self

The experience of self is as real as any other conscious experience, such as pain or pleasure. What is illusory, as emphasized by Buddhism, is the idea of a permanent and fixed essence that constitutes the "true self," the "real me."

to the extent that we are identified as a ‘self’, we are merely a performance of the possibilities latent in language.

regardless of its content, the thinking process presupposes the identity of the thinker, and thereby imposes the parameters of selfhood on whatever it addresses.

on the one hand, thoughts are expressed on behalf of an integrated nameable self and, therefore, seem to be ‘my’ thoughts; on the other hand, the fact that they are spoken in words, which are designed to communicate between people, suggests a degree of internal fragmentation.

the human mind has fundamentally irrational elements. I’d go as far as to say that magical thinking forms the basis of selfhood. Our experience of ourselves and other people is essentially an act of imagination that can’t be sustained through wholly rational modes of thought. We see the light of consciousness in another’s eyes and, irresistibly, im