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«[...] the Buddhist answer to the question of the self is that it is an illusion—not that you don’t exist, but that you don’t exist in the absence of others. A famous Zen Buddhist koan asks, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” One solution to this riddle is that any sound would be an illusion—it would become real only if you added your other hand to make the clap. It’s a metaphor for the self without others. Your individual existence, in isolation, is empty; it is made full only by the presence of other people.» |