"Cogito ergo sum"

Unbeknownst to me, my friend Siew recently went into coma just before the Chinese New Year celebrations (that's another tale altogether) and woke up a few days later with total memory loss. She has since then, thank god, fully recovered. Interestingly enough, during her amnesia, she remembered enough to write on a piece of paper the words, "Who am I?"

One friend, Connie, commented that despite having no memory of her life, by those words, Siew proved that she knows she exists. And thus, Connie concluded that this episode has perhaps bring us a step closer to understanding and believing in the long and endless debate of the existence of a soul.

A "soul", as defined in www.dictionary.com, can be described in the following ways:
1. The animating and vital principle in humans, credited with the faculties of thought, action, and emotion and often conceived as an immaterial entity.
2. The spiritual nature of humans, regarded as immortal, separable from the body at death, and susceptible to happiness or misery in a future state.
3. The disembodied spirit of a dead human.

This brings to mind Rene Descartes, also known as the father of modern philosophy. Descartes suggests that there is no knowledge that can be guaranteed. He couldn't even be certain that his body was real but he could be certain that his thoughts existed!

How could he be certain? Descartes postulates that doubt is a kind of thinking. And trying to doubt that one is thinking disproves that doubt! Follow me so far? Essentially what he means is that the awareness of thought comes first. And that thought proves that he exists. But it does not work the other way round i.e. the awareness of his existence first allows him the faculty of thought because when you become aware of your existence, you have already started thinking!

Hence,
"Cogito, ergo sum" ~ or in Latin "I am thinking, therefore I exist", or traditionally "I think, therefore I am".
~ Rene Descartes

Descartes went on to suggest that humans are dualist beings ~ of spiritual minds or souls inhabiting material bodies. And these bodies are like machines and will eventually perish. But our minds live on. Our minds are immortal.

But Buddhism denies the existence of an unchanging and eternal soul created by God.

According to Buddhism mind is nothing but a complex compound of fleeting mental states. One unit of consciousness consists of three phases -- arising or genesis (uppada) static or development (thiti), and cessation or dissolution (bhanga).

Immediately after the cessation stage of a thought moment there occurs the genesis stage of the subsequent thought-moment. Each momentary consciousness of this ever-changing life-process, on passing away, transmits its whole energy, all the indelibly recorded impressions to its successor.

Every fresh consciousness consists of the potentialities of its predecessors together with something more. There is therefore, a continuous flow of consciousness like a stream without any interruption. The subsequent thought moment is neither absolutely the same as its predecessor -- since that which goes to make it up is not identical -- nor entirely another -- being the same continuity of kamma energy. Here there is no identical being but there is an identity in process.

~ Buddhism in a Nutshell by Narada Thera

Confused? Me too. Essentially, my understanding of this concept is that the mind is a series of continuous thought-moment that lives and dies and transmits its whole energy with all the previous memory to the next thought moment.

But if a soul does not exist, what is reborn then?

According to Buddhism, when life ceases the kammic energy re-materializes itself in another form. As Bhikkhu Silacara says: "Unseen it passes whithersoever the conditions appropriate to its visible manifestation are present. Here showing itself as a tiny gnat or worm, there making its presence known in the dazzling magnificence of a Deva or an Archangel's existence. When one mode of its manifestation ceases it merely passes on, and where suitable circumstances offer, reveals itself afresh in another name or form."

It's an interesting concept. But in applying this concept to the episode that Siew had experienced, does this mean that what she wrote was just kammic energy that continuously and actively lives, dies and transmits itself to the next thought process? And while she was in a coma, can we assume that the kammic energy continues to work. How then does one explain the temporary amnesia? The mind boggles with this concept. But such concept has its support in today's science, which has discovered that atoms are divisible and destructable and in the course of those processes, energy is created and passed on. How that works beats me. It is interesting food for thought though ... isn't it?

Have a good weekend while we ponder the existence of our souls and minds.