You are listening to the Secular Buddhism Podcast, and this is episode number 17.

I am your host Noah Rasheda, and today I'm talking about our sense of self.

Welcome back to the Secular Buddhism Podcast. Before we start, I want to mention something

that I mention every single time I record one of these podcasts.

And that is a quote from the Dalai Lama, where he says, do not try to use what you learn from

Buddhism to be a Buddhist. Use it to be a better whatever you already are.

Please keep this in mind as you listen and learn about the topics and concepts discussed in this

podcast episode. And if you enjoy the podcast, please feel free to share, write a review, or give it

a rating. So let's jump into this week's topic. So this week I'm excited to continue along the

lines of what we discussed in last week's podcast episode. So in the last podcast episode,

I talked about the concept of truth being relative in space and time. And the implications of

that understanding of if reality or truth is relative in space and time, what does that mean for

us individually? And this is where the concept, the Buddhist doctrine of no self comes in.

And I've talked about this before in one of the earlier podcasts, but I would like to discuss this

in a little bit more detail here, mostly because it's coming right off of the heels of the

understanding that truth is relative. And if truth is relative, then the self is also relative.

So I want to discuss that a little bit and hopefully this makes sense. So in Buddhism, there's the

term Anata or Anatman. And this refers to the doctrine of no self. And that is that there is no

unchanging permanent soul in living beings. And this is a central Buddhist doctrine. And it appears

in several of the old original teachings of Buddhism. And you'll find this concept taught within

every Buddhist tradition out there now. And the reason this is so important to understand

is because we have the tendency to relate to ourselves, the sense of self as a permanent fixed thing.

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