This chapter argues that we exist. It first examines whether we can perceive the self. It is concluded that we may be able to perceive the self, but it seems doubtful that we can perceive the self in a way which could establish, on the basis of perception, that the self exists. The chapter then turns to examine whether we can infer that the self exists. This chapter then endorses the following argument. Either something is thinking my thoughts, or some things are thinking my thoughts. If something is thinking my thoughts, then I am that thing, and so I exist. If some things are thinking my thoughts, then I am among those things, and so I exist. An analogous argument could be used to establish that you exist.

This chapter examines some prominent arguments for the thesis that we do not exist. It is concluded that these arguments are not compelling. The arguments discussed include: the argument from impermanence; the argument from lack of control; the neither one nor many argument; and the argument from simplicity or parsimony. Most of these arguments are associated with the Buddhist philosophical tradition, and the argument from impermanence and the argument from lack of control are attributed to the Buddha himself in some of the earliest recorded teachings of the Buddha. The chapter therefore contains a discussion of whether these arguments are, within the context of the Buddhist intellectual tradition, really meant to undermine belief in our own existence, or whether they are rather merely intended to undermine belief in a certain sort of strong metaphysical postulate (i.e., the sort of unchanging and transcendent self postulated by the Upanishads).

Borges came to know Buddhism from a European perspective filtered through Schopenhauer and other philosophers, and his interest in it was ultimately concerned with the extent to which it coincided with Western ways of thinking. Together with Alicia Jurado, he co-authored What is Buddhism?, and he wrote with clarity of understanding about karma, nirvana, suffering, and nothingness, concepts that find their way into stories and essays such as ’The Garden of Forking Paths’, ’The Library of Babel’, ’The Cult of the Phoenix’, and ’The Writing of the God’. Borges showed greater enthusiasm for the fables and legends of Buddhism than for the spiritual truths of its doctrine. The chapter proposes a Buddhist-inflected reading of ’Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’ and a more fully developed one of ’The Circular Ruins’, which it concludes is Borges’s consummate ’Buddhist fiction’.