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Who Is “I”?—No-Self, Interbeing, and the Five Aggregates
In Buddhism we do not indulge in metaphysical speculations; the teaching is about suffering and how to transform it. The basic cause of suffering is our wrong perceptions—fear, anger, jealousy, despair—and to free ourselves we must practice looking deeply: learning how to look, to listen, and to speak without creating misunderstanding. When we say “I am,” we must investigate what “I” really means.
The Buddha shows us that what we call “I” cannot be found in the five aggregates (skandhas):
- form (body)
- feeling
- perception
- mental formations
- consciousness
He refutes three successive wrong notions of self:
- self is the five aggregates
- self is not the five aggregates (so must be something outside them)
- self and aggregates contain each other (tương tại)
None of these withstands deep scrutiny—there is no permanent core hidden in form, feeling, perception, mental formations, or consciousness.
By looking deeply at a flower—and by extension at ourselves—we see that a flower is made only of non-flower elements (sunshine, rain, soil, time, space, gardener) and has no separate self. Touching this reality brings us beyond “to be” or “not to be” into the insight of interbeing (“this is because that is”), and reveals no-self. In meditation we discover that our “I” is a community: ancestors, teachers, elements of the cosmos. Only through daily practice—mindfulness, concentration, ethical conduct—and the keys of impermanence, no-self, and interbeing can we transform ignorance and touch true understanding.
