This story is about the Buddha’s teaching of anatta; that there is no separate self. The story shows that although there is no separate self, yet there is still a functioning being, and that these two things don’t stand against each other. They are sometimes described as ‘Emptiness and Form’, and sometimes as ‘All is One’ and ‘All is Different’.

King Milinda was a Bactrian king who ruled the north-east of India, including parts of present-day Afghanistan, in the late second century BCE. His meetings and conversations about Buddhism with a Buddhist monk called Nàgasena are recorded in the Questions of King Milinda which is thought to have been written in the first century BCE.

King Milinda had heard a lot about the Buddhist monk Nàgasena, and one day he travelled by chariot to meet him. When the two of them met they exchanged greetings, and the king sat down respectfully to one side of Nàgasena. Then the king asked, “How is it that you are known Venerable Monk? What is your name?”

Nàgasena replied, “O king, I am known as Nàgasena, but that is merely a convenient and conventional label; there is actually no separate individual here that it refers to.”

In apparent astonishment, King Milinda turns to some of his followers and asks, “We can see this person who is called Nàgasena standing right in front of us, and yet he claims that no such separate individual exists. How can that possibly be the case?”

Then he turns back to Nàgasena and starts to question him, “If there is no identifiable ‘person’ there for other people too, then who is it that gives you alms? Who or what is it that gives you food and shelter? And in your own case, who is it that receives those alms and lives the Life of Buddha?

“Similarly, if no person has their own unique separate self-nature, then who is it that kills, steals, lies or gets drunk? If what you say is true, then how can there be anything like ‘doing the right thing’ or ‘doing the wrong thing’, bringing benefit or causing harm? There would be no doer of good deeds or evil deeds and so what about the Law of Karma? How could there be a Law of Karma? If someone were to kill you, then there would be no murder, because there is no Nàgasena there to murder! Oh and by the way, it must also follow that there can be no masters or teachers in the Buddha’s Sangha.

“You say you are merely referred to using the label Nàgasena, but what on earth does that mean?”

It’s not quite clear in the story whether the king really doesn’t understand the Buddha’s teaching of anatta, or whether he actually does have a good understanding (as some of his later comments might suggest), but is just putting forward this argument in order to test Nàgasena.

It is clear in the Buddha’s teaching that there is no such thing as a separate self. However, this doesn’t mean that there can be no functioning individual (or thing); the Buddha is very clear that these two don’t stand against each other. The king is misunderstanding this however, and thinks that a person requires a self, so that if there is no self then there can be no person.

He thinks that either there is a being there, in this case called Nàgasena, who is or has a separate self, or if there is no self then there must be no Nàgasena. But it isn’t like that; Form and Emptiness are two different ways of looking at the same reality, and that is brought out in Nàgasena’s eventual reply.

However, before even giving Nàgasena a chance to respond, the king then changes tack. In his previous questions he has been arguing that, ‘if you say there is no self, then you can’t exist, and then how does the Buddha’s teaching apply’.

Now he changes directions and says, ‘since you clearly do exist, you must have a self, so where is it?’

The king continued, “You say that you are called Nàgasena; now what is the essence of this Nàgasena? Where can I find it? Is it your hair?”

Nàgasena replies, “No it isn’t, your majesty”.

“So is it your nails?”, “No”,“Is it your teeth?”, “No”,“Is it your skin?”, “No it isn’t, your majesty,” repeats Nàgasena again and again.

The king then carries on listing more and more parts of the body, but always with the same response from Nàgasena.

Then the king asks, “Or is it your physical form as a whole, or your feelings, perceptions or volition? Or is it your consciousness?” (These are the five Skandhas which in Buddhist teaching make up a person.) Still Nàgasena replies, “No it isn’t, your majesty.”

“Is it all of these taken together? Or is it some extra thing different from all of these that is Nàgasena, such as a soul or some kind of spiritual essence that abides in you?”

Still Nàgasena answers: “No it is none of these, your majesty.”

And so the king then concludes, “If this is true, then try as I might I can find no Nàgasena anywhere. Nàgasena is just a meaningless sound. There is no such person that stands before me, it is an illusion.

“But this can’t be the case, because I can clearly see that there is someone standing in front of me; so it must be your view of the world that is wrong.” At this point the king finally ends his interrogation, and allows Nàgasena to answer.

Nàgasena responds, not by trying to talk the king into seeing things his way, or by arguing against him, but by using an analogy, or metaphor, for a human being, but one which it is easier for the king to understand. The example he uses is the king’s chariot.

Nàgasena says, “Your majesty, I know you live in great luxury and I imagine that on a day as hot as this you wouldn’t have walked here, would you? I’m guessing you probably came in a chariot.”

And the king confirms, “Yes, I did come in a chariot.”

Nàgasena then proceeds to question the king in just the same way that the king had questioned him. “So tell me your majesty, what is that chariot. Is it the axle?” And the king of course says, “No, it isn’t the axle.”

“Or is it the wheels?”; “No, it isn’t the wheels.”

“Is it the chassis?”; “No, it isn’t the chassis.”

“O is it the reins, or the yoke…”, and he goes on through all the bits and pieces of a chariot, all the way down to the nails holding it together; every little bit that is part of the chariot. He identifies every single component that makes up a chariot and taking them one by one he asks whether any of those is the essence of the chariot; is that the self of the chariot? He has gone through the whole lot, and the king says, “No it is none of those.”

And then just to complete his questioning, and to mirror the king’s questions about the human body, Nàgasena asks him to imagine all the bits of the chariot laid out on the ground, and asks whether this collection of items taken all together is the essence of a chariot. The king replies that it isn’t. Or is the essence of the chariot some extra thing in additional to all these parts, which is somehow added in? The king answers that this isn’t true either.

Having heard all the king’s answers, Nàgasena then turns the tables on him and challenges him saying, “Then your majesty, ‘chariot’ is just a meaningless sound. Try as I might, I can discover no chariot anywhere, because we have been through all of the bits, and it’s very clear that none of those bits is the chariot. There is no such thing as this chariot that you claim to have travelled on; it is merely an illusion.” This is just the same objection that the king had raised previously about the human body.

Nàgasena then goes on to taunt the king a bit (which seems a rather risky strategy with a king he has never met before). He says, “You are such a powerful king your majesty, are you so afraid of me that you don’t dare tell the truth?” He then turns to the king’s followers and says: “This great king claims he came here in a chariot but when I ask him to show it to me, he is unable to do so. What should we make of that?” The king’s followers are greatly amused by this turn of events, and say to the king, “Ha! Get out of that!”

But the king protests and says, “Venerable monk, I have not lied to you. How I would describe it is that, when all of these parts are put together in the correct way, then there is an appearance and functioning which we refer to using the term ‘chariot’.” (It is this description which suggests that the king did actually understand the teachings of no-self and emptiness.)

Nàgasena approves the king’s answer, and carries on to say, “It is just the same with this person who is referred to as Nàgasena. When all the different kinds of tissues and cells in a human body come together in the correct way, giving rise to the five aggregates of being, then there is an appearance and functioning which we refer to using the term ‘Nàgasena’.

In reply, the king says, “Thank you for that wonderful answer Venerable Nàgasena. You have provided a solution to this most difficult of puzzles. I feel sure that even the Buddha himself would approve of your explanation.”

We can go through just the same process as Nàgasena does, even with something as simple as a molecule of water (H₂O), made up of just three atoms: two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom. A hydrogen atom is not water and contains no water; that’s also true of the other hydrogen atom; and an oxygen atom is also not water and contains no water. If you put together three things, none of which are water or contain water, how can you possibly create water? It’s impossible isn’t it? This is the emptiness view of water.

And yet, as a result of these atoms coming together in a particular way, there is an appearance and a functioning which we refer to as water. This is the form view of water, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that it is made up of these three things, none of which are water, or contain water. These are two different views of the same reality; the emptiness view and the form view.

The emptiness view is that when you look at the individual bits you can’t pin down which bit is water, or what is the heart of it; what is the essence of water? This is because there is no essence; there is no self-nature of water within the water molecule. And yet, there is still the appearance and functioning of water, which we can still refer to using the term ‘water’, and can still use to wash with or drink. Emptiness and form together.

Nàgasena uses the example of the chariot because it is quite easy for us to understand how all the bits of a chariot might go together. We understand it much better than we can understand how a molecule of water goes together, and certainly much better than we understand how a human being goes together. We can easily count all of the bits of a chariot, but we can’t count all of the bits that make up a human being.

