"A central tenet of Buddhism is the idea that the self is an illusion and by relinquishing it, our self-centered impulses melt away. But what does it mean not to have a self, and how does one go about ridding oneself of the idea? Drawing from early Buddhist texts and scriptures from the Theravada, Tibetan Indian, and Chinese Zen traditions, this will be the first non-Greco-Roman volume in our Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers (AWMR) series. Jay Garfield, Maria Heim, and Robert Sharf introduce and translate the key texts they individually know best. They show how these texts argue that while we exist as conventionally constituted, interdependent persons, we have no self, or core that makes us who we are. More importantly, they reveal that this approach is not nihilistic, but rather, a positive way of thinking about personal identity, ethics, and our place in the world"--

Jay L. Garfield is the Doris Silbert Professor of Philosophy and Buddhist Studies at Smith College and a visiting professor of Buddhist philosophy at Harvard Divinity School. He is the author of Losing Ourselves: Learning to Live without a Self (Princeton). Maria Heim is the George Lyman Crosby 1896 & Stanley Warfield Crosby Professor in Religion at Amherst College. She is the author of Words for the Heart: A Treasury of Emotions from Classical India (Princeton). Robert H. Sharf is the D. H. Chen Distinguished Professor of Buddhist Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Berkeley, where he chairs the Numata Center for Buddhist Studies. He is the author of Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism.