IS THERE REALLY NO 'SELF'?
SOME REFLECTIONS ON A BUDDHIST DOGMA
Many years ago I heard someone say they chose to become involved with Buddhism on reaching adulthood because it “lacked dogma.” As he put it, “I don’t have to believe in some bearded deity, or angels, or higher planes of existence to be a Buddhist.”
Well, with all due respect to that fellow—and btw, I consider myself to be 49% Buddhist, but that’s another story—Buddhism actually does have a dogma, and a fairly big one at that.
I’m referring here to the concept of “no self,” also known as anattā (which essentially means “no atman,” or “no Self”, though some interpret it instead as “non-Self”). To be a full-blown Buddhist one is essentially obliged to subscribe to the notion of there being no core, fixed identity at the source of personality. As one friend explained it to me many years ago,
“Think about it. From the moment you’re born until now, you’ve undergone a multitude of changes. Are you the same person you were as a five-year old? No, of course not. Saying there is a “Self” is like looking at a bend in the river and saying that part of the river has an identity. The notion of a consistent identity is a fiction.”
Eloquent, to be sure. But I don’t buy it, not in its most familiar and dogmatic form, anyway. I’ll go over some of my reasons why.
I once asked a teacher in the Kriya Yoga lineage I studied with for many years, Goswami Kriyananda of Chicago, for his thoughts about the claim that there is no fixed “self” at the heart of personality. He had an interesting response:
“Next time someone tells you there is no individual self, of any sort, just ask them: ‘So, what is it that reincarnates?’”
I’ve done just that on several occasions over the years, and the answers have been interesting, if frequently convoluted, as the respondents struggled to reconcile the notion of anattā with not only reincarnation but the doctrine of karma.
Talking about this very question with a fellow student at Zen Mountain Monastery back in the mid-1980s, I listened as he explained that it’s not so much a “person” that reincarnates as a series of habits and karmas.
“Okay, then help me out here,” I said, genuinely trying to understand his perspective.
“What exactly are those habits and karmas attached to, exactly, if anything? Or are they just free-floating and not attached to anyone or anything? Because if that’s really the case, are you saying that this present personality of mine could have just as easily incarnated with Hitler’s habits and karmas attached? Or Mahatma Gandhi’s? Or Genghis Khan’s?”
He paused a bit, and finally answered, quite confidently, “Yes.”
I was floored. To his mind, it was simply a cosmic roll of the dice which determined my status and condition, having nothing to do with my personal karmas or past life actions. In theory, my life could simply be reaping the positive karmas of some holy saint 1000 years ago, or the negative karmas of some horrible warlord from the distant past. Clearly, the doctrine of karma pretty much winds up being meaningless if there is no one behind any actions or karmas.
However, let me suggest a slightly different way of interpreting that Buddhist teaching of anattā, one that I heard from yet another practitioner back at the monastery. You see, there is considerable disagreement even amongst Buddhist scholars about this particular doctrine—just look at the Wikipedia page on “anattā” and you’ll see what I mean—and this other fellow was himself just such a scholar. When I asked for his thoughts about this problem, he told me the following:
“What I think most people misunderstand about the doctrine of ‘no-self’ is, it’s actually saying that there is no separate self—which is something quite different from saying there is no individual self at all!”
That viewpoint spoke to me. One can safely allow for the existence of individual spirits as long as we recognize that they are still all deeply connected and entwined. There is no firm wall or boundary separating different beings—including even between us and that great consciousness I call “God”—yet these all nonetheless possess their own unique qualities and perspectives.
To my mind it’s that last word that’s critical here—perspective. Each Self represents a particular perspective on the whole, infinite in scope yet distinct in its specific angle.
One way of understanding this is via the classic Eastern image of Indra’s “Net of Pearls”—a famous Buddhist metaphor illustrating the complex interconnectedness of all phenomena and beings. In much the same way that broken-off pieces of a holograph contain the entire image, so the image of Indra’s net describes a vast network of pearls (in some versions, gems, dewdrops, or jewels) in which the polished surface of each pearl reflects all the other pearls in the net, and all the pearls reflected in any one are in turn reflected in all the others, giving rise to an infinitely compounded series of reflections. In short, distinct yet unified.
