Get Out of Your Way

The Buddha

When I wrote, “Not Self is Where It’s At,” I meant it.

The world is full of paradoxes, so the teachings of the Buddha are as well. The teaching on Not Self is perhaps the most important, and most paradoxical, of the Buddha’s teachings. Several Buddhist teachers say that awakening occurs when the wave realizes that it is water. An amusing way to state a version of this paradox, in the modern United States, is to say that you are…