[MD] self: owner of action & owner of thoughts

[MarshaV]

 2.4  Identification revisited in light of self as illusion

...  

   "Now if the self is, as I have suggested it is, a construct, then a subject's identification with a perspectival owner, such as through memory, will not be coupled with the actual representation of a personal owner.  Identification, which elicits feelings of personal ownership, will only _seem_ to represent a persona self.  So when we seem to recall _ourselves_ performing an action, what will actually occur is that we appropriate, to our current witnessing perspectives, those psycho-physical cues (subtending the act of remembering) that stand our perspectives in relation to the remembered action.  Such appropriation will elicit feelings of personal ownership towards the past action and those feelings will in turn seem to point to a _personal_ owner who performed the action (and is now remembering it).  But there will be no actual personal owner;  such is the illusion of self. 

   "An example will help.  Suppose Ben wins a race, and then feels proud because of it.  On our analysis, Ben's feeling of pride and attendant thoughts 'I won the race!' indicate that he feels personal ownership towards winning the race and his proud feelings.  The feelings of pride are a give-away sign that, as a current witnessing perspective, Ben identifies _with_ the perspectival owner and agent who won.  He would not feel proud unless he believed it was _he_ who won the race.  But is this belief a correct one?  Not literally.  He believes that he _qua personal self_ won the race --- that is how the event seems remembered from his perspective.  His believing this much, however, has already bought into the content of those thoughts and feelings that tell him 'I, a personal owner and agent called 'Ben', won the race, and I, the same personal self who won the race, am feeling proud because of it'.  But such feelings, I have argued, mislead.  There is in fact no such self-entity who could have won the race or now believes that he won it.  There is no actual personal self who has these emotions; that is what it means to say the self is an illusion."   
 
    (Albahari, Miri, 'Analytical Buddhism: The Two-tiered Illusion of Self ')   
 
 
Marsha: 
It is quite easy to state there is no such entity as a autonomous self, but it is harder to recognize and break the habit.  imho.  
 
 
 
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