It's 8:20am on a Sunday morning. The sun is streaming into the kitchen and drying all the dishes I just washed. I'm waiting for the people who live next to the laundry to wake up so I can do some washing without pissing them off.
My coffee has gone completely cold.
At this point, I have found myself pondering on existence. Pondering on the concept of self.
The concept of the self is one of those things that should be very straightforward and comprehendable but is secretly a lot more complex and confusing than it seems. Everyone has a self, or rather they are a self. Linguistically, we refer to the self as being a combination of something the individual owns, and as something the individual is. In saying "I am myself" I refer to me actually being the self in saying that I am that self. But the personal connection between me and the self is destroyed in that I then refer to that self as "myself", denoting that this self is something I own, or something I have, and not something that I am completely.. So, what is the self? Something we are, or something we own? Is it all of us, or part of us, or something merely associated with us?
It is not uncommon for one to refer their physical self as their "person". If someone asks "Do you have a pen?" you may reply "No, not on my person", and in this situation you are implying a seperation between you and your physical self. You are claiming that your physical self is not you, but is merely something you have, something that is yours but not you.
So why do we refer to the self as being simply a part of us, or something that we have or own, when, technically speaking, we are that self? And if we are not the self, or the self is not us, then what are we?
I studied Buddhism briefly last year, and I have a basic understanding of the belief system. One thing that interested me in my studies was that Buddhism claims that the self does not really exist, and that all of the "selves" in existence are actually one thing. And in the pursuit of Nirvana (Enlightenment) one attempts to literally detach from desire or attachment, and essentially from the physical self. I found it a deeply profound concept that the self may not actually exist, and instead merely be a construct that emerged to create disharmony and disrupt or divide one large co-existence.
So, what is the self? From what I've found so far, it is us, it is not us, it something we have that is ours but not us, and it does not exist.
