Why Nobody Knows Who They Are Anymore: Sartre and the Buddha on Identity

Key takeaways

• Both teachers reject the idea of a hidden "true self" buried inside you like treasure, waiting to be dug up.
• Sartre: existence precedes essence. A potter knows the pot's purpose before she shapes it, but no one designed a plan for humans, so we exist first and become what we make of ourselves. You are the sum of your actions, not your unused talents.
• Sartre called freedom a burden: we are "condemned to be free", and saying "I'm just like this" is bad faith, a way of pretending we have no choice. In 1964 he even refused the Nobel Prize so a label would not define him.
• The Buddha taught anattā (non-self): what we call "I" is five changing parts (body, feeling, perception, mental formations, consciousness), like the Tonle Sap whose water, and even its direction, changes while the name stays. Anattā does not mean you do not exist; it is a middle way, and clinging tightly to any label brings suffering.
• Three tools: turn nouns into verbs ("I am lazy" into "today I didn't do that task"), wear labels like clothes, not skin, and swap "Who am I?" for "What do I choose to do today?"