The word anatta gets translated in a lot of different ways. You will hear people say that “there is no self,” or “self is an illusion.” Sometimes it’s translated as “not self.” This is on its face very counterintuitive, because I certainly feel like I’m a “me,” and that all of you are “you.” When I have an itch I don’t scratch your cheek, I scratch my cheek. There seems to be a boundedness to this experience, and so it’s kind of baffling when somebody says there is “no self.”
I’m going to try to untangle that bafflement. What the term “not self” is pointing to is not something that you should believe or a view you need to adopt. It’s a signpost for something that we can see in our own meditative experience. The world appears very solid and stable, but when we look much more closely, we can see that almost everything is a process. Even our bodies, which have structure to them, are made up of cells that are always changing. What appears to be solid and stable is actually a process.
The Buddha observes this about the whole world. Everything is process. All things, all conditioned phenomena are empty of any sense of self. There are mental activities that create the sense of a self: thoughts like “this is happening to me,” or “I shouldn’t feel this way.” These narratives help form the feeling of identity. When we get still and quiet though, we might get a glimpse of a moment where there’s no one at the center needing to defend or define anything.
Over the course of this four-week series, we’ll be exploring this teaching of anatta more deeply. We’ll see what happens when we ask: What is the self, really? What might open up if we’re willing to let that question remain a living inquiry?
With warmth,
Gullu