Fake Names, Fake Selves, Useful Fiction
5 min readDec 15, 2020
Many Buddhists are not familiar with Buddha’s teaching of Anatta. To them, it is an abstruse concept that is not important to Buddhist practice. This is a gross misunderstanding. Anatta is the key to decode the deep meaning of what the Buddha taught. It is also the key to enlightenment.
There is a Zen anecdote, which is also a Zen koan, that is worth pondering. It is from the Blue Cliff records:
