Do Others Exist?: Buddhist Perspectives on “The Other”

From my perspective as a Buddhist, I have to say that all the questions about “the other” are secondary questions, not the primary question or the primary reality. When we begin to perceive and talk about others, we are in the realm of duality. Therefore, we are already removed from the clear, basic awareness that surrounds and supports our projection or creation of the seeming reality of self and other. While this point may seem subtle and esoteric, it is actually completely basic. If we assume the existence of self and other as separate, metaphysically real entities and take that as the starting point of our discussions, our discussions will be limited and unsuccessful in my view. We are starting our discussions at a point well into a process, without ever becoming grounded in the underlying realities. We need to look into what precedes duality, not as a temporal absolute beginning, but in the moment by moment flickering of consciousness. We need to understand that there is an “other” only in the experience of a self, that self and other are co-created or, in better Buddhist language, arise together. And, we need to understand that, at least in Buddhist terms, duality is a secondary and somewhat mistaken perception. While it is important and useful to talk of self and other, such talk needs to be put in proper perspective, to be grounded in fleeting awareness of the vast space in which self and other co-arise.

I understand that these claims are very much against everyday assumptions about the nature of reality. Usually, we take ourselves to be the center of the world and experience others as momentary, sometimes pleasing, sometimes unpleasant or painful, arisings in our consciousness. But, we also assume that others, like ourselves, are separate, fixed, and metaphysically real entities. The profundity of the Buddhist message is to challenge as fundamentally erroneous these views to which we are so habituated about the substantiality of self and other and about the ultimate reality of duality. Buddhism also challenges us to recognize that these fundamentally mistaken views are the source of our misery, much of which arises from our unsatisfactory relationships with “the other.”

In addition to my training as a Buddhist, I have also been deeply influenced by other streams of thought that are deeply suspicious of duality. Especially in the early literature of the second wave of feminism, sexism and male dominance were often analyzed as the results or the expression of the “othering” of women, of the way in which men, who created culture and thought, experienced and saw women as “the others,” the ones who were different and perhaps not even completely human. This was a powerful explanatory tool for many of us, helping us understand why we so often felt like outsiders and victims in a world that was male-dominated despite a superficial rhetoric of equality. We were always associated with the downside of a long list of dualities. Duality quickly became the code word explaining what was wrong with conventional ways of thinking and acting. ¹

I will claim, as a Buddhist and as a feminist, ² that, when we seek to understand otherness and “the other” and relate with them, whether or not we consider duality to be ultimately real and the underlying fact of our existence could make a great deal of difference. It will be harder to solidify and demonize “the others” if we recognize that duality is ultimately only apparent, that all persons and all things live and move and have their being in an interdependent matrix of nonduality. It will be harder to categorize them as sub-human and to set artificial limits to their humanity and their achieving. Even if nonduality is not seen as more logical and persuasive than some form of dualism as the ultimate reality, which would probably be the case for most monotheists, it is nevertheless important to understand that, by any analysis, self and other are interdependent and co-arising, not separate and independent. [End Page...