No Self

In a famous passage from the classic Buddhist text, The Questions of King Milinda [ed. The Debate of King Milinda], a monk is talking with the king and trying to explain exactly this idea of not-self (in Sanskrit, anatman, literally not-self). The monk uses the simile of a horse-drawn chariot, but to make it more relevant, let's use a car. Same idea. As the monk might ask if he were around today: What is the car? Is the axle the car? Is one or all of the wheels the car? Is the engine block the car? Are the airbags the car? And so on.

Of course the answer is no, none of these things is the car. The "car" is merely a convenient container word for this set of systems that operates together in a way that, for a time, constitutes a car. But in reality there are only the systems; there's no actual car. If we were to replace each part, one by one, we could completely rebuild the thing. (If you've ever rebuilt an old clunker to drive, you know what replacing the thing one piece at a time is like. You've also discovered that buying the parts for a car costs sometimes like twenty times the cost of the whole car. This is an example of dukkha.) If you replaced every part, would it be the same car? Not physically. And you can't really say that it would be the same car because you would use it the same way. That's just its use, not its essence. That would be like saying that another person kissing your boyfriend or girlfriend is you, because he or she is doing the same thing you do. "That's another example of dukkha.)

This brings us to the self. Just as there is no car, there is no self. Take you, for example. Are you your liver? Your heart? Your skin? Your blood? Such things are constantly changing. They can't be you if you want to claim that you are a permanent thing. Let's cut to the chase: No part of you is you. Even your mind, which is what's left when we've discovered the various parts of your body are not you, is impermanent. Your thoughts are constantly arising and passing away.  Even your consciousness itself was simply not there before you were born. It didn't exist.  And after your death? Gone again. In fact it's gone when you fall into deepest sleep.  It's gone even during the day in those micromoments between thoughts. There are times when your very you-ness dissolves into a grainy mess of mere perceptions and apperceptions fleeting across a field of consciousness which itself disappears when it's not active.

There's a charming passage in an early sutra that lists the questions it is foolish to dwell on:

He may ask, "Did I exist in the past? Did I not

exist in the past? What was I in the past? How

was I in the past? What was I that led to me being

as I was in the past? Will I exist in the future? Will

I not exist in the future? What will I exist as in

the future? How will I exist in the future? What

will I be that will lead to me being as I'll be in the

Future?" Or he may be confused about right now:

"Do I exist? Do I not exist? What am I? How am

I? Where have I come from? Where am I going?"

 

Majjhima Nikaya

 

---Buddha In You Backpack, by Franz Metcalf---