Letting go of the self
On the axis: Nature of the self · the self
Is the "I" a convenient fiction, mistaken for a thing? And would letting go of it be a loss, or rather a deliverance?
Justification
The same test applies to the self: if it existed, there would be an impression that gives it. But introspection never yields a permanent subject, only some particular perception, heat, light, pleasure or pain, at once replaced by another. Hume infers that there is no thinking substance beneath the perceptions: the self is but a bundle of perceptions in perpetual flux. The we ascribe to it is a fiction of the imagination, mistaking the resemblance and continuity of its contents for a real identity. The thesis targets and every soul-substance; it is the archetype of the bundle theory.
For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other... I never can catch myself at any time without a perception.A Treatise of Human Nature, I, IV, 6
A Treatise of Human Nature, I, part IV, sect. 6 (of personal identity)
Justification
Look for the self among the five aggregates (form, feeling, perception, formations, consciousness) and you find only their shifting flux: none of them is stable, none is yours, none is a subject bearing them. From this analysis Buddhism draws against the of the Upaniṣads, that permanent Self identified with : where posits an unchanging subject beneath becoming, the Buddha holds that positing such a substrate is precisely the delusion (avidyā) that feeds attachment. The subject is only a bundle of impermanent processes, which makes Buddhism the great historical instance of bundle theory.
Form is not-self, feeling is not-self, perception is not-self, formations are not-self, consciousness is not-self.Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta (Saṃyutta Nikāya 22.59)
Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta (the discourse on the not-self characteristic) · Nāgārjuna, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way)