doubtingt
Senior Member
The concept of a self presumes some form of permanence, so without permanence there is no real "self". The same goes for all "things". Things are defined by their stable properties. Without some stability they are not really "things". We use words and concepts to identify parts of the universe because doing so is useful and aids cognition. But in doing so, we sort of con ourselves into thinking that things are more stable than they are. We refer to "that stream" behind our house, even though from day to day, the water in it, the shape of its banks, the sediment that is there, is different than it was. In most ways (other than relative location), it is no more the same stream each day than it is the same stream as a stream in Japan.
In the same way, we largely ignore the fact that what we know, believe, feel, and do changes over our lives. We go to lengths to alter our current memories of our own past to make them more consistent with our present, in order to maintain a sense of stability that underlies our concept of self.
This is how Buddhism reflection on the "self" differ sharply from Christianity and Communism. First, Buddhism's notions are largely accurate in a scientific and psychological sense. Those of Christianity and Communism are not. Christianity actually promotes the illusion of self via the concept of the soul whose entire point is to create a quality that is permanent (unlike all actual qualities of people) and thus is the true "self". Besides being objectively wrong, its psychological impact is completely different than the illusion of self notion in Christianity. It makes people narcissisticly obsessed with themselves and making sure that self is ideal, meaning whatever the authorities tell you that self should be. The "sacrifice of self" in Christianity is actually all about narcissism. It is rooted in the idea that your true self is your permanent soul whose welfare your must make the focus of your every living moment by being obedient to the authority that decides its fate (which is all that is meant by "sacrifice"). It is almost the opposite of Buddhist notions, and there is nothing admirable, healthy, or positive about it, unless of course you are the authority that benefits from such obedience and people fearing the fate of their soul (i.e., self).
Communism's self-sacrifice is more like that of Christianity, which is why they both wind up promoting authoritarianism and irrational destructive obedience. In communism, it isn't a personal "soul" that matters but a kind of group soul, which is still conceived in terms of its permanence and its contrast with "the other". Also, in communism, the idea is that the obedience is to the will and interests of the group rather an individual authority. But in reality groups have no will because they are only a collection of individual person's whose will is a product of their brains. Thus, submission to the "group" always winds up being submission to individual authorities that control the group. So in practice, it is authoritarianism just like Christianity and all monotheistic religions. Note that in Buddhism, all authorities and all groups are also illusions. Thus sacrificing for those things makes no sense.