the self

The self is getting the most attention in my thoughts and most of the other people I talk to in the class. What the heck is it? Is it just the sum total of all actions and experiences up till death? Does a person become what he does? or is what he does an outcome of who he is? Is there an essence in each self that makes it an individual who is different from all other selves?

I wonder, if maybe we separate the self from the body too much still. We seem to associate the self only with the mind. Not that it is some substance that is totally different from the body, but the mind's processes seem to be in the bulk of discussion; beliefs, intentions, thoughts, perceptions, etc. And so then we look at those and say "Yea, they change all the time, so the self must be constantly changing as well. No part of the self stays the same, thus the self is completely different through time." But many of us want to know that there is something about the self that stays static over time; some defining property of the self that is always there and makes it the individual that it is. Is my self right now a completely different self than my self 5 years ago?

I want to say that, of course, lots has changed, but there is still something that has not changed. I may have different perceptions and intentions and beliefs, but through all that change atleast one thing is uniting these "two" selves. However I don't know what that is if it is anything, or where to start trying to find it.


Maybe it's the way I experience things; I may have different experiences over time, but I experience these experiences in the same way that I have always and will always. We all experience joy, and different situations and different things bring about joy, but my self experiences joy in a certain way, and I will always recognize it as joy and joy will always feel the same way, no matter the changes in my body or mind. And this is so with all experiences. I'll always experience pain in the same way; pain will always feel THAT way, even if there are varying degrees of it or whether I think I should rejoice in pain or try to stifle it. And I experience pain, and joy, in a different way than anyone else. I won't know what it is like to experience joy as person B, and person B won't know what it's like to experience joy as Me. Maybe it's that element of the self which stays the same throughout life and which allows each person to understand that parts of his self has changed or grew, but there is a unifying factor of experience.

I'd like to be able to articulate this in a much better fashion, so maybe after I read it over again and think on it, and discuss it with other people, I will be able to do that. Perhaps this makes no sense and has no plausibility, and I'll figure that out soon enough.