What I was saying in that session with my teacher was that I—that is, my “self,” the thing I had thought was in control—don’t readily control the most fundamental aspect of my mental life: what I’m thinking about. As we’ll see in the next chapter, this absence of control is part, though by no means all, of what the Buddha had in mind when he emphasized the importance of grasping not-self. And later in the book we’ll see that, however ironic it sounds, grappling with the sense in which you don’t exist is a step toward putting you—or at least “you”—in charge.
