A Māori Perspective on Mind, Body and Self

In this essay I use tikanga or concepts to define the thinking of a contemporary bicultural Māori/Pākehā native of New Zealand/Aotearoa. Both ethnicities have differing prescriptions for identity. That is why I use the philosophy of the colonisers (Pākehā, non-Māori stock) and colonised (mātauranga Māori), to reveal “mind, body and self” from a uniquely South Pacific perspective. I find in contemporary Indian philosophy, in particular the referents “this” and “I” of K.C. (Krishna Chandra) Bhattacharyya, that there are close parallels with a whakataukī or proverb of the Whanganui tribe of Aotearoa/New Zealand, that expresses the “common” relationship with their river. Here the “I” is subsumed in the communal Māori “we.” Using mātauranga Māori, linguistic logic and Indian philosophical insights, I suggest both entities’ identities can be dissolved and equated with the Absolute. And using the Māori concepts of “mind” and “time,” I show that the Māori “self” can only be known as an integral part of the communal “we,” which includes seeing past ancestors’ actions as part of the present.