Menander’s Questions

This dialogue on the individual self provides a way of understanding the Buddhist concept of self.

Menander asks Nagasena (an elderly Buddhist monk) his name.
Nagasena replies it “is only a generally understood term, a practical designation.  There is no question of a permanent individual implied in the use of the word.”
Menander replies, ‘If there is no permanent individuality, who gives you monks your robes and food, lodging and medicines?  And who makes use of them? Who lives a life of righteousness, meditation and reaches Nirvana? Who destroys living beings, steals, fornicates, tells lies, or drinks spirits?  If your fellow monks call you Nagasena, what then is Nagasena? Would you say that your hair is Nagasena? Or your nails, teeth, skin, or other parts of your body, or the outward form, or sensation, or perception, or the psychic constructions, or consciousness? Are any of these Nagasena? Are these taken together Nagasena? Or, anything other than they?
Nagasena answers no to all of Menander’s questions.
Menander says, ‘then for all my asking I find no Nagasena. Nagasena is merely a sound! Surely what your reverence has said is false!
Nagasena  now takes over the questioning.  He asks Menander, “Your Majesty, how did you come here on foot, or in a vehicle?
Menander replies, “In a chariot.”
“Then tell me, “ Nagasena asks, “What is the chariot? Is the pole the chariot?
“No, your reverence,” Menander replies.
“Or the axles, wheels, frame, reins, yoke, spokes, or goad?”
Menander replies that none of these things is the chariot.
“Then all these separate parts taken together are the chariot?”
Menander again says no.    
“Then is the chariot something other than the separate parts?”
“No, your reverence.” Menander says.
“Then for all my asking, your Majesty,” Nagasena says, “I can find no chariot. The chariot is a mere sound. What then is the chariot? Surely what your Majesty has said is false!”
Menander protests that what he has said was not false. “It is on account of all these various components,  the pole, axle, wheels and so on, that the vehicle is called a chariot. It’s just a generally understood term, a practical designation.”
“Well said, your Majesty!” Nagasena relies. “You know what the word chariot means! And it’s just the same with me. It’s on account of the various components of my being that I am known by the generally understood term,  the practical designation, Nagasena.”


This is taken from a discussion of self in Pankai Mishra’s book An End  to Suffering, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004, p. 25-26.

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