Alzheimers and Dementia in Buddhism
When we are born we have no fixed identity, no acquired preferences, no defined personality, no psychological habit patterns, no self-image, no favorite memories, no relationships, no sense of self, no friends or enemies and no story of "me" or "my world".
By age 85 studies indicate that fifty percent of the elderly suffer from some form of dementia like Alzheimers. Slowly the mind returns to that mental status of a new born baby, but now due to having a very unhealthy brain.
The self, the "me", identity and personality that took a lifetime of conditioning to develop begins to unravel. At death all the qualities of personality and self identity cease suddenly and forever. The personal self never existed as other than a story the brain/mind generated over a lifetime. It doesn't ever really exist even during a healthy person's lifetime.
The self is no more than a collection or assemblage of several mental processes supported and maintained by brain function. Damage the brain and the "self" can be radically altered, permanently. This is what happens progressively in Alzheimers.
The Buddha taught that our sense of self, individuality and personality are merely the assemblage of many mental abstractions, fictional beliefs, memories and conditioning, and that it is the psychological story "about" that imaginary self that is causing all our emotional suffering.
The belief in a personal self is the mind's main mistaken fiction. It's not a person, it's just an ongoing collection of thoughts and memories but with "no one" actually "in there".
The Buddha said it's the same with the fictional belief in being a spiritual soul who escapes the death of the body with its personality and sense of self-identity fully intact.
Many who have witnessed the progression of Alzheimers in a family member, friend or patient; knows how the individual person" slowly disappears. The Buddha pointed out emphatically that all compounded aggregates of every kind are impermanent or "anicca" in Pali. The personal identity or mental self, decays overtime and finally fades away forever. That proves that no independent, inherently existing self or person ever existed in the first place; it only seemed to; and that is the realization of "no self" or anatta in Pali.
The personal self is only a collection of conditioned responses and memory traces that are subconsciously projected into consciousness, like the person you seemed to be in last night's dream. Your waking "self" is equally imaginary and unreal as well as the other "individuals" you seem to have relationships with.
This imaginary self (our only personal self) could not possibly ever attain enlightenment anymore than your self from last night's dream could.
Besides this imaginary self, there is no other real personal self-identity in the mind for it to discover. When the mind sees there is no real self; it ceases the subconscious projection and "you" disappear, just like at death or final stage Alzheimers. That's the end of the personality and all sense of being an historical self entity that "had a body and personal life" are gone.
But the Buddha didn't stop there. In Buddhism we explain that at death all that was impermanent ceases, however that which is not impermanent remains as it can't cease, decay or die. We call that the Dharmakaya or Mind of Clear Light. It's nature is permanent Nirvana.
It's the ever-present background "Knowingness" that has no individual personality, no preferences, no historical identity, no form, no self, no story, and no location in space or time.
Although it is void of all personalization, individuality and afflictions, it is not void of its own positive qualities of beingness, omniscience, total peace, unconditional love and bliss. In Dzogchen it is referred to as the "ground of being" (Zhi) or the "All Good, Samantabhadra" as the primordial Buddha; our true nature. The "self" can't get glimpses of this at any time, but only in its own absence is It known. (the "self" actually is only a stream of thoughts that can't "glimpse" anything anyway)
In the Dhammapada, the Buddha explains the notion of Nirvana thus:
"There is that dimension where there is neither earth, nor water, nor fire, nor wind; neither dimension of the infinitude of space, nor dimension of the infinitude of consciousness, nor dimension of nothingness, nor dimension of neither perception nor non-perception; neither this world, nor the next world, nor sun, nor moon. And there, I say, there is neither coming, nor going, nor stasis; neither passing away nor arising: without stance, without foundation, without support [mental object]. This, just this, is the end of stress (suffering) ."
From Sri Lankan Buddhist Master Niyananda:
"If, for instance, a vortex in the ocean comes to cease, can one ask where the vortex has gone? It will be like asking where the extinguished fire has gone. One might say that the vortex has 'joined' the ocean. But that, too, would not be a proper statement to make. From the very outset what in fact was there was the great ocean, so one cannot say that the vortex has gone somewhere, nor can one say that it is not gone. It is also incorrect to say that it has "joined" the ocean.
A cessation of a vortex gives rise to such a problematic situation. What, in short, does it amount to? The vortex ceased and now 'became' the great ocean itself? That is the misunderstood significance of the comparison of the emancipated one (a Buddha) to the great ocean.
But when one thinks of the relation between the vortex and the ocean, it is as if the realized practitioner has become one with the ocean. But this is only a mis-turn of speech.
In reality, the vortex is merely a certain momentary state of the ocean itself. That momentary state (a personal self) is now no more. It has ceased. It is because of that momentary altered state and its whirling self-grasping that there was a manifestation of suffering (and the personal self).
The cessation of suffering could therefore be compared to the cessation of the vortex, leaving only the great ocean as it is.
Only so long as there is a whirling vortex (conceptualizing mind) can we point out a 'here' and a 'there'. In the vast ocean, boundless as it is, where there is a vortex, or an eddy, we can point it out with a 'here' or a 'there'.
Even so, in the case of the saṃsāric individual, as long as the whirling round is going on in the form of the vortex, there is a possibility of designation or naming as 'so-and-so' (identity). But once the vortex has ceased, there is actually nothing to identify with, for purposes of (personal) designation. The most one can say about it, is to refer to it as the place where a vortex has ceased.
Such is the case with a Buddha too. Freedom from duality is the cessation of the vortex itself (the conceptualizing mind and it's imaginary self).
We have explained on a previous occasion how a vortex comes to be. A current of water, trying to go against the mainstream, when its attempt is foiled, in clashing with the mainstream, gets thrown off and pushed back, but turns round to go whirling and whirling as a whirlpool. This is not the norm. This is something abnormal. Here is a distortion resulting from an (the egoic mind) attempt to do the impossible (to survive as a self). This is how a thing called 'a vortex' (samsaric mind and self) comes to be."
"Yā c' eva kho pana ajjhattikā paṭhavidhātu, yā ca bāhirā paṭhavidhātu, paṭhavidhātur ev' esā. Taṃ n' etaṃ mama, n' eso 'haṃ asmi, na meso attā 'ti evam etaṃ yathābhūtaṃ sammappaññāya daṭṭhabbaṃ."(from the Buddha)
"Now whatever earth element that is internal, and whatever earth element that is external, both are simply earth element. That should be seen as it is with right wisdom thus: 'this is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.'"
The implication is that this so-called individual, or person, is in fact a vortex, formed out of the same kind of primary elements that obtain outside of it. So then, the whole idea of an individual or a person is a mere momentary self-illusion. The notion of individuality existing in beings is comparable to the apparent individuality of a vortex. It is only a pretence. That is why it is called asmimāna, the conceit 'I am'. In truth and fact, it is only a conceit."
In Dzogchen, Essence Mahamudra and Zen; we point out the cognitive presence of Nirvana as that seeming immanent/transcendent, impersonal, background knowingness from where one is always, already "Seeing".