Nagasena

Which comes to the story of the chariot.

Do you all know the story of the chariot? Okay, a king once met a monk called Nagasena and asked his name.

I am called, he said, Nagasena, said the monk, but that is only a name.

You will not find a person behind it.

You know the story? The king thought he had caught him out.

He says, then who am I talking to? So Nagasena asked how the king had arrived.

He says, by chariot.

Then he showed me the chariot.

and he became the central figure in a wonderful Buddhist text called the Melinda Panha, or the Questions of Melinda.

In this gentle philosophical dialogue, King Mananda poses deep questions to a Buddhist monk named Nagasena, questions about the nature of self, about what makes a person who they are.

about whether there is truly a soul that persists unchanged through time.

The conversation unfolds with patience and curiosity, each question answered with careful reasoning and memorable analogies.

If so, you needn't decide which is the dream.

Level 52 In a later Buddhist dialogue, The Questions of King Melinda, a king meets a monk named Nagasena and asks his name.

Nagasena says he is called Nagasena, but that this is only a name, and no person is to be found in it.

The king is puzzled, so Nagasena asks how he traveled there.

By chariot.

Then what is a chariot? Is it the pole? The axle? The wheels? The frame? The yoke? The king says no to each.

Is it all of them together then? No.

Is it something apart from them? No.