What the Buddha seems to be rejecting in his teaching of anattā is the idea of self as some kind of command-&-control centre. “Self” as the one in charge, who is exercising her individual free will to make her way in the world. For certainly, when the Buddha introduces his teaching of not self, he links it with an absence of the kind of everyday control we take for granted as being exercised by who we think and feel we are. He is suggesting that our ordinary, everyday concept of ourselves as the one in charge is mistaken; that actually we are complex systems, networks of qualities of mind and body (“dharmas”) that are intimately related to each other.

In considering where the Buddha is coming from, we might begin with his politics. India during his lifetime was divided between the old tribal republics and the new centralised monarchies. The tribal republics were heirs to a tradition of face-to-face communal decision making, where unity emerged from the ground up through a process of consensus building. Unity was collective, found in the tribal assembly. The new monarchies were tyrannies, where unity was imposed by violence from the top down. Unity was singular, residing within a single person at the top of the pile, the king.

When the Buddha came to construct his sāsana, what we now call “Buddhism,” he quite deliberately rejected the monarchial model in favour of a unity that emerges from within complex networks. This is the model of the bhikkhu and bhikkhunī saṅghas, which, like the tribal republics, build unity from the ground up through complex webs of human relationships based on mutual respect and the quest for harmony. Unity is multiple, collective, and is characterised by harmony.

Anattā works on the same principle. “Not mine, not me, not myself” knocks out any potential tyrant, any aspect of oneself that might make a claim to ultimate power and alone define who “I” am and what this world is. In the absence of a tyrant, what’s left is a network of dharmas (qualities of body and mind), none of which are in charge, but all of which work together to create a viable collective unity.

Take, for example, the five “indriyas,” those of faith (saddhā), energy (viriya), mindfulness (sati), unification (samādhi) and wisdom (paññā), which together indicate a complex system of those aspects of the person which lead us from here to awakening. The word “indriya” is derived from “Indra,” who in the Vedic world was the king, the war leader, of the gods. “Indriya” means “associated with Indra,” “belonging to Indra.” The very word indriya suggests not one command-&-control centre — Indra, the boss, the one who imposes his will through violence — but a complex system of governing, leading, faculties.

And the Buddha is clear that these faculties must work together to find a harmonious balance between all their members. Faith works together with wisdom to create a balance between the affect/heart aspects of the person and the cognitive/mind aspects; while energy and unification work together to create a balance between the active, driving aspects of the person and the receptive, unifying aspects. The co-ordinating chairperson of this network, the one whose job is to facilitate these dynamic balances, is mindfulness, which replaces a single, domineering, Indra. In this system, harmony is central. Any imbalance between the dharmas creates a unity which is conflicted, dysfunctional — a person in dukkha.