To make the teaching of Anatta clearer we have to
investigate two things more carefully: 1) What exactly is the nature of
selfhood ? 2) Why is the person not-self? (What are the reasons for negating
selfhood in the five aggregates?) There are four dominant criteria of selfhood:
(a) the idea of duration or lastingness
(b) simplicity, incomposite entity
(c) unconditioned
(d) susceptibility to control
(a) Idea of Lastingness
Self has to be an entity which persists through time. It might be a temporary
duration. eg. that we come into being at birth, continue as the same self throughout life,
and are annihilated at death. Or else a permanent duration, the idea of an eternal
everlasting self.
(b) Simplicity
This is the idea that the self is not compounded, that it possesses a basic simplicity
or indivisibility.
(c) Unconditioned
We assume that the self must possess its own power of being, it must be
self-sufficient, unconditioned, not dependent upon causes and conditions.
(d) Control.
If something really belongs to us we should be able to exercise mastery over it, to
control it so that it is subject to our determination.