Buddhist teachings of self and non-self

Of all the Buddha's teachings, those about the nature of the self are the most difficult to understand, yet they are central to spiritual beliefs. Indeed, "fully perceiving the nature of the self" is a way of defining enlightenment.

The five Skandha
The Buddha taught that an individual is a combination of five aggregates of existence, also called the Five Skandhas or the five heaps:

Module
Sensation
Perception
Mental formations
Consciousness
Various schools of Buddhism interpret skandhas in slightly different ways. Generally, the first skandha is our physical form. The second consists of our feelings - both emotional and physical - and our senses - seeing, feeling, tasting, touching, smelling.

The third skandha, perception, encompasses most of what we call thought: conceptualization, cognition, reasoning. This also includes the recognition that occurs when an organ comes into contact with an object. Perception can be thought of as "what identifies". The perceived object can be a physical or mental object, like an idea.

The fourth skandha, mental formations, includes habits, prejudices and predispositions. Our will or will is also part of the fourth skandha, as well as attention, faith, conscience, pride, desire, revenge and many other mental states both virtuous and non-virtuous. The causes and effects of karma are particularly important for the fourth skandha.

The fifth skandha, consciousness, is awareness or sensitivity towards an object, but without conceptualization. Once there is awareness, the third skandha could recognize the object and assign it a concept-value, and the fourth skandha could react with desire or repulsion or some other mental training. The fifth skandha is explained in some schools as a basis that links the experience of life together.

Self is Non-Self
The most important thing to understand about skandhas is that they are empty. They are not qualities that an individual possesses because there is no self that possesses them. This doctrine of the non-self is called anatman or anatta.

In essence, the Buddha taught that "you" are not an integral and autonomous entity. The individual self, or what we might call ego, is more correctly thought of as a byproduct of skandhas.

On the surface, this appears to be a nihilistic teaching. But the Buddha taught that if we can see through the illusion of the small individual self, we experience what is not subject to birth and death.

Two views
In addition to this, Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism differ in how the anatman is understood. Indeed, more than anything else, it is the different self-understanding that defines and separates the two schools.

Basically, Theravada believes that the anatman means that an individual's ego or personality is a barrier and an illusion. Once freed from this illusion, the individual can enjoy the happiness of Nirvana.

Mahayana, on the other hand, considers all physical forms without intrinsic self, the teaching called shunyata, which means "empty". The ideal in Mahayana is to allow all beings to be enlightened together, not only out of a sense of compassion, but because we are not really separate and autonomous beings.