[Buddha-l] query about a term in Japanese zen, translated as "soul" in one text.

[Richard Hayes]

On Jan 1, 2012, at 15:15 , Sally McAra wrote:

> After hearing a teisho about Bassui (downloaded from the Rochester Zen
> Center website, the first of a series of 5 talks on Bassui by Roshi
> Bodhin Kjolhede), I've been looking online at a book called "Mud and
> Water: The Teachings of Zen Master Bassui." (Bassui Tokusho, transl.
> Arthur Braverman)
> (see
> http://www.amazon.com/Mud-Water-Teachings-Master-Bassui/dp/0861713206#reader_0861713206
> )
> 
> In the introduction (p. 3) the word "soul" is used in recounting
> Bassui's inquiry: at a memorial service for his late father, he asked
> the officiating priest how his dead father could eat the food
> offerings on the altar. The priest told him that his father's "soul"
> would receive the offerings, and this led to Bassui's inquiry "What is
> this thing called a soul?"
> 
> Given the emphasis on "anatman" in Buddhism, I'm curious about the use
> of the English word "soul" in this translation and wondering if anyone
> familiar with the Japanese version of Bassui's biography that the
> translator is referring to might be able to tell me what the Japanese
> term was?

I am not sure what the Japanese term for "soul" would be, but I don't find the least bit of tension between the doctrine of anātman and referring to people having a soul. I think that the ātman that Buddhists disputed was something like personal identity, an enduring and indeed unchanging set of qualities that a sequence of moments have in common and that serves as the basis for the notion that a person remains essentially unchanged while accidental (that is, non-essential) qualia change. One can very easily argue against personal identity without having to reject the concept of a soul. All one needs is a notion of a constantly changing soul. Indeed, I think most Buddhists in India did have a concept very much like the concept of a constantly changing soul that one finds also in Western philosophy, that is, a set of events that are cognitive and connative in nature and that are not reducible to physical events. And as I understand it, East Asian Buddhists had no problem at all believing in a spirit of some sort that continued to function even after the physical heart stopped beating and a competent authority had pronounced the body dead.

As far as I can tell, the conviction that anātman involves a denial of a soul belongs solely to modern European materialists who themselves do not believe in a spirit or soul and hope to find antecedents for this non-belief in a soul in people whom they dismiss as primitive savages from long ago and far away. (I count myself among those modern materialists who deny that there is a soul or a spirit, but I do not count myself among those who would foist such a belief off onto Asian Buddhists, nor do I count myself among those who think of people from the past as primitive savages. To do so would be very poor scholarship indeed, and even worse philosophy. Mind you, I'm capable of very poor scholarship indeed and even worse philosophy, too. But I digress.)

I'm sorry that no one responded to your question, Sally. It deserves a good answer. And now that I have given a very bad answer, no doubt someone will come along and say something more satisfactory.

They also serve who just make stupid remarks that provoke others into speaking wisdom.

Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico