Vajira (Buddhist nun)
Vajira was a Buddhist nun mentioned in the Samyutta Nikaya (I.134-55). She was confronted by Mara while meditating and asked about the origin and creator of her "Being", i.e., her soul. She responded by comparing one's "Being" to a chariot, showing that it had no permanent existence but was made up of constituent parts.
Excerpt and exegesis
This passage is famous not just for succinctly presenting the Buddha’s teaching of non-self through the simile but also for being one of the earliest depictions of a woman adept at comprehending and practising the Buddha’s dhamma. The person Mara seeks to concede as having a metaphysically substantial or permanent essence is only an aggregation of processes, some of which are material (rūpa) and some which are non-material (arūpin). These material and immaterial processes make up the five aggregates (skandhas) which are body, feeling, perception, disposition to actions and consciousness. Just as the term ‘chariot’ is used to refer to an assemblage of parts, such as the wheels, yokes, axles etc., so too is ‘person’ nothing more than a conventional term employed to denote these five aggregates rather than to a permanent essence which the person holds. Each person, like each chariot, is a compound and no compound can be an individual, a being.
Podcasts:
The Pensive Disarray
I seek to find
All the things that i have found
All the times that i have lost so
I seek to yield
To the pressures of today
To the pensive disarray
But I'm still folding
Holding onto what I've got
I seek to bring
All the gifts of inner core
To the ones that i adore so
I can surround
Myself with the ones i love
With the ones i trust and i'm still holding
Holding onto what I've got
I take the pressure now
I take the silent sour
I keep believing
I hold the reason
I hold the answer how
Will i know why right now
I hold the reason
I am deceiving
I breathe the
I feel the
And I wonder I ponder I can't escape from me again
Like the silent abode
In the tears I will glow
It's illusion i crave
It's the feeling i savour and the
Subatomic niveau
Into pieces I go
Judging all that I see
In the absence of glee and you always say
I seek to find
All the things that I have found
All the times that I have lost so
I seek to yield
To the pressures of today
To the pensive disarray
But I'm still folding
Holding onto what I've got
I take the pressure now
I take the silent sour
I keep believing
I hold the reason
I hold the answer how
Will i know why right now
I hold the reason
I am deceiving
I know the answer now and feel
I know what you have said is real and I am suffering again
Taking all the pain
I know the answer now and feel
I know what you have said is real and I am suffering again
Taking all the pain
I hold the answer
How will I know why right now?