(No)Self

Our reading after meditation tonight made me realize how very little I know about Buddhism.  In the current chapter of “Ending the Pursuit of Happiness”, Barry Magid compares the Buddhist view of self to the self of psychoanalysis.

The first startling revelation to me was that for Buddhists the concept of “self” is empty.  Instead of a soul or self existing in a being, nothing that is permanent or stable can exist in something that is always subject to change, death, and decay.

That’s a lot to process.  I had always thought of my self as something as defined at birth as my dog Jake’s smell.  I had a stack of words to describe my self, including my name, my race, my ancestry, etc.  But since I am told I am “becoming continuously”, I can have no self.  

I’m sure it’s just a matter of semantics, but sometimes those Buddhists do make things difficult in their interpretation of life in the present moment.