If it is metaphysically true that no self exists, then Buddhist ethics, free will, and karma seem to evaporate. To act selflessly would be to act without a mind and without intention. Yet, Buddhists often attribute the accumulation of karma to “right understanding” and “skillful volition” [2] – neither one possible without some self to process it’s environment and consciously act on it.

If I can truly act selflessly, then who or what accumulates karma for this deed? It can’t be me, since I don’t exist – so is it someone else? What if we had a Buddhist utopia and everyone acted selflessly – would any of us be conscious at all, or just cogs in a machine? In what other form can selflessness take besides self-annihilation – a rejection of consciousness itself – which, taken to its logical extreme, sounds principally anti-Buddhist.

Buddha never specified whether or not a self does or doesn’t exist. He refused to answer the question, presumably because it gave power to the self/other dichotomy, which he consider illusory and the source of all suffering.

I admit by contemplating these things I am to some degree falling for this dichotomy myself, but I thought this was worth philosophizing about; I so often see people preach “no self” as the ultimate ideal, end-goal, or enlightenment of Buddhist practice, yet I find it to be misleading, nihilistic, and potentially self-destructive. At best “selflessness” is a concept that serves as a means to a goal – a technique, a strategy, a stage, or a stepping stone – not an end to be achieved. I think the idea of “selfless” is intended to break apart our conventional understandings of a self, not to be a claim of something that is true.

The problem with the self is that we often think of it too narrowly. It becomes a prison, instead of something expansive, creative, and resourceful. Helping others should be viewed first and foremost as not something self-less but something self-evolving. In this light, Buddhist morality – the drive to be compassionate and kind to others – becomes strengthened rather than diminished. Interconnectedness is the nature of the self, not selflessness.

Sources

[1] “Not self” as a strategy in Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s “No self or Not-self”

[2] The Theory of Karma by Ven. Mahasi Sayadaw