Page "Mindstream" Paragraph 2

Most Buddhist schools are committed doctrinally to anātman ( Pali: anattā ), " non-self ," the teaching that none of the things perceived by the senses constitute a " self.

" As Thanissaro Bhikkhu explains, "... the Buddha was asked point-blank whether or not there was a self, he refused to answer.

When later asked why, he said that to hold either that there is a self or that there is no self is to fall into extreme forms of wrong view that make the path of Buddhist practice impossible.

" Scholar Herbert V. Gunther further explains, " an individual, which in other systems is imagined as a combination of matter and a permanent mental principle ( ātman ), is in reality a continuously changing stream of that which from one viewpoint is believed to be matter and from another a mind.

However, what we call the mental and the material occurs in a unity of organization.

Organization is something dynamic.