What if the self doesn't exist?
Philosophy Curriculum #43: on the Buddha's "no-self" and the wanting that comes with it
Selfish. Self-centred. Self-absorbed.
None of us would want to be known for any of these words.
On the other hand, there’s the label we’d all happily wear: selfless.
Isn’t it odd how our language assumes we have a self? One we either centre ourselves around or one we rise above. And isn’t it just a little curious how all of these words give us a signal, a moral one, as to how good or not a person is? As in how good a person is can be known by their relationship with their self?
But does the self actually exist?
The idea of one - a self, a soul, an essence, whatever you want to call it - is so ingrained in me that it's the one thing I'd never thought to question...until I started reading around Buddhist philosophy. Instead of asking what is the self, what is it for, where does it direct us, they ask - quite directly - whether its there at all.
If there is a self, where is it, they ask. Point to it. Show me.
So I turned inward (admit it, you’ve done the same as you’ve read this) and went looking for the thing I could land on and say: there, that’s it. My constant me. The essence of my being, the thing that’s stayed the same for all 39 years. Let’s just say I’m still looking.
Because as I read around this question, my idea of what a self could be sort of collapsed. Our self, according to the Buddha, isn’t one permanent unchanging thing. Instead, we are a collection of a bunch of things that are constantly changing. We are our bodies, feelings, perceptions - all things that change from one moment to the next. Even our awareness, the thing that notices, that thinks, our consciousness - isn’t the self because without anything to think, notice, or be aware of, it’s not there - it’s notably absent. So how can something that can be there one minute and gone the next be the thing that we point to and define as our permanent unchanging self?
“Just as that what we designate by the name of ‘chariot,’ has no existence apart from axle, wheels, shaft, carriage, and so forth; or as the word ‘house’ is merely a convenient designation for various materials put together after a certain fashion so as to enclose a portion of space, and there is no separate house-entity in existence:-in exactly the same way, that which we call a ‘being,’ or an ‘individual,’ or a ‘person,’ or by the name ‘I,’ is nothing but a changing combination of physical and psychical phenomena, and has no real existence in itself.”
[The Word of Buddha, ed Nyanatiloka]
We can rummage all we like but, according to the Buddha, we will never actually find this idea of a constant, unchanging, "self." He's slippery on the direct question of whether it's there at all - despite what the quick philosophy takes will tell you, he doesn't actually say outright that there is no self. What he gives us instead is anatta - usually translated as "no-self," though "not-self" sits closer to it.
If the Buddha's right, and there's no fixed self to find, then what does that do to the moral signalling of selfishness or selflessness?
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