무아(無我)에 대한 신경과학적 성찰

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Human beings are incapable of feeling or knowing the world right with their sensory-physical or memory- perceptive abilities, but we are inevitably dependent on our abilities to sense and judge in the course of life. There is an self called “I” at the basis of all these. In recent years, the field of neuroscience has agreed on the idea of non-self or selflessness, which has long been an argument of Buddhist philosophy. In this position, this study set out to examine the selflessness idea argument of Buddhism and the selflessness argument of neuroscience-based on their connections. The findings show that human beings are open connections linked to their external environments across all dimensions, and it is in line with the law of causality in Buddhism. The brain is an evolutionary product for human survival. Being unable to connect to an outside world directly, the brain processes information coming through the sensory organs and depends on the world of old experiences to predict the future. It is thus necessary that the brain creates fiction. A self is also fiction and a concept created in this process. These findings are in the same vein as the idea of ignorance or saṃskṛta in Buddhist philosophy. On the premise of the limitations inherent in the human existence that cannot escape from its self, it is thus important to make constant efforts for self-improvement with an self as a raft toward selflessness to live in a more developed state. When such efforts are made, self-improvement will reveal itself in the form of merciful relationship improvement. This means that human beings should achieve selflessness practice by consciously creating an environment in which they can form merciful relations and full empathic relations with all things in the world including people. This is a practice that should be done in the education field more than any other social field.