Of course you exist, don’t worry! If you didn’t, how would you know it? There wouldn’t exist anyone to know they don’t exist!
To put your existence to doubt is to prove it. Only one who exists may wonder whether they do or not!
Right?
Right… Unless our premise is wrong. A wrong premise may produce a perfectly logical wrong conclusion.
And what is our premise?
Our premise is the very question. To ask ‘Do I exist?’ is already to set yourself up for a wrong answer. The Buddha’s most life-changing teaching addresses this paradox. But we’ll get there in a bit.
This essay has 3 parts. First, we look at how language makes us hallucinate a virtual reality and traps us in it. Next, we’ll explore what a better representation of reality might be. The Buddha will offer profound insight here. Finally, we’ll take what we’ve learned and apply it to our ‘self’ – or to what we take to be our ‘self’.
By the time we’re done, you’ll see your true nature transcends all questions, words, and concepts you may aim at it. This is an insight powerful enough to change your entire experience of life.
But we’ll take things one step at a time. First, let’s deal with our collective hallucination.
Let’s talk about language.
(You can watch the video version of this essay on YouTube.)
I. LANGUAGE
Why should we discuss language in an essay about the self? Well, we can only speak about the ‘self’ within the limits of language. It is exactly these limits that get in the way of our understanding.
Language is founded on an assumption. It takes as a given that the world is made of ‘things’. And true enough, look around and you find all kinds of ‘things’.
But remember, to one holding a hammer everything looks like a nail.
Let me show you the problem with language with an allegory. A modern version of Plato’s allegory of the cave.
The VR Headset Allegory
Imagine a group of people who grow up with a virtual reality headset strapped to their heads. Unbeknownst to them, all they see of the world comes through the headset. And the headset has a low-resolution display. Since birth, its users only ever see pixelated images of the world – and of their own bodies. As far as they are concerned, they are pixelated people living in a pixelated world. They even dream of pixelated sheep.
Now, say one of these people loses her headset. In a terrible moment of revelation, she gazes out at the world with her naked eyes for the first time. The world, she discovers, is not made of tiny squares! The world is made of shapes and colours that flow into one another. And so is her own body!
In the early excitement of awakening, the woman runs to her group to share the good news. She shouts from the rooftops: ‘Nothing is pixelated – not even you!’
The response?
She is laughed at, of course – ignored at best – burned at the stake at worst.
And her peers are right to disbelieve her as they watch her pixelated form preach the unreality of pixels.
Tragic, I know.
But the real tragedy of the story is that the pixelated people are us.
Language = Virtual Reality
Language is a representation of the world composed of ‘things’. Anything can be a ‘thing’ (pun intended). Objects, events, processes, qualities… ‘Things’ are pixels language uses to put together a picture of reality. This compresses the complex terrain of existence down to a map. This map is perhaps the most useful tool we have. It allows us to make sense of the world, of ourselves, and even of things we cannot perceive with our senses.
The trouble comes when you stare at the map for so long, you forget there’s a terrain in the first place. You forget you are wearing a headset.
Take, for example, the laptop I’m writing these words on.
My Laptop Is A Fractal
My ‘laptop’ is the result of a web of causes and conditions. This includes its assembly, the manufacturing of its parts, the mining of minerals from around the world… My laptop is the work of designers, programmers, businessmen… It is the result of advancements in science and technology, market pressures, and cultural trends. Go back far enough and you find the atoms making up my laptop being born in the heart of a star.
What we take to be a ‘thing’, a ‘laptop’ is but a momentary phase of causal stream stretching all the way back to the Big Bang. It is a snapshot of a fractal web of relationships comprising all of reality.
Even this short analysis is a lot for the human mind. No wonder we prefer to simply say ‘laptop’. We prefer the map. But the longer we stare into the representation, the more we lose sight of what is being represented.
The distortion language creates is nowhere more important than in how it obscures our own nature. Language pixelates not only the world, but also us. It tells us we are a ‘thing’ – a ‘self’. This deeply engrained belief serves as the foundation of most we ever do. And most we suffer.
But what if it’s wrong?
How would life look like if we found our ‘self’ is a hallucination?
Before we explore this, one last point.
