Dependence and emptiness › The self and the processes we call ours

Chapter 18 opens by considering whether the self is identical with the aggregates or different from them. The aggregates are the bodily and mental processes around which the Buddhist analysis of a person is organized. If the self were identical with them, the text argues, it would be subject to arising and destruction. If it were different, it would lack their characteristics. Each option creates a difficulty for a self conceived as an independent bearer of experience.

This is more precise than saying that a person changes and therefore does not exist. Change does not ordinarily stop us identifying a person. The target is an additional self that would explain ownership and continuity while standing independently of the changing processes. Nāgārjuna asks what such a self could be and how it could be related to those processes.

Return to the friend whose reply we explained through a fixed inner identity. We can acknowledge her action, ask what led to it, and distinguish it from something another person did. None of that requires identifying an unchanging core that causes every response. If we instead describe the response as the expression of an immutable angry nature, we make it harder to explain how a different understanding or situation could change it.

This hypothetical case does not establish that anyone can change any habit on demand. Removing an assertion of intrinsic identity does not remove constraints, consequences, or the need for help. Its modest purpose is to separate identifying someone and holding her accountable from assigning her an independent essence.

The distinction also protects against a careless ethical inference. "There is no independently existing self" does not entail "No one is affected by what I do." Chapter 24 explicitly defends the significance of actions and results against the charge that emptiness destroys them. Responsibility can be discussed through the relationships among persons, actions, and consequences; denying those relationships would abandon the very dependence the chapter is trying to explain.