October 06, 2026

The Trouble With Me

The idea of self is an imaginary, false belief which has no corresponding reality, and it produces harmful thoughts of 'me' and 'mine', selfish desire, craving, attachment, hatred, ill-will, conceit, pride, egoism, and other defilements, impurities and problems. It is the source of all the troubles in the world from personal conflicts to wars between nations. In short, to this false view can be traced all the evil in the world.

Walpola Rahula was a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk and scholar who wrote this book in 1959 to explain core Buddhist teachings clearly to readers unfamiliar with the tradition. Here he addresses anatta, or non-self, arguing that the belief in a fixed, permanent self is not just mistaken but actively harmful, since it breeds craving, pride, and hostility. He goes further than most teachers by tracing wars and large-scale conflict back to this same small, private insistence on 'me' and 'mine.' In the Eastern wisdom tradition, the self is understood as five ever-changing aggregates — body, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness — not a fixed essence to protect. Meditators train to watch this process directly, so the compulsion to defend or inflate an 'I' naturally loosens, easing both inner suffering and outer conflict.

A principle of Eastern Wisdom: Non-Self →