Selected Qutoes on the Non-Existence of Self

 "For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception. … I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement." - David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature (1739 CE)

"The method to be practiced is as follows: you are to doubt regarding the subject in you that hears all sounds. All sounds are heard at a given moment because there is certainly a subject in you that hears … You must doubt deeply, again and again, asking yourself what the subject of hearing could be. Pay no attention to the various illusory thoughts that may occur to you. Only doubt more and more deeply, gathering together in yourself all the strength that is in you, without aiming at anything or expecting anything in advance, without intending to be enlightened and without even intending not to intend to be enlightened … [As] you go on doubting, you will find it impossible to locate the subject that hears. Doubt deeply in a state of singlemindedness … becoming completely like a dead man, unaware even of the presence of your own person … You will arrive at a state of being completely self-oblivious and empty. But even then you must bring up the Great Doubt, “What is the subject that hears?” … And after that, when you are no longer aware of your being completely like a dead man, and are no more conscious of the procedure of the Great Doubt but become yourself, through and through, a great mass of doubt, there will come a moment, all of a sudden, at which you emerge into a transcendence called the Great Enlightenment, as it you had awoken from a great dream, or as if, having been completely dead, you had suddenly revived” - Takusui, Sermons (18th Century CE)

“[T]he deeper level that we have to refute here is that there is a self that can be known by itself without some sort of a basis also appearing at the same time. The technical term for that is a “self-sufficiently knowable self.” There is no such thing.

The example that I always use is: I want people to love “me” for “me,” just for myself; not for my body, not for my money, not for this or that – just to love “me” for “me,” as if that “me” could be an object that can be loved just by itself. But it can’t be known by itself. It can’t be loved by itself. It’s always with a basis.

So, when we work with “I know myself,” “I want to know myself” – how can you know yourself just by yourself? You know yourself in terms of experience and mind and your body – all these sort of things. That’s how you know yourself. The self is imputed on that. Similarly, how do I liberate myself? Don’t conceive of it as a self that can be known independently of all these other things. It’s always with a basis. Remember, we started this course by saying think of yourself. And the only way that you can think of yourself was either with the mental sound of the word “me” or a mental image or a feeling or something. You can’t just think “me” without something as the basis. So, similarly, you can’t liberate “me” just by itself without working on a “me” imputed on a basis and known at the same time as its basis.

What are the ramifications of this? The ramifications are that when I’m working to try to attain liberation, I have to think in terms of my everyday experience; and it’s in terms of the problems that I’m actually facing, the disturbing emotions that I’m actually facing, and the “me” imputed on that. That is how we work on gaining liberation of the self. It’s not that you just think of an abstract self without anything else appearing, which is impossible, and I’m liberating that. Then you don’t really connect your meditations with life, daily life. - Alexander Berzin, “Liberating the Conventional Me from Insecurity” Transcription of a seminar, Riga, Latvia, August 2013

“If, Ānanda, when I was asked by the wanderer Vacchagotta, ‘Is there a self?’ I had answered, ‘There is a self,’ would this have been consistent on my part with the arising of the knowledge that ‘all phenomena are nonself’?”

“No, venerable sir.”

“And if, when I was asked by him, ‘Is there no self?’ I had answered, ‘There is no self,’ the wanderer Vacchagotta, already confused, would have fallen into even greater confusion, thinking, ‘It seems that the self I formerly had does not exist now.’” - The Buddha, Saṁyutta Nikāya 44.10 from the Pali Canon