So when all of the bits of a chariot, none of which is a chariot (or contains a chariot, or contains the essence of a chariot), are put together in a particular way, then as a result of that there is an appearance and functioning which we refer to as ‘chariot’. The chariot does exist; there is something there that we refer to as chariot, it’s just that it doesn’t have any self-nature of chariot. You can take all the bits apart, and you won’t find a ‘chariot’ anywhere, or any essence of chariot.

It is just that when all the bits are put together in a certain way, then this particular formation arises; it is a configuration of part of the universe. It’s not separate from the universe, it’s just that part of the universe is configured in that way, in the same way that part of the universe is configured as a human being, or a table, or a tea-cup. None of them have a self that is separate from the rest of the universe, and yet there is a coming together of particles that has a specific appearance and functioning. As a result of that we can ride on it, and we call it a chariot, or we can drink tea from it and we call it a cup.

We have these terms to refer to these particular patterns, or configurations, because that helps us to communicate so that we know what we are talking about, but the words so easily lead us to believe that there is a self there. Most of us wouldn’t believe that in terms of a chariot, or a cup, but when we refer to a Nàgasena or a Milinda, or to any of us, we so very easily assume that there is a separate being there.

The king’s gushing praise of Nàgasena suggests that he found his teaching helpful. And it is helpful, because it takes something fairly simple, a chariot, which has a finite number of pieces. We can take it all apart and ask of each part, ‘Is this nail a chariot? Is this bit of shaped wood (the axle) a chariot?’ No, obviously not. You can go through each part in this way and satisfy yourself that none of them is the chariot. So if they are all put together, how can we possibly make a chariot? There is no self-nature of chariot there, but nevertheless when they are put together in the correct way there is an appearance and functioning that we refer to as ‘chariot’.

If we put them all together except one, then it doesn’t function as a chariot. We could say that it is ‘almost a chariot’, or a ‘broken’ chariot, but when we see that there is no self-nature of chariot anywhere, then there isn’t the question of whether it has the ‘essence’ of a chariot or not if it is missing a piece. Similarly, when you start assembling the bits, how many of them are needed before you can say, ‘it is now a chariot’, as though some ‘essence of chariot’ had been breathed into it? That never happens. There is no ‘self-nature’ of chariot at any point, even when all the parts are assembled and it has an appearance and functioning that we refer to as ‘chariot’.

Once the chariot has been correctly assembled, perhaps someone could then build up the bodywork, and it would ‘become’ a carriage, and perhaps, thousands of years later, someone could add an engine and it would ‘become’ a car. But no ‘self-nature’ of car would ever have been added to it, or would be contained within it.

It’s the same when we look at a human being. If a human being loses an arm, are they still a human being? Are they a ‘not-quite’ human being, or a ‘broken’ human being? We don’t see things that way, as they just are the being that they are. We always say that this is still a human being whilst that human being is alive; whilst that human being is alive there is the appearance and functioning that we refer to as a ‘human being’.

When the person dies there is no longer the functioning. The appearance of a human being is still there, but the causes and conditions which sustained that life are no longer there. And of course the appearance doesn’t stay around for long after that. Parts of it can remain for a long time, but other parts disperse quite quickly. The same can be said of the ‘assembling’ of a human being as a foetus. There is no point at which it suddenly ‘becomes’ a human being, even though there may be a fairly well defined point at which it becomes viable if it were to be born.

The fact that there aren’t definite cut-off points might make things more complex when we are making decisions about a particular person at the beginning or the end of their life, but the Buddha is very clear that this is a much more accurate way to see and understand the world as it is.

It is this understanding of no-self and emptiness that leads the Scripture of Great Wisdom to say of beings, ‘they are not born and they do not die’. Like the story of King Milinda’s chariot, the scripture is saying that there is no ‘separate self’ which ‘comes into existence’ or ‘goes out of existence’. What happens is that a coming together of causes and conditions, and physical materials, results in an appearance and functioning, which abides for a while and then disperses again.

Between the arising and the dispersing of this human being, we have a wonderful opportunity to live the Life of Buddha. In the Shushōgi, Dōgen says,

‘We have received the exceptional gift of a human body and are able to hear the Truths of Buddhism: we therefore have the greatest possibility of a full life within the limits of birth and death.’

Sources:
There are many translations of the Questions of King Milinda, for example:

The Debate of King Milinda, translated by Bhikkhu Pesala, which can be found at
http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/milinda.pdf

Similar issues are discussed in the philosophical story of the Ship of Theseus:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus