The No-Self

Making Sense of The World's Most Perplexing Buddhist Truth

In a world where very little is certain, it’s good to start with something indisputable that we can know for sure. Here it is: You and I exist. Right? We can at least confidently start with that. There’s a me sitting here typing this article right now, and there’s a you over there reading it. Phew! Now that we have that out of the way.

French philosopher René Descartes helped solidify the fact of our existence when he said, “I think, therefore I am.” In other words, the very act of doubting one’s existence serves as proof positive that there must be a thinking entity (or self) for there to be thought. Descartes believed that he could not doubt his own existence because he was the one doing the doubting. In other words, that cannot doubt which does not think, and that cannot think which does not exist. I doubt, I think, I exist.

That you and I exist (along with 8 billion other people) is an open-and-shut case. You’re never going to be stopped on a street corner by a sane person asking you if they really exist, unless maybe it’s some disillusioned Cowboys fan who understandably has come to doubt everything.

You would think all of this is true, but the fact is that even our existence may not be a as clear-cut as we might think.

This past week I concluded my four-part series on the psychology of religion. After the series Introduction, I covered several psychological insights into religion in articles on Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Julie Reshe. I will be starting a new upcoming series, but I wanted to take a week or two to come back to a few topics I’ve previously mentioned in passing and want to explore more deeply. Today, I want to investigate the Eastern concept of the “no-self”.

I’m guessing you have at least heard the term, “no-self”. The idea of the “no-self” is that despite seeming like you are a real and self-existing something that you refer to as an “I” or a “self”, it’s actually an illusion. There really is no such “self” you imagine yourself to be.

Perhaps you’re thinking that people who involve themselves in this sort of crazy talk are either:

• Wealthy and retired folk, with too much time on their hands

• Monks in a Tibetan monastery, meditating all day

• Stanford philosophy PhD students, writing dissertations on nonduality

For the rest of us real people, well, we have to get a real “self” out of bed each day and go to a real job in order to pay real bills. That “self” doesn’t have the luxury of going to Bora Bora, Tibet or Stanford to contemplate abstractions of human existence.

Fair. I get it.

But let me give you some perspective.

The concept of “no-self” is a fundamental tenet of Buddhism. There are roughly 535 million Buddhists worldwide, and they are not all in Bora Bora, mountaintop monasteries, or philosophy PhD programs. They are human beings just like you and I with jobs and bills. One of my best friends is an American Buddhist who trains pilots for a living. He is the one who introduced me to the idea of the no-self many years ago. There are people all over the world living ordinary lives who accept and live the teachings of the no-self.

If you grew up in the East, say Thailand or Nepal, you learned about the no-self from childhood. It is not a big deal, it’s a fact of life, and no one collapses into existential and nihilistic despair because of it. In the Western world, the field of psychology has solidified and reified the sense of self so completely that our ego doesn’t take too kindly to the idea that the whole thing could be an illusion.

But what does it mean to say that the “self” is an illusion?

What is the No-Self?

One of the core concepts of Eastern spirituality is the “no-self”. In Buddhism, the teaching of “no-self” (called anattā in Pali or anātman in Sanskrit) is the idea that there is no permanent, unchanging essence in any phenomenon.

For example, take a table. There is no real permanent essence of a table. Right? “Table” is just a word we use to easily identify pieces of wood nailed together into a configuration with a flat surface and four legs, which you can put objects on. I’m sitting at a table right now with a laptop, lamp and cup of coffee on it.

According to Eastern philosophy, there is no real permanent essence of a self. “Self” is just a word we use to identify our sense of an individualized existence. Like the table, if we dismantled all the constituent parts that comprise what we call “self”, we’d discover there is nothing absolute or permanent there.

A table exists because all of its parts exist together, and there is no separate table that is separate from those parts. The concept of anattā or “no-self” says this is also true of us. Each of us is a configuration of parts and processes (body, mind, emotions, consciousness, etc.) that appear or manifest as something we experience and refer to as a “self”.

The concept of the no-self is based upon the realization that nothing in the world exists as a separate, absolute, ultimate, concrete, independent, self-existing entity. Instead, everything has a relative existence. All things exist only in relationship or as relationship with everything else. In Buddhism this is sometimes referred to as “dependent arising”, which was later Westernized into process philosophy.

This truth of the no-self is not apparent on the surface because everything in the world appears to our sensory consciousness as a separate, absolute, concrete, independent, and self-existing thing. It might be better to think of these distinct and separate phenomenon as a patterning within the energy field of the universe that appears much like a tornado funnel in the sky.

Tornados are not absolute, independent and self-existing entities. Tornados temporarily appear as a confluence of certain atmospheric conditions - rising warm moist air, wind shear, rotating updraft, condensation tunnel, and ground contact.

The patterning of a “self” is quite convincing because a stable sense of “I” persists and evolves through time. But like the tornado the “self” is a temporary phenomenon that arises from a set of conditions. The reason why a funnel-cloud and a self-cloud seem like two completely different and incomparable things is because an aspect of the self-cloud (which the tornado does not have) is a mind that mediates a complex and persistent sense of self.

In Buddhism it is important to note that the mind is given no special or higher classification (as it does in Western thinking) than our other senses. These are all called vijñānas. The vijñānas are the six types of consciousness in Buddhism, each corresponding to one of the six senses. The six vijñānas are:

• Eye consciousness: Cakṣurvijñāna

• Ear consciousness: Śrotravijñāna

• Nose consciousness: Ghrāṇa-vijñāna

• Tongue consciousness: Jihva-vijñāna

• Body consciousness: Kāya-vijñāna

• Mind consciousness: Manovijñāna

In Western society, we tend to make the human person unique and superior to all other forms of life because of the human mind and consciousness. But in Buddhism, whether it’s a bird, human being or table, all the same fundamental dynamics apply.

Taking the above picture, we think we’re like the image on the left - an independent, self-existing, absolute, concrete, solid, permanent self. The no-self tenet says that actually we are like the image on the right - an impermanent, interdependent, contingent, fluctuating, insubstantial pattern. In other words, that image on the right represents your “self” that goes to work and pays bills, not the one on the left.

If you and I were having coffee together, we would be two distinct patterns (represented by the image on the right), interacting with each other. The no-self is a collection of constantly changing features, like the physical parts of your body and the sensations and perceptions that make up your mental life. There is nothing else about us that persists through these changes: all we are is a series of changes. We lack inherent existence.

When Buddhism says that the self is an illusion, it’s not saying that the thing going to work, drinking coffee and paying bills doesn’t exist. It’s not like you can call out from your job or stop making car payments with the explanation that you are an illusion.

No, it’s not that we do not exist, we just don’t exist in the way we think we do. Words such as “self” and “I” are mental conceptualizations and terms of convenience, which we use to identify our sense of an individualized existence. We are real but not really real in the way it appears and we imagine it to be. In other words, our relative self is trapped inside the false construct of an absolute self.

The no-self is not a denial of functional identity. Human beings still possess personality, memory, responsibility, relationships, and practical individuality. Buddhism is not asking people to become psychologically erased or incapable of ordinary life. The distinction is between using identity functionally and mistaking identity for an ultimate, permanent, self-existing essence.

A common phrase you will see associated with the Buddhism is “the middle way”. The idea of the “non-self” is a perfect example. The two extremes would be to assert that either you are an absolute, ultimate, independent, separate, concrete, self-existing entity, OR you are a total non-existent figment of imagination. The middle way would be to say that one’s sense of existence corresponds to a relative, contingent and impermanent configuration, but not an independent, separate, self-existing, absolute and permanent entity.

In my view, it wouldn’t take more than ten minutes for an openminded person to prove to themselves that they cannot be a separate, permanent, independent and absolute self in the way we are conditioned in Western society to believe.

But let’s just stop here and acknowledge a few questions you could be asking. A few of them might be:

Does any of this really matter?

Even if it were all true technically or theoretically, what difference does it really make?

Is the no-self idea going to make me a happier or healthier person, a better parent, succeed in life, or have more fulfilling relationships?

How can this concept of the no-self address my stress, fears, anxiety, emotional baggage, and inner demons?

Is all this “no-self” mumbo-jumbo just a heap of high-brow meaningless philosophical dribble or a Buddhist teaching that only works with a robe, singing bowls, and the lotus position?

The Manufactured Self

The Buddhist concept of the no-self becomes especially relevant when viewed against the conditions of modern life. In many ways, contemporary society intensifies attachment to the self more aggressively than any previous period in history.

In earlier eras, identity was shaped primarily through family, tribe, religion, geography, and social roles. But in the digital age, the self has increasingly become a continuous performance project. Modern identity is constantly curated, branded, optimized, displayed, defended, marketed, and algorithmically reinforced. Social media platforms function like massive mirrors that continuously reflect versions of ourselves back to us through comparison, validation, outrage, status, performance, and tribal affiliation.

The result is not greater freedom, but often greater psychological fragmentation and exhaustion.

Many people now live under conditions of perpetual self-surveillance. They monitor how they appear, how they are perceived, how they compare, how they perform, how they signal belonging, and how they maintain relevance. The modern person is often trapped inside an endless cycle of constructing, protecting, defending, and promoting an identity-image. Anxiety, envy, outrage, insecurity, loneliness, and dissatisfaction are amplified because the self-project never stabilizes. The performance can never fully succeed because there is no permanent self underneath it capable of achieving final completion.

In this sense, Buddhism’s critique of attachment to self suddenly feels less abstract and more diagnostic. A civilization organized around perpetual self-construction may also become a civilization trapped in perpetual dissatisfaction.

Consumer culture further deepens this pattern by teaching people to build identity through acquisition, lifestyle, status, ideology, appearance, productivity, or personal branding. Entire industries profit from convincing human beings that fulfillment exists just beyond the next achievement, purchase, transformation, recognition, or upgrade to the self-image. But the hunger never ends because the separate self being gratified is itself unstable, contingent, and impermanent.

Political and ideological tribalism also increasingly function as extensions of ego-identity. Many people no longer merely hold beliefs. They become psychologically fused with identities, narratives, and group affiliations that must constantly be defended against perceived threats. Disagreement feels existential because the self has become intertwined with ideology itself.

From the perspective of the no-self, much of modern culture resembles a gigantic machine organized around reinforcing attachment to an illusion.

This does not mean individuality disappears or that personality becomes meaningless. Buddhism is not arguing that human beings become blank, passive, or interchangeable. Rather, it invites us to loosen our rigid identification with the constructed self-image we spend our lives protecting and performing. The point is not self-erasure, but freedom from compulsive self-obsession.

Ironically, many people today feel exhausted precisely because they are carrying the impossible burden of trying to continuously manufacture and stabilize a permanent identity within a world defined by impermanence, uncertainty, and change. The no-self offers another possibility: that peace may not come from perfecting the self, but from loosening our attachment to the illusion that we were ever a fixed and separate self to begin with.

Why the No-Self Matters

The Buddha’s life was dedicated to properly understanding and diagnosing the problem of human suffering. What he discovered is that the belief in a permanent essence of self is the core ignorance that leads to suffering.

According to Buddhism, we become so attached to this idea of an absolute “self” or “I” that we spend our entire lives trying to gratify it, defend it, protect it, and glorify it. Perhaps at times we get what we pursue, but it never lasts, and we are dissatisfied again. We lie, cheat, scam, claw, fight, and do destructive things to ourselves and others, in order to protect or gratify our almighty “self”.

The idea of the no-self is nestled within a larger Buddhist framework referred to as The Four Noble Truths. I recently wrote an article about the Buddha and the Four Noble Truths, which cover out these ideas in more detail. I recommend you give that article a read to better grasp what we are discussing here.

The First Noble Truth says that human beings experience incessant suffering in the form of chronic disharmony and dissatisfaction . The Second Noble Truth identifies the cause, which is a failure to understand the way things really are. According to the Buddha, this is not just a slight misunderstanding about a few little things here or there, but a monumental ignorance and misknowledge about the most essential, foundational, and bedrock realities that undergird the very structure and nature of reality, which includes a fundamental ignorance about what we are and what the world is.

The Second Noble Truth says that suffering is the consequence of a false world we have constructed in our minds, and everything we do in that false world ultimately leads to suffering. It’s not that there isn’t anything real that words like “world”, “life”, and “self” are referring to, but it’s not real according to our projections upon it. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “There are no facts, only interpretations.” In other words, our experience of life is determined by what we think it means or the interpretations we impose upon it.

We have been so deeply conditioned and ingrained with our projections and interpretations that they have become habituated into us on a subconscious, instinctive, and visceral level. We assume our delusions are real and we hardly question them. Our misknowledge is fortified continuously through education, religion, politics, popular culture, and social media. We are completely enmeshed, assimilated, entrenched, and govern ignorance, delusion, and misunderstanding, which causes us suffering. And at the center of that misknowledge and suffering is a false understanding of what you are.

The Second Noble Truths says that because of our ignorance, we employ a doomed strategy for happiness that will never work. We desperately strive, strain, cling, grasp, clinch, and clutch to things we imagine will make us happy, and fear, fight, and resist what we think are a threat. But it never works and we only intensify our unhappiness, discontent, dissatisfaction, and disharmony.

Let me put this as simply as I know how. As long as you think that there is a separate, absolute, self-existing, independent and permanent “self”, you will devote your life to protecting, gratifying and exalting that “self”, which will never work because both the “self” and the world in which it seeks to extract happiness is characterized by change, impermanence, and fragility. All the seeking, clawing, clinging, grasping, resisting, fighting, stressing and controlling will only lead to more of it.

Buddha said, “It is the grasping of desire that is suffering. Desire does not cause suffering; the cause of suffering is the grasping of desire.” It’s not lost on me that this is not unrelated to the work of psychoanalyst of Jacques Lacan, who I covered in this article in my psychology of religion series. One of Lacan’s insights into the human psyche is a deeply ingrained sense of lack, which gives birth to desire. If Buddha and Lacan had a chat it might go like this:

Lacan: “The unconscious is structured like language and it’s core message is lack.”

Buddha: “The self lacks a stable essence and mind consciousness inserts language into the patterning. But let’s be clear here, as long as that patterning thinks it’s an absolute, self-existing, permanent thing, this language will only be a trap of lack and desire.”

Lacan: “The human psyche operates with the symbolic, imaginary and the real. The symbolic and imaginary are the two registers of the human psychic experience that compose reality, and the real is all the malfunctions and holes in it.”

Buddha: “Yes. The ‘Self’ is the ultimate symbol and imaginative construct that rules our mind consciousness. Our suffering is the ‘real’ that signifies that something is wrong and not working.”

Lacan: “We must explore and understand the domain of the unconscious to achieve greater mental health and well-being.”

Buddha: “Follow the ‘real’ and learn that the suffering we feel is because we take the symbol of the ‘Self’ to be something it is not. Studying the symbol more cannot free us; the cessation of all grasping will.”

In his book, No Self, No Problem, Chris Niebauer writes:

“Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself—and there isn't one.”

“To live in a world of abstractions—based on language, concepts, beliefs, patterns, labels—is to live in a dream world rather than reality.”

“It is the process of thinking that creates the self, rather than there being a self having any independent existence separate from thought. The self is more like a verb than a noun. To take it a step further, the implication is that without thought, the self does not, in fact, exist.”

The Third Noble Truth says that once you correct your misknowledge, you will bring an end to your suffering. It’s important to note what Buddhists mean by “suffering”. The Buddhist concept of suffering is not the normal pain we feel as part of the lived human experience.

Human pain is not wrong. As long as you are human, the sun will rise and set, gravity will pull objects to the ground, and there will be human pain. No amount of God or enlightenment is going to eliminate human pain. If you live life skillfully by responding to situations as they require, this will reduce unnecessary human pain, but you can never eliminate it altogether. Hitting your finger with a hammer will always cause physical pain. Losing a loved one will always cause emotional pain. Pain is part of what it means to be human.

Suffering is different.

Suffering is the emotional anguish we feel because of what we take these experiences to mean. We are not unaffected by loss, rejection, betrayal, and hardship, but our misknowledge of what these experiences represent cause our deepest psychic suffering. You think that you are separate, independent, absolute, permanent, self-existing “self” in a struggle with 8 billion other selves to protect, advance, satisfy, defend, secure, justify, validate, fortify and exalt your selfhood.

Buddhism asserts that we think our existence is something that it’s not and never will be. We have several things twisted and our suffering will not stop until we see things as they truly are. Consider the possibility that you’ve never truly seen that way before.

It’s interesting that the primary outcome of meditation and other experiences of inner exploration almost always lead to the disillusion of an independent, concretized and separate “self”. This is what compelled my research into and experimentation with psychedelics. Virtually all psychedelic trips involve a liberating collapse of a separate ego-self. Though I don’t have time to discuss this here, consider reading my series: “Can psychedelics save the world?”

