My thoughts on Self and “Anatta”

My thoughts on Self and “Anatta”

Hello, this is Mahendra and I want to record my thoughts about the concept of self. It's often debated in philosophical and religious circles. There are people who believe that the self exists only as a concept and there's no real self as such. 

And some people even label the concept of self as a hallucination or a delusion, a virtual self. Buddhists refer to the concept of anicca, which means everything is impermanent. And on that basis, they say that a self cannot exist (anatta) as, if there is a self, it will obey the laws of anicca, which means the end result is no self (anatta). 

I take a slightly different view on the interpretation of the Buddhist concept. I think what the Lord Buddha said is that there is no unchanging or permanent self. The self or identity of self exists but  is subject to change just like everything else in the universe and therefore cannot be an unchanging entity as for example a soul. 

I am Mahendra Gonsalkorale as of now, this moment, but I'm not the same Mahendra Gonsalkorale who was born 80 odd years ago and I have probably nothing that I was born with which has persisted from my birth to my current state. I am a mixture of memories, ideas, likes, dislikes, concepts, beliefs, past memories, future projections, and even my physical being is changing all the time. In other words, there is a Mahendra Gonsalkorale but this entity is changing all the time and is evolving from a state or moment in time to another moment and as this process can move slowly or rapidly for the various constituents of Mahendra, I may appear as unchanged depending on the time scale applied. For example, if it was possible to construct a 5 year old Mahendra, there would be hardly any noticeable commonality even if it was possible to have a dialogue with him. But the Mahendra 1 week ago will still be immediately recognisable as Mahendra as he is now.  In this context, it is useful to go back to the well known “Ship of Theseus Paradox” on whether a ship which over time has changed all its components can be still called the original ship. 

All my cells have turned over so that I would not possess a single cell I was born with in 1944. But to me, the question is whether there is “something” which I might call the “core self”, upon which other things are added like your memories, your beliefs, your explanations, your opinions, and all the memories that you gather of the physical world outside. As a Doctor, I think this “core-self framework” has genetic and possibly other currently unknown elements which contribute to the object referred to as Mahendra. This “something” is in fact a hard to define “core framework”, which is unique to me, which I call Mahendra. The core framework is not a physical entity but is something which makes me unique. In other words, all humans are a “mind-body” complex where the mind component is a subtle framework which gathers all the components attributes, both physical attributes (not physical in the sense of a material object) and non-physical attributes, that makes a person a person, or self or him or her.

And this framework, although it is changing all the time, is still uniquely mine. The Mahendra Gonsalkorale framework does not apply to, say, my brother Daya or Raj. We may have common memories and features but we are different ever changing entities but still entities. My constantly changing identity within this entity is uniquely mine. 

We may have different memories. But within that core or within that framework, that outline of what I call Mahendra, there are things which are constantly changing. 

So the question is whether my belief in a framework, which I call Mahendra or self, is also untrue. And this is may be so because even a framework has to change all the time. But does it necessarily have to change in the way physical objects change? So my question is- “ is the self or identity of self, something that is there, but impermanent (anicca)?” And therefore, when we say anatta, which means there is no permanent soul (as there is in Hinduism), it means that you as a person or identity is constantly changing. And therefore, there's nothing within you which is unchanging, but this changing dynamically unstable self is still unique to you and separable from others. This separation is obvious physically but may not apply to the physically state alone. 

I find it a bit difficult to accept that there is no “core Mahendra” or “framework of Mahendra”, because I still pack things into this changing framework as I change physically. And if you talk to me and you talk to another friend of mine, we come across as quite different people with different ideas, different memories and so on. So going back to the Buddhist concept of anatta, I think what Lord Buddha meant to say is that although we may have an underlying consciousness stream or whatever you want to call it, which I label in my case as “Mahendra’s core framework”, it is not something which is consistent or constant, although it is distinct from the framework of others. For the purpose of living within a community of beings, it is helpful to think that we are not unchanging permanent objects but are selves with“frameworks” interacting with each other. We are given names to make living easier but we have  a huge amount of shared and interactive components. 

