This week's blogpost is from Browyn Finnigan, associate professor at Australian National University, on her recent publication Self-related processing removal or revision? The Buddhist theory of no-self and the mechanisms of mindfulness in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
There is strong evidence that mindfulness helps reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. But scientists are less certain about the mechanisms behind these effects. Inspired by the Buddhist idea of anattā, or no-self, some suggest that mindfulness works by attenuating or reducing all senses of self. Proponents argue that mindfulness fosters disidentification from one’s experience and reduces rumination, which plays a significant role in anxiety and depression. They infer that the benefits of mindfulness arise from decreasing rumination through a reduction in all kinds of ‘self-related processing’ (SRP).
Drawing on the research of Britton and Lindahl, I argue that there is little empirical evidence to support this broad proposal, and even some evidence to suggest that removing all SRP might have detrimental effects. SRP includes not just self-involved thinking, but also a minimal sense of being a subject of conscious experience and agent of one’s actions and decisions.
While evidence indicates that mindfulness reduces negative self-involved thinking, this does not imply a reduced sense of subjectivity. Some studies also suggest that the benefits of reduced rumination may arise not from a decrease in self-involved thinking, in general, but rather from a decrease in negative self-involved thoughts or a shift from negative to more positive self-concepts. These findings might seem to count against the Buddhist no-self view.
I argue, however, that the Buddhist doctrine of no-self need not be understood to recommend erasing all senses of self when operationalized as a mental health strategy. Alternative interpretations of this teaching allow for the conventional use of self-conceptions as skillful tools to reduce suffering and enhance well-being. For the same reasons, such interpretations can support revising one’s self-conception, from negative to more realistically positive. I further suggest that this perspective can be integrated within cognitive-based forms of mindfulness practice.
Changing negative self-conceptions is notoriously difficult, in part because they often reinforce themselves. Believing that one cannot perform well in some domain, such as public speaking, can undermine effort in that area, leading to poor results that seem to confirm the original belief. I propose that the Buddha’s teaching of no-self might support revision in negative self-beliefs in at least two ways.
First, the Buddha’s claim that we lack a fixed, unchanging self but are instead a highly complex causal series of impermanent psychological and physical states may help loosen our attachment to rigid self-conceptions.
Second, the way we think about ourselves has a causal impact on our actions. Since there is strong evidence that positive self-conceptions contribute to better health outcomes, we have good reason to cultivate more positive views of our abilities, even if our immediate experience does not yet fully reflect them.
While the science remains unsettled on whether eliminating all senses of self yields mental health benefits, I show that the Buddhist teaching of no-self need not be operationalized in this way. Alternative interpretations are available that align more closely with existing findings. Overall, there are many more possibilities available for developing a Buddhist-inspired account of mechanisms of mindfulness.