Who Is the “I”?

We use the word “I” hundreds of times:

• I think.
• I want.
• I remember.
• I am angry.
• I am successful.
• I am afraid.

Ordinarily this causes no problem. Buddhism does not ask us to stop using the word. But Buddhist philosophy asks a fascinating question: When we say “I,” what exactly are we pointing to?

Is it the body? The body we have today is not the body we had at five years old. Is it our thoughts? Thoughts appear and disappear continuously. Our memories? They change too. Some disappear entirely, while others are reconstructed whenever we recall them.

Perhaps it is our personality. Yet people who knew us twenty years ago may remember a very different person. The Buddha taught that what we call a person is better understood as a constantly changing process than as a permanent, independent essence. This teaching is called anatman—no fixed or independent self.

It is easily misunderstood. Buddhism does not say that you do not exist. Clearly there is a person who experiences happiness and sadness, remembers yesterday and makes plans for tomorrow. The teaching questions something more subtle: the idea that somewhere inside all these changing experiences there must be an unchanging “me” who owns them.

Consider a river. We can point to the Rhine and call it one river. Yet its water is never exactly the same from one moment to the next. Its shape changes. Rain enters it. Water evaporates. Tributaries join it. The river exists—but as a process. Buddhism suggests that we are something like this.

Our bodies, experiences, relationships, memories and choices constantly interact. There is continuity, but not an isolated permanent core standing outside change. Why does this matter? Because we suffer greatly from defending fixed ideas about ourselves:

• “I am unsuccessful.”
• “I am an anxious person.”
• “I am better than them.”
• “I could never forgive.”
• “I will always be like this.”

If the self is more fluid than we imagine, these statements become less absolute. We can change. Others can change. And we do not have to protect every opinion, identity or self-image as though our existence depended upon it.

A thought to carry with you

Instead of asking, “Who am I really?” perhaps sometimes ask:

“What is happening here, and what am I becoming?”

Connection to the Buddhist Path

The teaching of no fixed or independent self is closely connected with the Buddhist understanding of emptiness. Buddhism does not deny our conventional existence; rather, it asks whether the solid, independent “I” we instinctively experience can actually be found when examined carefully. This question is central to the Middle Way (Madhyamaka) tradition studied at Dzongkar Choede. Monks first investigate it through reasoning and debate and then turn that same analytical attention inward in meditation, examining the habitual sense of being a permanent self in a world of independently existing things.

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