It is changing all the time because every microsecond I exist, I gather data, memory, information, which changes me. But my question is whether there is something which I used the term “Framework” which is unique to each person at birth but is undergoing change all the time since then. My contention at first appears to go against the “anatta” concept in Buddhism but on closer examination, there is no contradiction, as the “Framework” is also changing all the time. Why postulate a Framework at all? To me it is a satisfactory way of understanding “self” and its impermanence while preserving the uniqueness of a person.

Added on 02-02-2026.

A word of explanation on why I tried to interpret "self" a bit differently. I am influenced by Buddhist philosophy, especially the concept of "anicca" or impermanence.

An area which Western Philosophers and Scientists dismiss too easily is rebirth (is it because to them the concept is so ridiculous that it does not warrant any examination of evidence provided?)- Rebirth seems very unlikely for those who don't accept the existence of a soul (anatta) or lack of unchanging entities (anicca)?

I have looked at the evidence provided with an open mind, and certainly with no intention of convincing myself or others that the concept of rebirth is true. So many people dismiss it because they don't accept that it is even remotely possible and just laugh at the evidence provided. I looked at the evidence with an open mind.

To me, it is a fact that there are many genuine examples of people recalling past births. I won't go into the evidence in this email. These have been thoroughly double-checked for fraud, recall errors, etc., and it appears to me that some people do recall past lives. The fact that so few do, and that many have been shown to be fabricated, does not invalidate it. Even a single verified occurrence demands an explanation, -One cure for a 100% mortality disease is a true cure!

The only way I can explain is to look at the cycle of birth-living-death slightly differently. I don't think a critical thinker should rule out the possibility of recall of past births or the persistence of a past birth memory in someone because they don't like the concept. Even if they don't believe in rebirth (one way of explaining recall), they have to acknowledge this memory persistence and try to explain it rather than take the easy way out and just dismiss it.

Just suppose that memories, experiences, thoughts etc which get encoded in the brain during the life of a person. (I am, of course, regarding neural mechanisms as the method by which this happens and not some vague spiritual "essence"). Suppose we consider that some or all of these are stored in "core individual frameworks," as I call them, which are in the background and constantly exchange information among the various modules (sensory, motor, thoughts, memories), which together with the framework form the self? The module change is very rapid and extensive, whereas the encoding of information in the Framework is much slower. Slower changes, which are coded, become apparent only with the passage of time (hence the Mahendra now so different from the Mahendra the child). Rapidly changing information occurring all the time leads to a Mahendra, although similar, being different from Mahendra a few days ago. Here is where I go mad! Supposing the Framework data is changing but is in some form (energy) that can persist after death and is capable of finding a new abode in the form of a fertilised ovum? Sounds farfetched and you might rightly say no different from those who belive in a sould that migrates, Yes, but the difference is my idea of a farmework.  “Mahendra’s core framework” is not something which is consistent or constant, although it is distinct from the frameworks of others. If you say I am using the word "Core Framework" as an alternative to "soul", I can understand that, but the difference is that, unlike an unchanging soul, my Framework is also subject to change. Just like the DNA we inherit, it might eventually be shown that it does exist, changing all the time so that just as "self" evolves through a life time, so does the framework survive just passing on from one living human to another who is not the same person who died (soul theory)  but who carries "information" carried over from the information of the one who died.

I am not expecting anyone to agree with me (apart from perhaps a Philosopher, as philosophers thrive on ideas that come to their heads, unlike Scientists, who only accept after going through the data, explain the implications of the data with a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, and then accept or reject).

It is just an attempt to explain how a person (A) can die --> be born again as a new distinct person (B), conditioned by information passed to him with the death of A. Here, A and B are not the same but share some data from A's previous life. The change in the lifetime of A can be so much that without the evidence we have that Boy A grew up to be Man A, it would be like looking at two people. I postulate that this "Core framework has a biological basis quite similar to genes, but as yet undiscovered (just as the Higgs Boson at one time!).

The moral implications of rebirth in Buddhism is that your current life events are conditioned (but not determined) by the actions of your previous life.