The Core of Experience
September 24, 2017
When I was up in the Bay Area last week, I came across a new word: corelessness. Apparently, the latest fashion is to claim that the Buddha said we are coreless, and that that’s the meaning of anatta. In other words, there’s a jumble of karmic activities that make up a human being. That’s what you are. The anatta teaching, in this interpretation, is not a not-self teaching; it’s a no-self teaching. It answers the question of what you are, saying that what you are has no core. You’re like a karmic fuzz ball. All the fuzz that’s picked up as the fuzz ball moves across the floor under the force of the wind is held together only by static electricity, but there’s no real core there. This is supposed to represent what the Buddha taught about what we are.