Expert: Justin Choo - 12/15/2008

Question
compliment to you Justin. i want to know what they Buddhists conceive a person to be? firstly how do they define a person? is a person seen as individual distinct from the community or is a person defined in relation to the community the person is born and trained and with the other persons in that community

Answer
Hi Daniel-Mario,

Thank you for asking me.

It is very difficult for one who is new to Buddhism to understand the Buddhist concept of a "person" or "self". In fact the Buddhist concept of self is "no self"!

I shall try to put it in a simple way. This body we call self. In Buddhism, this body has 2 components; the physical body and the consciousness. The physical body is subject to growth and decay. This phenomenon is the natural process of existence. No one can change it, let alone control it. No matter who we are and what we chose to believe, once born we are subject to sickness, decay and death. This is nothing negative, but the universal truth of life. Since we have no ultimately control over this physical body, this body doesn't belong to us. We are just "renting" it for use until the body fails to function.

The other aspect is this consciousness. It is the life-stream of existence. It continues to exist even after this physical body is no more. This stream of consciousness will leave the body once this body is dead. It will continue its existence in a new medium. This is what we call rebirth.

As an example, take the computer. The hardware is the body. The software is the ingredients, our character/traits. The electric current is our stream of consciousness. When this computer is old and ceases to function, we change the computer, but we transfer the data to the new computer. Nothing will work until we switch on the power. And here we go again, the start of another cycle!!

Since we cannot control this body we view this existence as "no-self".


As for your other questions, in the worldly sense, a person has his own identity, and at the same time is subject to the influence of the community he lives in.


Hope this helps.

Justin Choo  [I like to invite you to visit my blog:]
http://lifeislikethat999.blogspot.com/

[And these sites by Rev. Dhammika:]
http://sdhammika.blogspot.com/
http://www.buddhismatoz.com/