When the Buddha was asked whether there is a self or not, he refused to answer. There is undeniably self as a phenomenon in the sense of a self-concept or selfing process — if there weren’t, no one would have any idea what not-self is talking about. However, self as phenomenon doesn’t have to mean that self is actually the way we normally take it to be. It’s sort of like the common view that illusionism means there is no such thing as consciousness, but some illusionists views affirm consciousness but say it’s just not the way we think it is. The Buddha is basically Quining self like Dennett Quined qualia (Buddhizing self?).

I think you could also flip the question to make more sense of it: if reincarnation exists, how could there be a self in the way we think of it? Rebirth is an infinite process with no beginning and no end if you don’t become enlightened. In each rebirth, you get a different body, different thoughts, etc. So imagine now that in your next life you’re reborn as a god. After that, you’re reborn as a dog, then a woman in Chile, then a man in Germany, then as a hellbeing, then god realm again, etc. Consider your 10 trillionth rebirth. What would actually recognizably remain of you from now until then that you could say “ah yeah, that’s me”? Some vague habits and inclinations maybe? But even those would likely have shifted by then. What you can do is connect a causal stream, i.e., your current life will condition your future lives because the world will be different depending on how you act (if you discover a cure for a disease, your next life will inhabit a world where that disease is cured — not exactly the same point, but related: the world has a causal stream, but is there something you can point to and say “that’s world”?). But the causal stream that you can denote is not what we tend to mean by a self.

Consider how in Christianity, the self is inextricably linked with the body to the extent that it’s restored in heaven to its ideal form. This is the standard view of what self is. In Buddhism, getting rid of self-view (sakkāya diṭṭhi) means getting rid of the sense that “I am this”, i.e., this body, this thought, etc. That’s in direct contradiction to the Christian view, and that can help make it a bit clearer what not-self is getting at. There’s another subtler fetter called conceit (māna) that corresponds to “I am”, but that’s another story.

What I’ve said here is just touching the basics of this and is skipping over the control and impermanence aspect, which is how not-self is actually described in the suttas. I wrote an article a while back that goes into that part of it: paintingsilence.substac…