I can fully understand the concept of no self as applied to the individual self, personality and ego. The Buddha' chariot analogy demonstrates this perfectly. But the chariot analogy has two major problems when one tries to apply it to Self as in the impersonal transcendent self. 1. The chariot analogy for the composition of man was around for a thousand years before Buddha and he would certainly have been aware of it. It originates in the Upanishads where it is given thus; Body is the chariot Mind is the reigns Senses are the horses Intellect is the charioteer Self (transcendent) is the chariot owner. When Buddha gave his chariot analogy he only dissects the parts of the chariot to show that mind and body contain no self. He does not take into account the chariot owner. Why? Is it that he only wanted to demonstrate non existence of self (ego) and not the Self (eternal), or was there another reason. Simply leaving the chariot owner out to show there is no chariot owner makes no sense, because there is no need for the analogy to do this and indeed the analogy does nothing to point this out or help make this case? 2. We can dissemble all the parts of a chariot and indeed there can be found no self. But when we put all the parts of a chariot together, it is equally as true that they do not make a chariot – they just make a pile of chariot parts. Unless they are put together in a certain way, they are useless. Unless there is a chariot owner to put them together and put them to use – nothing happens. Now I refuse to believe that Buddha, would have chosen a ‘bad analogy’ or that he was unaware of the upanshadic analogy or did anything by accident. So there must be a reason why his analogy stopped short of completely refuting the Self (transcendent). Can anyone shed any light?
I won't try to shed light on your problem directly, but I'll say something else regarding metaphors: There is no universal way to understand a metaphor; there is only an agreed way to understand it. And to understand it properly, we must stick to that agreed way (as it is expounded in the scriptures). In a metaphor, we conceptualize one cognitive content in the conceptual domain of another; "we throw it over", as the word "metaphor" means. But the target domain may include possible contents which have nothing to do with the originating domain. For example, we may liken the soul unto a bird. We may say the soul flies on the winds of experience. But -- a bird changes feathers, lays eggs, poos, eats nasty worms, and whatever else it is that birds do besides flying. Does the soul also change feathers, lay eggs, poo, etc. -- is there something about the soul that can be likened unto changing feathers, laying eggs, pooing etc.? We may extrapolate further, but it can easily happen that we overinterpret a metaphor, using the concepts from the target field which have no correspondence in the originating field. The metaphor, the target field may lead us into making false conclusions about the concept we were trying to explain. This is why we must be careful with metaphors.
Light Travelling, I remember when I was very young and there was no fear of death. Maybe that last question is for you to answer.
