In academic spaces, Buddhism often arrives packaged as a religion, complete with rituals, monasteries, and elaborate cosmologies. Yet whenever I return to Buddhist thought in my own studies, I find myself less drawn to the religious imagery and more to its analytical power. Few traditions examine the structure of human experience with the same precision. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Buddhist teaching of anatta, the idea that the self is not the stable entity we imagine it to be.
This teaching raises a question that continues to motivate my research: if Buddhism can describe consciousness and identity in a way that parallels modern scientific findings, should we keep calling it a religion? Or does it function as something more like a psychological and philosophical partner to cognitive science?
The Difficulty of Categorizing Buddhism
Buddhism resists simple categorization. It contains devotional traditions, ethical guidelines, and ritual practices, but it also includes a strong philosophical core that treats human experience as something to be examined with clarity and critical insight. When I first learned about dukkha, the deep sense of dissatisfaction that permeates life, I was struck by how directly it speaks to the emotional tensions modern psychology tries to address.
This overlap is more than symbolic. Contemporary therapeutic approaches such as Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction explicitly draw on Buddhist meditation techniques while maintaining empirical frameworks. This integration suggests that Buddhism is not only a religious tradition but also a sophisticated inquiry into the mind, one that science continues to learn from.
What No-Self Really Means
The Buddhist idea of no-self, anatta, is often misunderstood as a denial of personhood. In reality, it is a challenge to the assumption that there exists an inner core that remains the same across time. Early Buddhist texts describe the self as a temporary arrangement of constantly shifting processes: form, sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. These Five Aggregates do not combine to produce anything permanent. They simply arise due to conditions and fade when those conditions change.
Understanding the self in this way changes how we interpret personal identity. Rather than seeing "me" as a fixed essence, Buddhism invites us to see identity as contingent and dynamic. This does not negate individuality. Instead, it reframes it as an ongoing process rather than a possession.
When Buddhism Meets Western Thought
When compared to the Western philosophical canon, Buddhism appears almost radical. Philosophers like René Descartes grounded identity in a stable "thinking substance" that persists independently of the body. Buddhist thought rejects this entirely. Yet in the landscape of contemporary cognitive science, Buddhism feels surprisingly at home.
Researchers like Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi describe the self not as an immutable core but as a structure generated through embodied experience. Gallagher's distinction between the "minimal self" and the "narrative self" demonstrates that our sense of being a self varies with context and is deeply tied to momentary consciousness. Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology echoes this view, emphasizing the body as the site through which we encounter and construct the world.
These perspectives align closely with Buddhist analyses, which also argue that subjectivity emerges from experiential processes rather than metaphysical essence.
Where the Dialogue Becomes Tense
Even with this convergence, Buddhism retains commitments that science typically avoids. Cognitive science describes how the self functions. Buddhism asks what this means for human suffering. According to Buddhist thought, any form of fixed identity leads to attachment, and attachment inevitably leads to suffering. This ethical dimension separates Buddhism from purely descriptive science.
Still, this is where the dialogue becomes fruitful. Buddhism pushes scientific discussions of consciousness to consider their philosophical implications. It asks whether understanding the self as constructed can change how we live, not only how we theorize. And scientific research, in turn, offers empirical tools that help clarify or test aspects of Buddhist psychology.
Where Science Steps Into the Conversation
Even though Buddhism is thousands of years old, its idea of the self lines up surprisingly well with what modern cognitive science says. Today, many researchers argue that our sense of self is not a stable essence, but a construction shaped by the brain, the body, and our environment.
Shaun Gallagher, for example, describes the "minimal self," a very thin sense of self that only exists in the present moment. It includes the feeling that I am the one seeing, thinking, or acting right now, but it does not claim that I have a permanent inner core. This fits very closely with the Buddhist view that selfhood arises only from temporary mental processes.
Phenomenologists like Merleau-Ponty and Zahavi also describe the self as something lived through experience rather than something hidden underneath experience. They emphasize that we understand ourselves through our bodies and actions, not through an abstract soul. Once again this resonates with Buddhist thinking, which has always emphasized lived experience over metaphysical speculation.
Where the Two Views Still Diverge
Even with all these similarities, Buddhism does something science usually avoids. It connects its theory of self to an ethical and existential goal. In Buddhism, understanding no-self is not only a description of how the mind works. It is also the key to ending suffering. If everything that builds the self is impermanent, then clinging to any fixed identity will always create frustration. Science can study how the self is constructed, but it does not usually ask what this means for liberation or well-being at the deepest level.
This is where Buddhism enriches the conversation. It brings together metaphysics, psychology, and practice in a way that challenges science to think more broadly about what it means to study the mind.
A More Nuanced Way of Understanding Buddhism
After exploring these ideas, it becomes difficult to define Buddhism in narrow terms. It is a religion for many, but it is also an analytic system capable of engaging with scientific research on equal footing. Instead of asking whether Buddhism is a religion or a philosophy, it might be more productive to see it as a tradition that bridges categories.
Its teachings illuminate the lived structure of consciousness. Its practices influence psychological interventions. Its metaphysics challenge the assumptions that underlie cognitive theories. And its ethical commitments offer direction for navigating the instability of human identity.
For me, this is where Buddhism's value becomes most apparent. It opens a space where scientific inquiry and existential reflection meet. It invites us to question the solidity of the self not as a purely academic exercise but as a way of understanding why we cling, why we suffer, and how we might live with greater clarity.
In that sense, studying anatta is not only an intellectual project. It is also a way of learning to see ourselves with a little more honesty and a little less rigidity, which may be one of the most meaningful dialogues between Buddhism and science today.
Buddhism in the End
After spending time with both Buddhist texts and scientific research, I find it almost impossible to give Buddhism a single label. It is a religion for many. It is a philosophy for others. It is also a psychological system that has made its way into therapy rooms and neuroscience labs.
Perhaps the more helpful answer is that Buddhism is a flexible dialogue partner for science. It offers insights that science can test, question, borrow from, and even disagree with. It also offers practical tools that can improve everyday life. And most importantly, it pushes us to rethink the very idea of who we are.
For me, this is what makes the conversation between Buddhism and science so fascinating. It invites us to loosen our grip on fixed identities so that we can see ourselves more clearly and live a little more freely.