In Search of No-Self

[One of my first meditation teachers,] Joseph Goldstein, studied seven years in India [with] a Bengali man named Anagarika Munindra. Munindra had an encyclopedic knowledge of Buddhist psychology that filtered directly into Joseph's understanding. At the heart of Munindra's understanding was the peculiar notion of

, or no-self, the central psychological idiom of Buddhism.

This seemed like the ultimate trick to me, a psychology without a self behind it. In the teachings, the self was like those

[Indian shawls] that Joseph's friends draped over themselves. It might give comfort sometimes, but we could just as well take it off. Like a snake's worn-out skin, or the food in the monkey's closed fist, this self was insubstantial and could simply be dropped.

I was intrigued, puzzled, curious, and determined to know more. I peppered Joseph with questions that began to have a familiar ring. My biggest and most recurring question in those years ran something like this: "If there is no self, then who is meditating right now? If there is no self, then who is watching this process? If there is no self, then whose knees are hurting?" This was not only my recurring question but everyone else's as well.

In a Buddhist text known as "The Questions of King Milinda," the sage Nagasena attempts to address this problem by asking the king how he traveled.

"Did you come on foot, or in a carriage?"

"I did not come on foot, reverend sir, I came in a chariot."

"If your majesty came in a chariot, explain to me what a chariot is," Nagasena replied, zeroing in on what has become a traditional Buddhist symbol of the self. "Can the chariot-pole be the chariot, O king? Is the axle the chariot? Are the wheels, or the frame, or the banner-staff, or the yoke, or the reins, or the goad, the chariot?" To each of these questions the king responded in the negative. "Then, O king, is the chariot all these parts? Well, O king, is the chariot anything else than these?" Again the king said no. "O king, I ask and ask you, and do not perceive a chariot. Is 'chariot' anything but a mere word? What is chariot in this matter?"

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