The Trap Of Language
In my attempts to show my laptop is not a ‘thing’, I still conceded to the limitations of language. I still listed a number of ‘things’: minerals, programmers, stars, and so on. We can, of course, analyse each of these down to its causes and conditions. But this would only produce more lists of ‘things’.
Such is the trap of language. It allows us to describe the world, yes – but only the world it is able to describe.
Now let’s see how reality might appear if take off the headset. Let’s see how you might appear.
Enter the Buddha.
II. INTERDEPENDENT ARISING
Unlike the woman in our allegory, the Buddha did not rush to share his insights. In fact, it took the pleading of the gods to convince him to teach others. Initially, he thought to himself:
This [insight] that I have attained is deep, hard to see, hard to realize … subtle, to-be-experienced by the wise.
Ayacana Sutta; SN 6.1
Notice the wording here. Awakening is ‘to-be-experienced’. What the Buddha discovered is incommunicable through language. It can only be seen by taking off the headset.
So, how are we to discuss Buddha’s insight if it’s ‘incommunicable through language’?
Well, metaphors help – and allegories. The world’s wisdom traditions love figurative language. By taking language to its limits – they point to what lies beyond those limits. Even then, the student needs to take the leap beyond concepts. He must walk without the map.
The Formula
Here is how the Buddha’s insight translates into language:
When this exists, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises.
When this does not exist, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases.
Pañcaverabhaya Sutta; SN 12.41
Every teaching of the Buddha arises out of this insight. The insight called Interdependent Arising.
Interdependent Arising sounds like a fancy term, but don’t get hung up on the words. The point is simple: every ‘thing’ arises due to causes and conditions.
My Laptop Is Still A Fractal
To have my laptop, you must have the factory where it was built and the workers who built the factory. You can’t see these workers when you look at my laptop, but they are there. They too are phases of that causal continuum which, at this point of space-time appears as my laptop. Some years ago, this continuum appeared as the construction of a factory. Some time after I’m done writing this, it will appear as an essay you are reading.
The point is, when you lift the veil of language, you don’t see ‘things’. You see a dynamic tapestry of relationships, constantly evolving and criss-crossing. You see a cosmic current of causal change.
This current forms patterns, like waves in a river. Language picks up on these patterns and draws boundaries around them. ‘This is a laptop. This is a factory. These are workers.’ Such classification is indispensable for understanding. But left unchecked, it becomes misleading. What we gain in understanding the parts we lose in understanding the whole.
Ying + Yang
Again:
When this exists, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises.
In other words, the ‘this’ is contained in the ‘that’ and the ‘that’ is contained in the ‘this’.
‘This’ and ‘that’ are separated only by the process of causation, but the process of causation is also what unites them. There is no ‘this’ and no ‘that’, really. No separation – no union even. The world is not made of things, not even of relationships between things.
The world is made of relationships between relationships. And no matter how much you zoom in, you only find more relationships.
You never find ‘things’.
Later Buddhism calls this thing-less-ness of the world ‘emptiness’. You can have a look at our deep-dive essay on that. The Buddha calls it Interdependent Arising.
The world as a fractal of relationships.
The Point?
Here you may think: ‘Great, but why should I care? What difference does it make whether the world is made of ‘things’ or ‘relationships’? My life remains the same either way.’
Well, the significance of all this appears when we look back at ourselves. Most our energy goes into thinking about, worrying about, and figuring out our ‘self’. This stands to change forever once we examine just whose life ‘our life’ really is.
III. YOUR ‘SELF’
The Buddha’s no-self teaching is the most profound analysis of the self from among all wisdom traditions. Encountering it may at first feel uncomfortable. What if it turns out we really don’t have a self? Our self feels threatened by this prospect.
You see the irony here.
The Buddha analyses personal experience in five dimensions. ‘The five clinging-aggregates’, he calls them. These are the most common targets of our clinging to self-identity. Let’s go through the aggregates one by one. As we do so, search for your own center of gravity. Search for where you feel your ‘self’ to be.
The Body
The first aggregate is our physical body. It is easy to take the body for a ‘thing’ and hence a ‘self’. The body has specific dimensions, it remains relatively the same for a relatively long time, and it seems to partake of our every experience.
