DALAI LAMA ON THE SELF

In a dharma talk from Dharamsala, India, on December 19-20, 2011, the Dalai Lama talked about the nature of the self.  "Who do we mean when we say 'I?'" he asked.  For instance, the "I" we are as a baby is not the same "I" we are as an adult.

He went on to present the well-known analogy of a cart, pointing out that a cart is made of parts, the wheels, the box, the pull bar, and so forth.  In the same way, a person, an "I," is made up of components.  They are called "skandhas" in Buddhism.  These are (1) the body, (2) the sense-perception, (3) the feelings, (4) the "sankharas" (difficult to translate but meaning approximately the instincts and the subconscious), (5) the faculty of reason.   It is the union of these "skandhas" that constitutes an individual. 

As long as the "skandhas" are held together the individual functions as a single being, lives, and has a history, even as each component is in perpetual flux.  The body changes from day to day only a little less conspicuously than the mental states. 

At death the union is dissolved, the "skandhas" dispersed, and the individual, the "I," ceases to exist.  In this way, then, the "I" is merely an appearance, and as only an appearance it certainly does not carry on after death.  This is the Buddhist doctrine of "anatta," no-self.

The result of this understanding is compassion, the ideal of Mahayana Buddhism.