Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening

by Stephen Batchelor

THE SAME IS true for each one of us. Just as a potter forms a pot on the wheel, so I configure my personality from the spinning clay of my existence. The pot does not exist in its own right: it emerges from the interactions of the potter, the wheel, the clay, its shape, its function (each of which in turn emerges from the interactions of its causes and components ad infinitum). There is no essential pot to which its attributes adhere—just as there is no essential daffodil to which stalk, leaves, petals, and stamen adhere. Pots and daffodils are configurations of causes, conditions, parts, functions, language, images. They are devoid of an identity stamped like a serial number in the core of their being. And so is each of us. As a human being I am more complex than a pot or a daffodil, but I have also emerged from causes and am composed of diverse, changing features and traits. There is no essential me that exists apart from this unique configuration of biological and cultural processes. Even if intellectually I agree with this, intuitively it may not be how I feel about myself. In any event, dharma practice is concerned not with proving or disproving theories of self but with understanding and easing the grip of self-centeredness that constricts body, feelings, and emotions into a tight nugget of anguish.