There was a man belonging to the Jain tradition who asked the Buddha whether human beings have a self. The Buddha could have answered that there is no self, but he kept silent. Then the Jain man asked, “Then do we have no self?” The Buddha still kept silent. Later Ananda asked the Buddha, “Why didn’t you say there is no self?” The Buddha said, “I know that he is caught in his view. If I were to say that there is no self, he would be lost and he would suffer a lot. So although ‘no self’ is correct according to our teaching, it was better to keep silent.”
