溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
Is the Body Like a Garment One Changes?
If the body is a garment the true self briefly wears — do I take this body to be my very self, or something worn?
As a man casts off worn-out garments and takes new ones…
The Gita's image — the body as a garment one changes — stands at one pole of the lineage split over the tie between body and self. The Indian tradition saw the true self (atman) as undying beyond the body, taking the body as a garment briefly worn, and this view grounded the thought of rebirth and liberation. The Greek Plato too believed in the soul's immortality and reached a kindred place. But an opposite lineage existed. Buddhism held there is no such unchanging self at all (anatta) — body and self alike are but a flow gathered by conditions. Modern materialism denied any self beyond the body, seeing mind as the working of the body. Am I something beyond the body, or the body itself? The lineage split.
The more an age grows the fancy of remaking the body and porting it into data, the more this question — am I the body, or something wearing it? — asks after the seat of the self.
To Arjuna, who hesitates to fight on the battlefield, Krishna divides the body from the true self (atman).
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
To Arjuna, who hesitates to fight on the battlefield, Krishna divides the body from the true self (atman). As a man casts off worn-out garments and puts on new ones, the indwelling self casts off worn bodies and takes new ones; the self is not cut by weapons nor burned by fire. I read this question as casting a radical doubt on the sense that identifies body and self. Yet can the body be regarded as merely a garment to shed? I feel this body to be my very self — is that feeling illusion, or truth? I stand between body and true self, before this question.
✍️Your Answer
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