I had the Buddhist view of the self re-explained to me the other day, it made a bit more sense this way.

The example I was given previously was by Alan Watts and was of a man in a railways station who buys a ticket, sits in the queue and then finally gets on a train and leaves.

The point Alan makes is that at each moment the man has extra experiences, his metabolism has moved on, he’s had extra thoughts about things, etc. So at no point is he a static entity, the man who buys the ticket is not the man who entered the station. The man who waits is not the man who bought the ticket, and so on. A consistent self is not present, as at each stage the man has changed in any number of small ways, and thus cannot present a consistent entity.

So I’m reading “An End to Suffering” by Pankaj Mishra, it’s an interesting read so far. It’s autobiographical and is covering a bit more of the history of the British and European discovery of Buddhism than I’ve seen elsewhere. The Buddhist view of the self is presented here by way of a short story, which uses the example of a chariot.

A chariot, like anything, is made from components. But no one component can be said to be the whole of the chariot.

The question is asked “Are the wheels the chariot?”, and answered “No”. Then, “Are the reins the Chariot?”, again the answer is “No”, and so on. It becomes clear that the chariot is really the relationship between it’s parts, it can only be said to exist when the parts are together.

The same is true of a person that we are truly the relationship between our physical and mental parts. My appendix for example, is not me, just one part of me. If I have my appendix (or tonsils) out, then I am certainly not the being I was before as I am minus some parts, but those parts cannot be said to be me.

Again the point is that my “self” is really the relationship between the constantly changing components of my body and mind, not anything concrete. But there is another dimension that the author has not touched on yet, which I think underpins Buddhist ethics. It’s something I’ve mentioned on here before, the South African principle of “Ubuntu” or “I am who I am because of who we all are”.

A very important part of the relationships that make me who I am is my relationship to my environment, the society I live in and to other people within those. This makes the precepts and the eightfold path even more urgent, as they not only change my body and mind relationship, but they directly change my relationship with these external things, thus not only changing who am I am, but ultimately who we all are.