But should you investigate it, you find the body is in a constant state of change. You find it is a web of complex processes you don’t even understand, let alone control. It is the result of eons of evolution and carries the features of countless ancestors.
In short, the body is not a ‘thing’, but a web of relationships, a cluster of causes and conditions. Your body is not your ‘self’.
Feeling
The second clinging aggregate is feeling. Here we identify with the experience of pleasure or displeasure. When dogs bring us pleasure, we think ‘I am a dog person’. When a bad smell brings us displeasure, we think ‘I hate this smell’. We project an ‘I’ onto the feeling.
We rarely reflect that our mom made us a dog lover. Or that our biology makes us enjoy some smells and hate others. We forget that what brings us pleasure or displeasure is a reflection of our genetics, upbringing, culture, and countless other factors.
In short, feeling is not a ‘thing’, but a constellation of relationships, the fruit of causes and conditions. Your feeling is not your ‘self’.
Cognition
The third clinging aggregate is cognition. Cognition is the field out of which language grows – and into which language plants its seeds. Cognition is the tendency to classify experience. ‘This is a shape. That is a colour.’ This comprehension of what we perceive can often feel as our self.
But look at this yellowish circle:
Can you now recognize this yellowish circle as a blueish triangle? You can’t because it is, in fact, a yellowish circle!
Cognition is a reaction of the mind to external stimuli. As such, it is a relationship between the external world and your body-mind. Could you have any cognition about the yellowish circle if you never had eyes? Unlikely.
In short, cognition is not a ‘thing’; it is a confluence of relationships. Your cognition is not your ‘self’. In fact, the very ideas ‘I am a self’ and ‘I am not a self’ are just patterns of cognition.
Volition
The fourth clinging aggregate is volition. Here we identify as our thoughts, words, and actions. Surely, you are the one who decides to keep reading this essay! To prove so, you can put away the essay at any time. There – you’ve made an intentional action – you exist and you are your free will!
But consider this: do you choose what you choose to do? Do you choose what you choose to say and think? Aren’t your choices the results of past experiences? Aren’t they a reflection of your environment, upbringing, and genetics?
If volition was an independent ‘thing’, nobody would ever struggle with temptation and addiction. People would just choose to choose what is good for them. But we do not choose what we choose. We simply choose and then search for ourselves in the choice. Hence, all the blame and guilt.
Rare are those who look for what stands behind a choice. And when they look, they find no ‘self’ there, but a labyrinth of relationships. They find people’s choices are as free as the apple seed’s choice to grow into an apple tree.
In short, intentional words, thoughts, and actions are a function of the world just as much as the world is a function of them. Your volition is not your ‘self’.
(You can read our essay on karma for more.)
Consciousness
The fifth and final clinging aggregate is consciousness. This is the most stubborn base for self-identity; especially in spiritual circles. ‘Surely, if nothing else is my ‘self’, then at least my awareness of experience should be it!’
But consider this: my dog, Barni, can hear a wide range of sounds I will never be able to hear. And I can see a spectrum of colours he will never be able to see.
It is not that Barni’s consciousness is different, it is not that this makes him one ‘self’ and me another. It is simply that our different body-minds allow for different experiences. Consciousness is simply the space in which body-mind and world encounter one another.
Consciousness is not a ‘thing’, but a property of the world. To identify with your knowing of experience is as absurd as identifying with the space in which you stand. Your consciousness is not your ‘self’.
The Dimensions Of I
Here, then, are the five aggregates: body, feeling, cognition, volition, and consciousness. The usual suspects for our ‘self’. All, we’ve seen, arise from causes and conditions and change when the causes and conditions change. For all, it applies that:
When this exists, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises.
When this does not exist, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases.
We’ve seen each of the five aggregates is the coming together of relationships. And the aggregates themselves stand in relationship to one another. Body affects cognition, cognition affects volition, volition affects feeling, and so on.
A Fractal Of Relationships
Zoom in and you see consciousness, zoom out and you see a person, zoom out more and you see a planet or a galaxy. But these different ‘things’ – consciousness, person, planet, galaxy – these are only different scales of one and the same phenomenon. This phenomenon is the cosmic flow of relationships, the stream of cause and effect connecting all of space-time.
