May 26, 2026

In the question 'What am I?' lies no self but only the five aggregates.

Walpola Rahula was a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk and scholar who published this work in 1959, during a period when Western readers were first seriously engaging with Buddhist philosophy. He wrote it as a clear, corrective text — pushing back against romanticized or distorted versions of the Dharma. When he explained the five aggregates — form, sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness — he was showing that what we call a "self" is actually a temporary assembly of processes, not a fixed thing. That insight cuts directly at interconnectedness: if there is no sealed-off self, then the boundary between you and everything else is thinner than you assume.