Ship of Theseus and Anatta

There is a well-known paradox in Western Philosophical thought called The Ship of Theseus.
It goes like this, “what is the essence of a ship? If we take out and replace every part of a ship, then is it the same ship or a different ship? So what really makes a ship?”

The paradox ends right there and there is no known solution to this problem, hence why it’s called a paradox.

But the Buddha has revealed a much deeper observation AND SOLUTION to this problem.
The phrase “Sabbe dhammā anatta” means that all phenomenon are anatta, having no complete control or absolute essence or ultimate fruitfulness.
Everything that we call “thing” are nothing more than a bunch of collection glued together by bunch of things, everything has no ultimate essence. Therefore, knowing this, there really is no point in pursuing anything (except *Nibbāna*) in this world since every “thing” that we try to pursue in this world or the next, whether in earth or in heaven, ends up just like assembling ships that get broken at its end, they are nothing more than useless childish play.

Buddha Dhammā has really shown itself to be transcendentally superior to any kind of doctrine that we know of, including in this case, Western mode of thought. The Western thinking often stops at asking question and trying to find evidence based on those questions and hypothesis, this of course leads to science and other good things, but it is still clearly not perfect, some people even worship scientific empiricism like a religion, and then proceeds to criticise religion despite them using the same mode of worship of a method, believing that it has no fault whatsoever.

A lot of modern day Atheists are quite similar in their extreme scepticism and constant questioning, therefore creating a modern movement of “secular Buddhist”, practically an oxymoron, since Buddhism is heavily metaphysical despite not being mystical whatsoever. Claiming to be a secular Buddhist is like finding a hidden village full of treasures but taking none for yourself but only seeing it through the distance for the sake of having a nice view, it may provide a temporary relief but in the end they are wasting the potential of the true teachings. The Buddha of course also promotes skepticism, but he also provides very clear parameters for spiritual development and what is good/bad to not create a spiraling extreme scepticism rabbit hole where you don’t believe in anything in the end. This is the essence of “Ehipasiko”, go and prove yourself, which means to prove whether the teachings are truly a way out of suffering or not, it is not simply to prove that Dhammā is just superior because it sounds smart or crafted in a complex manner.

This is also distantly related with Zeno’s paradox, which basically describes fractals going smaller and smaller into infinity.

The Buddha describes those phenomenons with just 1 magic word, anatta.

This is why translating “anatta” into another language is a severe disservice to the Buddha Sāsana, since no language in existence so far as I know can translate and copy all the nuance contained inside this very complex word. Translating it into non-self or any other kind of word will only lead to spiral of confusion and stagnancy of progress.

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Yash RS, Jittananto