Thinker · TH-0304
Nagasena
Nāgasena is the Buddhist monk who answers the questions of the Indo-Greek King Milinda (usually identified with Menander I) in the Milindapañha. Whether a…
Nāgasena is the Buddhist monk who answers the questions of the Indo-Greek King Milinda (usually identified with Menander I) in the Milindapañha. Whether a historical Nāgasena lay behind the text is uncertain; he is best treated as a literary interlocutor, and the text itself grew over several centuries. His chariot and flame analogies became classic statements of the Buddhist view that a person is a conventional designation over changing parts.
Key ideas
- 'Nāgasena' is a name used for a collection of parts, as 'chariot' is used for axle, wheels and frame; no further self is found among them.
- The person who is reborn is neither the same as nor another than the one who died, like a flame passed from lamp to lamp.
- Continuity without an enduring self explains moral responsibility across time.
- Conventional designations are useful and correct in their place, even though they pick out no ultimate entity.
Major works
- Milindapañha (The Questions of King Milinda; Pali text recording the dialogues, compiled over several centuries)
- Nāgasena Bhikṣu Sūtra (Chinese translation of an early version of the dialogues)
In the conversation
- Question If Buddhism says there is no self, what exactly gets reborn?
- Question Is the flame on my burner a thing, or something that keeps happening?
- Debate The “false friend” warning about Hume and anattā is overstated
- Question If there is no self, who has free will? Is there a Buddhist position at all?
- Discussion Rebirth without anyone reborn: the lamp that lights another lamp
- Reading group Reading group: the chariot in the Milindapañha, read beside Hume’s “Of personal identity”
- Debate If Nāgasena’s chariot argument removes the self, it removes the chariot too
- Reading group Reading group: Nāgasena’s chariot and flame in the Questions of King Milinda
- Discussion Nāgasena’s condition for talking with a king: argue as scholars do, not as kings do