The Homo sapiens have a survival instinct. They have lived on this planet for a long time and survived the onslaughts of natural hazards, diseases, starvation and wars which are of their own doing. Yet they cannot and will never be able to defeat the end of life, death. Regardless of the efforts to find elixir to have a permanent life, so far they have failed. The Great Emperor of China who built the great wall even sent an expedition to look for the magic medicine in the Eastern Sea but to no avail and only to leave a legend of how Japan came into existence. It was thought by the Chinese that these were the people, five hundred couples of boys and girls, who formed the Japanese people. This legend would not be accepted by the Japanese who had the legend of being the people who were born out of the unions of deities after the birth of the islands of Japan which were created in the same manner and then the Sun Goddess asked her grandson to descend from heaven to rule over Yamato or Japan. So went the legend or mythology of the Islands of Japan, the Japanese people and rulers.
China’s Emperors claimed to be Son of Heaven and was granted the Mandate of Heaven to rule while European kings claimed to have the Divine Right of King. The Hindu Deva-raja Cult granted political legitimacy to rulers who governed the realm. But all the above except probably the Japanese case, the people were not deified. It was only the rulers who were granted the special privilege and deference. But deep in the psyche of human beings is the pride of being the noble creatures but at the same time are subject under the Almighty in whom they can take refuge. The conflict between self-aggrandizement and acceptance of superior power deities has been part of human thoughts since time immemorial. There are concepts of the present existence of this life on Earth and the speculation or wishful beliefs of the unknown future, life after death. There thus exist both the realm of the physical reality and the spiritual sphere where one believes exists. In other words, there exist in the mind of human beings humanism and theism. Ancient Greeks believed that the planet Earth was the center of the universe while the Sun moved around it. The Sun orbited the Earth indicated a strong pride in humanism. But then reality dictated otherwise when Copernicus argued that the Sun was the center of the solar system. The new reality affected pride in the supremacy of human beings. But indeed, even at the time when there was great pride in nobleness of human beings, deference for the mighty and powerful beings could be detected from the Greek mythology in which all stars were animated. Apollo was the God of the Sun while Poseidon was the God of the sea, for example.
Human beings’ psyches were then and even now are that their fate is subject under the Supreme Being or Beings who could control their life and destiny. Indeed, in some faith, human beings were created by the Supreme Beings such as Christianity, Islam and even the Japanese case. Many believed that they are the noble creatures created in the image of the Almighty. They believe that they have a soul which made them superior when compared to animals and even compared to other fellow human beings due to the different levels of the development of the soul.
Human beings then believe that there are three parts as a human being, the body, the mind and then the soul. The body is the physical part while the mind is the functioning of the brains, thinking and reasoning. When a person has to make choices, say, between killing a person and letting go of his life, he may have to go through a process of soul searching whether to take or spare the person’s life. The person might have decided to let go of the person. That part of him is the soul which might distinguish him from the other person who decided to kill with gratification by slashing the person’s throat or beheading him. The two different persons with two different choices indicated two different souls with different levels of development, kindness, loving-compassion and value for life. In some religion, it is believed that the body might have died and the mind might have ended but not the soul. The soul would live on after the demise of the body and the mind. In Hinduism, the soul was the Self or Atman which would never die. One would be reminded of the Bhagavad Gita, which was part of the Hindu epic Mahabharata, where Krishna convinced Arjuna that it was the duty of a warrior to fight the Dharma Yuddha or righteous war between Pandavas and Kauravas. The important part was the reason given by Krishna to Arjuna that he could never slay anyone because everyone had Atman which could not be slain including that of Arjuna himself. Atman or the Self which one could infer is the same as the Soul.
Atman was the Hindu core concept or thesis against which the Lord Buddha argued with the concept that all human beings were anata or anatman or non-permanent self which was one of the three elements of life, anicca, dukkha and anata. Anata was the impermanency of the self and ever changing which eventually would become emptiness or ultimately nothingness. This was a frontal attack on the concept of the Soul and the Self as being permanent. Anata or anatman was an anti-thesis of the thesis of Atman. Viewed in this context human beings and the human species are meaningless consisting of emptiness or nothingness. The corollary would be that life and living is just emptiness or nothingness. There is thus no significant meaning for existence whatsoever. Life is therefore not worth continuing because ultimately living has no substance and carries no significant meaning and purpose. If this is the case, one will have to argue, human beings are just temporary existence of a physical self where the mind dwells while the Soul or the Self are also just nothingness. Atman is thus the concept or thesis that is challenged by anata or anatman, the anti-thesis.
The question is whether this extreme reasoning is antithetical to the Middle Path as preached in Buddhism. This is arguably an ultimate way of looking at life and it is extreme, not the Middle Path. The Kalama Sutta outlines eight points not to believe anything told by anyone unless after earnest pondering and considering. One of the eight items is the saying of the Guru or famous learned man which would include sages of Buddhism which was not to be taken at face value but subject to consideration as to its tenability just the same. Based upon Kalama Sutta, the postulation of nothingness or anata or anatman should be scrutinized as to its validity and tenability. Indeed, in so doing, it would testify to faithful adherence to the teachings of the great sage, the Buddha, for not blindly taking the tenet without questioning.
The argument against such line of reasoning could be that if life is viewed as nothingness or if life is so empty and meaningless, why then should one continue to exist. If such is taken as the ultimate truth, then the introspection of “who am I; why am I here and what life is for “will be pointless. It is then useless to ponder about life anymore because there will not be any meaningful existence as human beings. In the final analysis, life is after all, nothingness or anata. The Soul or the Self is likewise nothingness. The question one can ask is whether such logic could be taken as ultimate negativism or escapism, i.e., from the mundane to spiritualism. And if anata is taken literally, even the spiritual realm is non-existent because of the state of being nothingness.
The perplexing question is how can one who ultimately is nothingness perceive oneself as nothingness? “Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could,” as a song goes. Nothingness cannot thus perceive nothingness! One may also want to ask whether the argument of nothingness which is ultimate and absolute would go against the belief that absolutely nothing is absolute. One would also be wondering whether absolutism is extremism. If that should be the case, one would be wondering further whether extremism is against the Middle Path. The Middle Path is the practice of moderation which is a modus operandi to achieve a goal. It is a process of moderation which would enable one to become more sanguine about success. But if the goal is absolute and ultimate, would it be contradictory that the Middle Path or moderation is employed to achieve absoluteness which is nothingness or anata or anatman? The Middle Path is thus a means to achieve an end of absolutism. How can one reconcile this internal contradiction will be a perplexing question. These are the issues or questions which need to be elaborated and explicated by Buddhist scholars who have a keener mind than that of the present writer who has been a Buddhist since a young age and used to ordain as a monk with son and grandson also used to ordain in the Buddhist order for a period of time. The questions raised are part of the process of trying to understand the teachings of the great Sage by following his instructions of enquiry in accordance with the eight items of Kalama Sutta.
It is to be noted here that the discussion above is concerned with a high-level of intellectual and spiritual contention of metaphysics and philosophy, the soul, the atman and anatman. This discourse is done by the high-level scholars and philosophers most notably the sages in religious order. It is a search for ultimate truth which may be too profound for ordinary people to comprehend. For the lay persons, there exist the teachings and practices of ordinary people who dwell in the mundane world. These ordinary people can be guided by the dharma of lay persons who still have duty towards family, society and country. The ultimate truth may serve a guiding light when darkness, excessive lust, greed and delusion