understand themselves through their desires and at-
tachments. Although the idea of the self that was re-
jected in early Buddhism was quite specific—the
concept of atman in the Hindu Upanisads,the un-
changing core that undergirds all experience—the de-
velopment of this critique in the history of Buddhist
philosophy extends far beyond the specifics of that ini-
tial rejection. The basic anatman position is that there
exists no controller, no possessor, no constant self be-
hind experience, which means that it is not that “I”
have a body and thoughts and feelings but that “I am”
these elements at any given moment in the process of
life. Rejecting the unchanging self does not mean that
no one is here; the idea of no-self is the Buddhist ef-
fort to explain who or what is here, and how that per-
son can best live.
In order to clarify the rejection of self, early sutras
posit the five SKANDHA(AGGREGATES), the five com-
ponents that make up a person: physical body, feel-
ings, conceptions, volition, and self-consciousness.
Sutras explain how these five components of the self
are always changing, always dependent on one another,
and therefore not constant, not stable, and not the un-
changing foundation that one assumes. Although lan-
guages posit an “I” behind these fluctuating states, no
such background possessor is ever present to experi-
ence. Buddhist sutras challenge meditators to examine
their own experience, and to locate the truth of the
posited self. The Buddhist critique of the concept of
the self is unique among the world’s religions, and it
provided a powerful starting point for the history of
Buddhist philosophy.
Change and causality.Perhaps the most basic philo-
sophical principle in Buddhist philosophy is the claim
that all things are characterized by ANITYA(IMPERMA-
NENCE); that is, all things are subject to change, in-
cluding birth and death. The initial context for this
realization was the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS, where suffer-
ing is caused by desires for and attachments to things
that are always changing and passing away. Failure to
recognize the ubiquity of impermanence and failure to
adjust one’s life accordingly lead inevitably to poor
judgment and subsequent suffering.
That moral context for reflection on change was just
the beginning. Later Buddhist philosophers took the
basic principle of impermanence as the starting point
for a wide variety of reflections on the nature of the al-
ways changing world. Closely associated with the idea
of impermanence was the concept of PRATITYASAMUT-
PADA(DEPENDENT ORIGINATION), the Buddhist expla-
nation for how it is that things change. Change is not
random; it is caused and conditioned by other sur-
rounding factors. The principle of dependent origina-
tion states that all things arise, change, and pass away
dependent upon the influence of other things. Noth-
ing, therefore, is self-sufficient; everything depends.
Buddhist thinkers took this principle to be an example
of the “middle way” between two logically unacceptable
views—eternalism, the view that things exist perma-
nently and on their own, and annihilationism, the view
that things have no existence at all. Pratltyasamutpada
falls between those extreme views by affirming that
things exist within a larger process of dependence. Al-
though these ideas certainly could be applied to the
natural world, and on occasion were, their most im-
portant application concerned the workings of the
mind. How is it possible, Buddhist philosophers asked,
to live an enlightened life, in touch with the way things
really are and free of delusion, greed, and hatred? That
possibility, like any other, they concluded, arises de-
pendent on the requisite conditions. Living your life
in accordance with those conditions gives rise to the
state of NIRVANA. The principles of impermanence and
dependent origination are the most basic ideas in Bud-
dhist philosophy.Morality and ethics.Like all Buddhist philosophy,
Buddhist ETHICSis articulated in the context of medi-
tation, and set in the framework of the quest to elim-
inate the devastating effects of suffering by achieving
the state of human excellence called nirvana. Suffering
and enlightenment are the central ethical issues. Ethics
is a practical matter of shaping one’s life in accordance
with the wisdom of the Buddha’s realization. Far from
making Buddhist ethics simple, this setting in the do-
main of practice gave rise to a voluminous philosoph-
ical literature on how it is that human life ought to be
lived. One difference between Buddhist ethics and
modern Western moral philosophy is the Buddhist
focus on everyday life, on choices that people habitu-
ally make all of the time. The idea behind this focus is
that one’s character is formed in every act one under-
takes, especially in the acts that one performs over and
over. This is where the Buddhist concept of KARMA
(ACTION) functions most forcefully. Modern Western
ethics has focused almost exclusively on exceptional
situations, on perplexing moral dilemmas that arise
occasionally in a person’s lifetime when major choices
need to be made. As a consequence of this focus, very
little attention has been given to how one achieves a
state from which major decisions will be made with in-
tegrity. From a Buddhist ethical perspective, how onePHILOSOPHY