• Part One: Unpacking the trending craze for psychedelics

• Part Two: Demystifying psychedelics

• Part Three: I went on a “trip”

Here are a few resources for exploring the Eastern concept of a “no-self”. The first two videos are a discussion of this concept by atheist neuroscientist, Sam Harris. I chose him in order to offer a more science-based view on the concept of the “no-self”. The first video is a short summary. The second one is a longer interview, but in my opinion worth the time investment.

Here are a few books for exploring the concept of the “no-self” further:

• No Self, No Problem: How Neuropsychology Is Catching Up to Buddhism (The No Self Wisdom Series) by Chris Niebauer

• Seeing That Frees by Robert Burbea

• Losing Ourselves: Learning to Live without a Self by Jay L. Garfield

For extra credit, if you want to really explore the implications of the “no-self” concept, a good dose of Robina Courtin will get you there, though she is not for the faint of heart:

I cannot adequately cover all there is to know about the concept of no-self. The Buddhist concept of anattā or anātman is one of the fundamental differences between mainstream Buddhism and mainstream Hinduism, with the latter asserting that ātman (“self”) exists, but a “self” that is identical to Brahman, the basis of everything. Nonduality also comes up in conversations such as this, which is associated with Advaita Vedanta.

I think we all would agree that an overinflated sense of self comes with a cost. Buddhism asserts that our attachment to a “self” is responsible for most if not all human suffering. Greed, aggression, pride, jealousy, and envy are all rooted in a glorified self.

In Buddhism, a self that exists independent of experience is seen as illusory, and it is considered a delusion to believe that happiness arises out of fulfilling the desires of such a permanent self. Ignorance is defined by the grasping at the separate self, in which power is given to the perceived existence of a self that is the ruler of experience. This mistaken perception drives people’s attempts to protect the self-delusion causing anxiety and suffering.

In the Buddhist psychological literature, it is an over-identification with a permanent and separate self that reaps havoc in our lives and the world. Loosening our attachment to such a “self” enables us to transcend personal suffering.

Yeah but…

I titled this article, “The No-Self for Dummies... like me”. Some years ago I came to the realization that the difficult part of the no-self concept is actually not understanding it with our mind. If we can figure out something like the Higgs boson, we can figure out the no-self. The real problem is not understanding it, but living it. What makes living the no-self difficult, includes:

• We are zealously devoted to our ego-obsession with perpetuating the absolute and exalted “self”.

• The religious, political, economic, and cultural structures, systems, institutions, messaging, and rewards and punishments are all designed to reinforce and reifiy the “self” and keep the game going.

• There is a lack of community, encouragement, and support to live life differently.

Carl Jung wrote, “The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.” An aspect of the lived human experience is learning to be responsible with stewarding our self-patterning because the human context involves connection, interaction and collaboration between patterns with mind consciousness. But part of this stewarding involves recognizing that the ego-energy of this patterning stems from an overidentification with the idea of the “self” and we must learn to live in and through our patterning from the realization of the no-self.

What to do

Here are a few suggestions for learning to live the no-self teaching:

Perfuming the mind

A common Buddhist phrase is “perfuming the mind”. Since our lives are bombarded with messages that reinforce and reify the ego-self, consider being proactive about engaging with thoughts and messages that encourage the no-self idea, and a life that isn’t driven by clinging and grasping. Start by exploring the articles, books and videos in this article. Subscribe to people on Substack like Mel Pine and Daily Nonduality who encourage this way of thinking and living.

Don’t Assume

Some people might dismiss the idea of no-self by claiming it doesn’t work in the real world. Challenge that notion. Rather than saying “this won’t work” ask yourself, “how could this work?” For example, E. F. Schumacher’s book, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered is a compelling exploration of Buddhist economics.

Developing a No-Self Practice

Cultivate a no-self practice that helps you lessen your attachment to an overinflated sense of “self”. You might start by observing where greed, aggression, pride, jealousy and envy show up in your life. A few questions you might ask are:

• What is at the heart of this feeling or experience of greed, aggression, pride, jealousy or envy?

• In what way does this feeling or experience relate to my illusion of being a separate, absolute, independent and self-existing self?

• What would I think, feel or do differently if I was operating out of the realization of the no-self?

The No-Self and Religious Deconstruction

The Buddhist concept of no-self (anātman) and religious deconstruction both challenge inherited notions of identity, truth, and spiritual authority—inviting a radical reorientation toward impermanence, authenticity, and liberation.

