Given the Buddha’s teaching on “not-self” (anattā), which seems to deny my existence as an individual person, what foundation is there for my sense of personal unity? For I need a sense of unity in order to function in the world. Otherwise, I’m still here, but fragmented, broken into conflicting desires and impulses.

In the discourse where he introduces his teaching of not-self, the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta (Characteristics of not-self), the Buddha speaks of the practice of not-self as the recognition of any experience as: “This is not mine;” “I am not this;” “This is not myself.”

This practice is ruthless. Whatever I experience is neither mine nor me. Everywhere I look, I find absence. Wherever I look, I don’t find someone I can identify with as me. And the Buddha does nothing, in this discourse, to fill this gap. The teaching is relentlessly negative — not mine, not this, not myself. Nothing is left standing. Read More...