over the world; rather, we have no power at all. The self, understood as a center of
power and control, as a doer of deeds, an initiator of actions, does not exist. When
I think, there is no “I” that makes thoughts appear. When I raise my arm or speak,
there is no “I” that makes my arm rise or my lips and tongue move. There is no
actor or agent behind my actions. The “I,” understood as an actor or agent, as a
center of power and control, is an illusion. This is the third mark of existence:
no-self (anattā). Understood as a general metaphysical thesis, the no-self doctrine
amounts to the claim that all things lack a substantial core. All things at every
moment are in the process of coming to be or in the reverse process of ceasing to
be; there is no time when something simply is. There are no “beings” but only
“becomings.” This includes myself. My life is a transformational process, but
there is no enduring entity that undergoes this process. My thoughts and actions
are events, and they are bound up with everything else that happens. They cannot
be disentangled from the causal matrix and assigned to a separately existing,
substantial self.
We regard many things as possessions, and these things are intimately bound
up with our sense of selfhood. Every “my” points to an “I.” I look upon my body,
for instance, as my body, not just as a body. But my body is not a possession. It is
something I make use of, but only temporarily. It is subject to disease, old age,
death, and decay. Sooner or later, it will slip from my grasp, like everything else.
Because all things are impermanent, there is nothing that persists from one
moment to the next—including myself and everything I conceptualize as mine.
This can’t be reconciled with the attitude of possessiveness. Possessiveness
insists that things remain the same. But nothing remains the same. The object of
my possessiveness now is not the same as the object of my possessiveness a
moment from now. Possessiveness rests upon the delusion of permanence. The
delusion is thinking that we can arrest the process of change and somehow make
something remain the same from one moment to the next, from one day to the
next, from one year to the next.
There are a number of reflections that bring home in a powerful way just how
deep our attachments are. Imagine that all your physical possessions are destroyed.
How devastating would this be? Imagine losing your ability to remember things
or to learn new things, to see, touch, or hear. Imagine that you lose your career.
Imagine that everyone you care about dies. Imagine that you’re diagnosed with a
fatal condition. The truth is that this is (or soon will be) happening to us, but we
don’t face this fact. It’s too frightening. We live with the comforting delusion of