is perceived and that which is perceiving it.  When we perceive our sense of self we stand apart from that which we are perceiving and thus we don’t know ourself as subject but only as an object of our perception.
    At some point in our human history we became self aware and thus ‘fell’ from nature.  This split allowed us to see nature objectively and thus enabled us to manipulate it.  At the same time this allowed us to create an idea of reality, religion, mores and beliefs that are constructs of our minds trying to explain the reality we exist in.  These things have no real substance but are ideas we cling to as we try to  identify and to preserve ourselves from death.
  I hope this helps you.  Take care,
       Joe