More Buddhism Mistakes - no-self

There's often this thing that people say about Buddhism, which is that it is a philosophy of "no-self." And people make a really big deal of that. That a person doesn't have a self. But that's just sort of wrong. What Buddhism is talking about here is a metaphysical self, or, to put it into christian terms, a soul. The reason Buddhism posits the notion that there is no soul is because Buddhism has no metaphysical components. There is not a world under or behind this world animating it - this world is it. That is wondrous. It is an interconnected self that doesn't need some outside thing to animate it. Another way to say this is like this: Buddhism doesn't view spirituality and humanity as separate. It doesn't view animalness and sacredness as separate - they are the same thing. It doesn't view nature as lesser and the spiritual realms as greater. This is what no-self really means. It means things can't exist without each other. Each thing creates another thing, from which a thing itself has been created. This is "no-self." The whole world is the self, the entire universe is, and when this is true, each moment is "spiritual," whatever that might mean. But I mean, look at it: the trees are green, the sky is blue, the clouds are white, and they are all the same thing, changing form. 

At the same time, Buddhism would never discount one's personality and character and inner life. While it's true that thoughts are fleeting, so are clouds, and thoughts are their own reality, just as clouds are. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't trust or believe our thoughts because they're "no self' or not real or something, it just means we hold them lightly because we know they will change. There are individual selves - that is one side of buddhism; but all selves are also one self - that is the other side of buddhism. We don't have to have a metaphysical system to see this ontological reality: you come from, are birthed by, two others, who come from, are birthed by, two others, and couldn't exist without the sun, the air, etc, etc, the entire universe, on and on. John Muir said, investigate one thing and you find the entire universe is hitched to it, and that is true of us as well. This is the actual meaning of no-self. It has nothing to do with the idea that you aren't fully real or don't have a functioning self in the world. It's much more practical than that and opens a way of seeing and then being that is different from worrying about some soul you might have. What you begin to worry about is your self - the self of reality, which means all the people, critters, plants, around you - you worry and care for them just as you would care for your own eyes, because they are also you and you are them.