How many selves does a person have? I guess that's a redundant question as far as Siddhartha Gautama is concerned in terms of how his Buddhist philosophy defines the word 'self'.
Buddhism teaches us there is no 'self' in the traditional way the word is meant. Putting aside all intellectual gymnastics with the word 'self', I have wondered how to explain the existence of two states in my mind that I would like to call 'selves' without seeking its meaning in terms of the generally accepted linguistics and semiotics.
Why I have a concern here is because I have a mind that I can control sometimes but not all the time. When someone treats me unkindly, the bitter aftertaste remains for a few hours unless I look at my mind through the technique of stepping outside of myself and looking at myself as if it was another self, another human being, a living object that is separate from myself. My mind then calms down.
But if I look at the world while involved and consumed by my feelings and emotions, all sorts of stress and depression linger, the effects taking over my mind, and me becoming a self who is feeling dejected and depressed because I let the emotions overwhelm me and become me.
I guess I should be glad that I am able to get my mind to switch between these two states which makes me able to survive without having a scary feeling that I might not be able to function as an individual human being without psychiatric medication.
Just a thought: deliberately or not I use the present tense when referring to people and other organisms such as I have here referred to in the case of Siddhartha the Buddha. From a traditional point of view he may not be walking on Earth now but I believe he is now one with the universe.
My belief that this universe is a conscious (in its unique sort of way and not in the way we sentient beings perceive) singular system with interconnected parts makes me feel that there is only one single larger 'self' - the universe itself - and on this occasion I don't refer to the 'self' as a state of mind. While language has enabled miracles among humans, due to these hiccups, I still find language something that is difficult to employ because of all the sorts of meanings words can represent depending on their use in a particular context.
As a pantheist like Siddhartha, I feel a certain comfort that when I die a bodily death, I as the universe will go on forever. But my experience may be different. I may engage in loving myself but not looking forward to sex because ultimately I feel weird with the concept of having sex with myself if there indeed exist ways to do that after I become one with the universe. Yet still this idea of me being the universe gives a certain kind of happy thought and spiritual pleasure.
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