I am trying to sort out this question of self. The more I read the more it seems that there is no substantive self. The experiential self is elusive, constantly changing, impossible to pin down. There is a sense of identity, allied with memory, of an enduring self but the more one examines memories the more one realises that the only pervading factor is a sense of identity. The various selfs of memory differ from situation to situation. There is a continuity in the sense that the self I now am has, to a great extent, been shaped and moulded by my previous selves and the events they lived through – though I am not now who I was then, nor will I be tomorrow who I am now.
In this sense one can see the accuracy of the Buddhist idea of dependent arising (pratityasamutpada) – each existing state arising from and being dependent on the previous state. Not only is there no need for a substantial, enduring and unchanging self, a ground, or substrate, which pervades all changes; such a self would not make sense. As Varela points out (p. 70) How could such a self be the condition or ground of all my experiences and yet remain untouched by those experiences? If there is an enduring substantial self then there is determinism and all hope for the future vanishes. But if each moment gives rise to the next and each self to the next then there is hope. We can make our future. We can make ourselves.
Here is the importance of meditation because in it we can become aware of the stillness in the emptiness and of the moments of arising. In it too we become aware of the fundamental state of all being – relatedness.