That feels right to me. In fact, even the head abbot at the Zen Monastery, John Daido Loori, once hinted at favoring it as a useful way of thinking about the nature of reality. In such a cosmology, all the individual Selves are essentially co-creators, an interlocking network of conscious being-universes.
It’s one of the reasons why I’ve long been attracted to the metaphor of a jazz band to illustrate not only certain political ideas (like democracy) but theological and spiritual ones as well. Unlike the classic image of a symphony orchestra where all the players are performing pre-determined roles under a supreme conductor, or “god,” the jazz band is more democratic with all its members contributing their own input to the whole. There may be a nominal leader or sorts in a jazz band, true, but they’re all contributing music to the whole in a far more co-creative way.
Might that be an accurate metaphor for reality as well?
(I have many more thoughts about all this—particularly as it relates to the philosophy of Shelly Trimmer, who I’ve written about before—but this much will do for now.)
© 2026 Ray Grasse
Ray Grasse is a writer, astrologer, and photographer living in the American Midwest. He is author of ten books, including The Waking Dream, Under a Sacred Sky, and An Infinity of Gods. His websites are www.raygrasse.com and www.raygrassephotography.com.
Hi Ray, if you take a look at my posts here on FB, you will be able to patch together a pretty good dialog on what you write, however, I will start again here.
I first had the great good fortune to meet Suzuki Roshi at UC Santa Cruz in the mid-60's (as Uranus met Pluto in my first house) and he was my teacher for a few years until I was called to Viet Nam with the Navy. Later returning to the U.S. and with Suzuki's passing, I met Baba Hari Dass and studied Ashtanga Yoga with him for about 50 years. It was only after Babaji's passing and some Nonduality studies that I came to see the amazing depth of Thich Nhat Hanh's meaning of the Ultimate Dimension and Deep Peace. He says in his book NO DEATH NO FEAR, that there are three parts of Buddhism without which it cannot be called Buddhism: Impermanence, No Self, and Nirvana.
The primary Key is Radical Impermanence which I think qualifies Buddha as an early scientist. I see this as saying the bottom line of reality is total change or more precisely Continual Transformation. Yes, all apparent "things" are One and not separate (thanks for reminding me of Indra's Net) but they are also continually changing. No two microseconds are the same, so they never come to be permanent separate fixed solid things. Hence there is no separate self or Self. Actually no separate anything, hence Sunyata or Emptiness.
To me the Buddha, once again as a good scientist, wants to go beyond delusion. In this case the delusion of a mystical solid self to give us some semblance of permanence.
That leaves Nirvana for another discussion. Ha!
Excellent. Many years ago I saw across spacetime and knew we were all part of an infinite field of Light, each of us unique but also inextricably within the field which extended into "beyond." Each of us were "merest specks in the ocean of Light" with some Lights brighter than others.
As you know, we are Eternals having a temporary human experience, one of many such incarnated experiences learning to deal with matter, feelings, and the five senses and the mind. It would be as impossible to kill out our Higher Self as it would be for us to extinguish the universe, because the Higher Self never dies. It is who we ARE, regardless of the external changes.
We reincarnate with a chart indicating the skandas (traits) we generated in the past coupled with the virtues which show our possibilities. We cannot reincarnate with a set of traits we didn't earn through prior skills and misfires. So in that sense, Ray, no, you cannot incarnate with the traits of Hitler or Stalin, as you have not cultivated those skandas and the karmas attached to them.
This reminded me of when I was invited to attend a private intimate class with HHDL he was conducting for Tibetans in New York. I was with a friend who knew Tibetan who whispered a translation to me. At one point he said something matter of factly and the entire group became highly agitated.
It turned out he told them that contrary to the doctrine of "no self," he believed there is something subtle of a higher nature which persists and reincarnates forever in one or another form. Coming from a guy who embodies 600 years of reincarnated unbroken awareness, I'm sure his opinion comes from his experience. But his students were definitely agitated.