Here’s a bit more from Jay Garfield’s Losing Ourselves:
The ninth-century Indian philosopher Śāntideva argues in How to Lead an Awakened Life (Bodhicāryāvatāra) that our conviction that we are selves arises from a primal fear of death, and that we construct the idea of a self as a bulwark against that fear. Śāntideva also argues that the idea that we are selves arises primarily in emotionally charged situations, as when we perceive that we have been harmed, or when pride is aroused. It is then that we think not of our minds or bodies, but of we who possess those minds and bodies. David Hume adopts a similar view. He argues that the thought that we are selves is a product of the passions – that we posit the self as the object of pride and humility, and then reify it in thought. If anything like these analyses is right, the idea of self is grounded not in reason or perception, but in affect.
I’m not quite sure how these ideas fit in and around this work and research but I am struck by the feeling of a being a self only arising in particular circumstances: when threatened, anxious, proud, etc. That in moments other than these we are simply experience itself (and without a self that is experiencing).
References:
Garfield, Jay L. Losing Ourselves: Learning to Live without a Self. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022.
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