Interdependent Arising.
So, is Interdependent Arising our true nature? Is it your true self?
This would be a satisfying conclusion. But to identify as Interdependent Arising is to fall for the last desperate attempt of language to impose itself on reality. To make a ‘thing’ of the emptiness of things.
The Buddha himself reminds us – Interdependent Arising is just words. It too is a map. It is a useful raft for taking you across the river. But once you cross, you leave the raft behind.
IV. DO YOU REALLY EXIST
A man called Vacchagotta once asked the Buddha point blank: ‘Does the self exits?’
The Buddha was silent.
Then Vacchagotta asked: ‘Does the self not exist?’
The Buddha remained silent.
Invalid Questions
There have been many interpretations of this, but my favourite is by Dr Peter Harvey. He compares Vacchagotta’s question ‘Does the self exist (or not)?’ to asking an innocent man ‘Are you still mistreating your wife?’.
There’s no right answer to such a question. To answer it is to submit to false assumptions.
To say I have stopped mistreating my wife is just as untrue as to say I am still mistreating her. I never have mistreated my wife. I don’t even have a wife.
Invalid Answers
But imagine I get distraught and go around looking for my wife, trying to make it up to her. This hopeless endeavour would occupy my entire life with worry for a made-up problem.
In the same way, we spend our lives searching for our ‘self’, using any means to satisfy and protect it. Of course, we never truly find that self, we never truly satisfy it, and we never quite manage to protect it. Our efforts remain as fruitless as trying to make peace with the wife you never had.
Or say we have a superficial understanding of Buddhism and we deny the self. We ignore the relationships between causes and conditions in our experience, we reject responsibility for our actions, we dissociate from our roles in family and society. These efforts remain as fruitless as trying to divorce the wife you never had.
Neither Nor
To say you don’t exist is just as untrue as to say you do. The former ignores the relationships between causes and conditions we call ‘I’. The latter ignores that what we call ‘I’ is relationships between causes and conditions.
Both arguments are stuck in the headset, they are arguments about the map without reference to the terrain.
But one day our headset slips. Our eyes meet the terrain for the first time, uncharted, untranslated, and unpixelated.
At that moment, there is no ‘self’ looking, seeing, and understanding; there’s no ‘thing’ being looked at, seen, and understood.
There is only the looking, only the seeing, and only the understanding.
Only relationship.
Questions such as ‘Do I exist?’ and ‘What am I?’ no longer apply. The pixels remain in the headset we have taken off.
A Good Map
This doesn’t mean language has to be done away with. Language is not only a representation of the world. It is also a representation of our thinking.
To get our thinking straight, we need to get our language straight. We need a good map. The Buddha’s Interdependent Arising is an attempt at such a map. And as a map, it has practical uses.
Once we see ourselves as a fractal of relationships, we don’t lose our agency. If anything, we become more skilled agents who better understand their role in existence.
To see the world’s interconnectedness unlocks new ways of living. We become more mindful and intentional in what we consume, how we spend our time, and what work we engage in. We see how our words, thoughts, and actions shape our private reality and our environment.
Our self-improvement is no longer separate from world-improvement. We realize it never was. We see the healing of ourselves and the healing of our environment as the same process at different scales.
We no longer need to tackle challenges directly and violently – we learn to work with the causes and conditions around our problems and see the problems resolve themselves.
We realize we do not exist within a family, culture, and planet. We realize we are co-extensive with our family, culture, and planet. With all of life, in fact. This makes us more responsible, more compassionate, and more engaged.
We realize the bombs falling on the other side of the globe are falling on our own heads.
Enjoy The View
Interdependent Arising does not annul our ability to think critically. If anything, it adds new depth to what we are able to think.
Freedom comes not with tearing up the map. It comes with realizing you can put the map away for a while and enjoy the view. And when you pick up the map again, you can alter it, make it a truer map.
Only after seeing past the limits of language do we begin to use the true power of words. Only then we remember why words were invented. To point to what lies beyond them.
The 3000 words I’ve used here are the map I hand to you. Imperfect as this map is, I hope it points you in a good direction.
And wherever you go from here, in this fractal we call life – remember to enjoy the view.