🪞 No-Self (Anātman): Undoing the Illusion of a Permanent Self

In Buddhism, anātman (no-self) is a foundational teaching that refutes the idea of a permanent, unchanging soul or essence:

• The self is a process, not a substance: What we call “self” is a bundle of impermanent aggregates—body, sensations, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness—that arise and pass away.

• Suffering (duḥkha) arises from clinging to self: By believing in a fixed identity, we resist change and grasp at permanence, which leads to suffering.

• Liberation comes through insight: Realizing the emptiness of self allows one to release attachment, dissolve egoic illusions, and experience peace.

This teaching directly opposed the Brahminic idea of ātman—a soul-like essence—and instead offered a path of liberation through deconstruction of identity itself.

🧘‍♀️ No-Self as Liberation from Religious Ego Structures

Toxic religion often builds identity around rigid roles, eternal souls, and divine hierarchies. The doctrine of no-self dismantles these constructs:

• No eternal soul = no eternal damnation: The fear-based control of “heaven or hell” loses its grip when the self is seen as impermanent.

• No fixed identity = no shame-based roles: You are not “a sinner,” “a priesthood holder,” or “a daughter of Eve.” These are symbolic costumes, not essence.

• No divine hierarchy = no spiritual caste: If there’s no self to elevate or degrade, then spiritual elitism collapses.

This is not nihilism—it’s freedom. A radical invitation to reinhabit your body, your breath, your moment. I further expanded this idea in the below diagram:

🌿 No-Self as Ritual Rewilding

In your ritual design work, Jim, no-self offers a symbolic lexicon for spiritual rewilding:

• Breath as impermanence: Each inhale/exhale is a ritual of arising and passing.

• Nature as mirror: Trees shed leaves, rivers flow—no fixed essence, only becoming.

• Rituals of dissolution: Burning old identities, composting shame, releasing inherited roles.

Imagine a ritual toolkit where participants write their religious identities on leaves, then release them into water or fire—embodying the truth of no-self.

🌀 From Collapse to Continuity

No-self doesn’t mean nothingness—it means interbeing. When the ego dissolves, what remains is relational, ecological, and compassionate:

• You are not separate from the world—you are the world, moment by moment.

• Healing from toxic religion becomes not just personal, but planetary.

🌱 A Healing Arc: From Conditioned Faith to Liberated Awareness

Here’s how dependent arising can guide a post-religious healing journey:

1️⃣ Ignorance (avidyā) → inherited dogma, unquestioned authority

Practice: Study the roots of belief; name the conditions that shaped your faith.

2️⃣ Mental formations (saṅkhāra) → internalized roles, shame scripts

Practice: Journal or ritualize the “scripts” you were given; compost them.

3️⃣ Craving (taṇhā) → desire for certainty, belonging, salvation

Practice: Sit with uncertainty; practice interoception and impermanence.

4️⃣ Becoming (bhava) → identity as believer, leader, sinner, saved

Practice: Explore who you are without those labels; ritualize un-becoming.

5️⃣ Birth and death → cycles of belief, rupture, and renewal

Practice: Mark symbolic deaths and rebirths through seasonal or nature-based rituals.

This arc doesn’t end in nihilism—it opens into interbeing, where meaning is co-created, not imposed.

In Summary

• The fact that we exist is a no-brainer but what that actually means might be the difference between liberation and suffering.

• You don’t have to go to Bora Bora, Tibet or Stanford to understand and live the idea of no-self but you may have to work at it because the cards are stacked against you.

• The Western view reifies the human mind and consciousness, but in the East there is not fundamental difference between a bird, human and table.

• Calling the “self” an illusion is not saying that you are not real, it’s pointing out that you are not exactly what you imagine and were taught you are.

• You can live the no-self with a real job, real bills, and you can even drink real coffee.

Thank you for reading today’s article. If you found it meaningful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber for $5 monthly or $50 for a year. As a token of my appreciation I offer several perks including two free books on religious deconstruction and post-religion reconstruction, and a free full membership to the Center for Non-Religious Spirituality.

“Everything changes, everything passes, things appearing, things disappearing. But when all is over, everything having appeared and disappeared, being and extinction both transcended, still the basic silence and emptiness abides and that is blissful peace.”

- Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras