From Mooc on Religion offered by Harvard University

On Reality of Self

Question 2: The Buddha makes the claim, which may draw some support from modern psychology, that the self does not exist. Describe the self that the Buddha says does not exist and explain the Buddha's principal argument against it. Do you agree or disagree with the Buddha’s argument that this kind of self doesn’t exist? Or are you unable to take a position? Give two specific reasons for your view, and explain why your reasons support either the existence of the self or the non-existence of the self, or why they explain why you are unable to take a position on the question.

There is a lot of discrepancy between modern psychologies theories of self and Buddhist thought concerning the existence of “self”.  Given that self is a construct of modern society, it is likely that the existence of self is also a construct.  That is, Buddha was correct in the assumption that the concept of self is an illusion or experience of something that is not indeed real, but rather imagined.

The self in modern psychology is often described as the affective or cognitive representation of identity.  Self takes into account the differences in the subjective knower, “I” and object of knowing, “Me”.  The “I” is the doer, the one in control of knowing.  The “Me” is the experience, the one who gets known.  Modern psychology also draws a reference between the ego and the id, the part of our identity that proclaims or defines who we are and the part of the identity who is observed.  The very act, however, of realizing that this explanation of self is “modern” indicates that the definition is new.  New ideas, while not always without enduring merit, infer from their newness a place history from which the idea did not exist.  It is a new construct or representation of something that we are pondering as a society.

Buddhism, on the other hand, resists the inclination to define observation in new terms.  Rather, it utilizes mindfulness meditation techniques that are designed to observe without formal words.  One could infer that the process of observing is carried out by the “I” who observes the “Me”, but Buddhism would say that there is not “Me” that is within the frame of our own bodies.  Rather, that as one experiences mindful meditation one comes to realize that the object of suffering arises from our own desires to be.  While one can argue that the “I” can be the driver of desire and the “Me” confined in the frame of the body, mindfulness leads us to a realization that nothing really exists.  The perception of “I” and “Me” is not a reality but a fleeting, temporal experience associated with the tbody that disappears in death and/or realization.  

Take for instance the experience of a person dying.  People working with the dying observe their sense of “self” disappears as the inevitability of death approaches.  Great effort must be taken for a dying person to reconnect with loved ones in the moments before death.  If “self” is real and exists, then how does the perception of it disappear during the process of dying?

Additionally, near death experiencers express a moment of feeling larger or greater than their own physical being.  Studies with the brain indicate there are moments during a stroke where one side of the brain takes over.  When that side is experienced by an individual, it feels like an experience of being beyond the body.  This experience indicates that there is a function of our brains that maintains our knowledge within the body, but that the possibility of experiencing and acknowledging a reality beyond ourselves is possible if these limitations are not present.