{"id":165511,"date":"2023-06-10T20:23:31","date_gmt":"2023-06-11T01:23:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/eastern-philosophy-says-there-is-no-self-science-agrees"},"modified":"2023-06-10T20:23:31","modified_gmt":"2023-06-11T01:23:31","slug":"eastern-philosophy-says-there-is-no-self-science-agrees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/eastern-philosophy-says-there-is-no-self-science-agrees","title":{"rendered":"Eastern philosophy says there is no \u201cself.\u201d Science agrees"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Why does all of this matter? The unfortunate truth is that each of us will experience plenty of mental pain, misery, and frustration in our lifetimes. Mistaking the voice in our head for a thing and labeling it \u201cme\u201d brings us into conflict with the neuropsychological evidence that shows there is no such thing. This mistake \u2014 this illusory sense of self \u2014 is the primary cause of our mental suffering. When you can\u2019t sleep at night, is it because you are worried about a stranger\u2019s problems, or is it your problems that keep you up? For most of us, we worry about my work problems, my money problems, and my relationship problems. What would happen if we removed the \u201cself\u201d from these problems?<\/p>\n

I am distinguishing mental suffering from physical pain. Pain<\/em> occurs in the body and is a physical reaction\u2014like when you stub your toe or break an arm. The suffering<\/em> I speak of occurs in the mind only and describes things such as worry, anger, anxiety, regret, jealousy, shame, and a host of other negative mental states. I know it\u2019s a big claim to say that all these kinds of suffering are the result of a fictitious sense of self. For now, the essence of this idea is captured brilliantly by Taoist philosopher and author Wei Wu Wei when he writes<\/a>, \u201cWhy are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself \u2014 and there isn\u2019t one.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why does all of this matter? The unfortunate truth is that each of us will experience plenty of mental pain, misery, and frustration in our lifetimes. Mistaking the voice in our head for a thing and labeling it \u201cme\u201d brings us into conflict with the neuropsychological evidence that shows there is no such thing. This [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,224],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neuroscience","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}