To allow one’s thought to occupy itself with a “force by itself,” or a “substance by itself,” means to work with half actualities possessing as much content of actuality as one side of a sheet of paper imagined by itself. I assert that to think thus is an intellectual _breach of discipline_. Now the manner in which I represent myself corporeally, receive sensations, acquire perceptions, exercise discriminations, become conscious of things, is one peculiar to me and to me alone, a thing unique. This means:-- _In every motion, corporeal as mental, physical as psychical, I am the form of Kamma itself._ This fact, that every living being is wholly and entirely the embodiment of his Kamma, is expressed by the Buddha in the word “anattā,” not-self. All beings are “anattā,” but this does not in any way mean, as science would fain make out, that they are all of a purely re-actual nature. It only means that they do not conceal within them a “force in itself,” a “constant in itself,” but are _out and out processes of combustion, of alimentation_, such as cannot conceal any “constant in itself,” since at every moment of their existence they represent a fresh biological value, and hence hold nothing that could possibly justify the notion of an _I_-identity, a genuine self. “The body, O monks, is ‘anattā.’ If the body were the self (_attā_), then this corporeal frame could not go to decay, and in this corporeal frame, this wish of mine would find fulfilment: ‘Let my corporeal part be thus! Let not my corporeal part be so!’ But, O monks, because the corporeal is anattā, therefore does the corporeal go to decay, and the wish, ‘Let my corporeal part be thus! Let not my corporeal part be so!’ does not find fulfilment.”[1] Following the like scheme, the remaining four Khandhas are then dealt with; and so, step by step, the idea of an _I_-identity is banished. The Buddha conceives of the entire _actual_ world, _i.e._ the world of self-sustaining processes as an infinitely large number of combustion processes. Every being burns in virtue of a purely individual _in-force_, Kamma. This his world-conception is given by the Buddha in that famous “Fire Sermon” which, shortly after the inauguration of his career of activity as a teacher, he delivered to his followers on a hill in the neighbourhood of Gayā. It is the “Sermon on the Mount” of Buddhism. “All things, O monks, is a burning. And why, O monks, is all a burning? The eye, O monks, is a burning. Visual consciousness [that is, the conscious representation that results in virtue of visual impressions] is a burning. Visual contact [_i.e._ the act of the encountering of eye and objects] is a burning. That which arises in virtue of visual contact, be it a pleasant, be it an unpleasant sensation, be it a neither pleasant nor unpleasant sensation, is a burning.”[2]