Strictly speaking, the person is a conceptual fiction and only impersonal
micro-level objects (i.e., the skandhas) ultimately exist. This is how the
Milinda Panha puts it:
Then King Milinda spoke to the venerable Nāgasena as follows:
“Nāgasena, I speak no lie: the word “chariot” functions
as
just
a
counter,
an
expression,
a
convenient
designator,
a mere name for pole, axle, wheels, chariot-body,
and banner-staff.”
“Thoroughly well, your majesty, do you understand a
chariot. In exactly the same way, your majesty, in respect
of me, “Nāgasena” functions as just as counter, an expression,
convenient designation, mere name for the hair of
my head, hair of my body . . . brain of the head, . . . feeling,
perception, the volition, and consciousness. But ultimately
there
is
no
person
to
be
found.”
(Milinda Panha 26-27; as quoted in Siderits 53-54.)
Picking up on this, we can see how the doctrine of two truths is related
to Buddhist reductionism. There are two ways a statement might be true:
conventionally and ultimately (Siderits 56). A statement is conventionally
true if and only if it appeals to and coheres with common sense and
reliably promotes “successful practice.” A conventionally true statement
is a “convenient designation,” as Nāgasena phrases it. A statement is ultimately
true
if
and
only
if
it
corresponds
to
how
the
world
really
is
and
makes
no
use
of
any
“conceptual
fictions.”
For
example,
as
King
Milinda
himself
grasps, to say that there are persons or chariots or apartment
buildings is to say something conventionally true, whereas to say that
there are only skandhas and that there is no-self is to say something ultimately
true.