He Searched for Himself and Found a Labyrinth. The Buddha Found a Door.

David Hume spent years searching for the self. He found a labyrinth — and admitted he couldn't escape it. The Buddha made the same discovery and found a door. Same investigation. Completely different response. Video #55 in our cross-pollination series. Hume's bundle theory (Treatise I.iv.6) and the Appendix "labyrinth" confession, the five aggregates (pañca khandha, SN 22:59), and the sharpest divergence: Hume makes a metaphysical claim; the Buddha refuses the question entirely. Plus: Boswell's deathbed visit, Kant's objection, and why Hume quietly stopped talking about the self in his later work. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ EGO Buddhism Podcast — Buddhism × Western Philosophy ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ What they both found: looking inward with full precision, neither Hume nor the Buddha could locate a unified "self" behind experience. Both find contents. Neither finds the owner of the contents. What they did differently: Hume calls it a bundle — makes a metaphysical claim about what the self is. He is troubled by the absence of a unifying principle. He calls it a labyrinth. The Buddha calls it a not-self strategy (anattā) — not a claim about what exists, but a practice for releasing identification. Ṭhānissaro: "anattā is not a doctrine of no-self, but a not-self strategy for shedding suffering." The "no owner" convergence: both traditions find contents but no owner. Hume is troubled by the absence. The Buddha is freed by it. The Boswell scene: seven weeks before Hume's death, Boswell visited expecting regret. He found a man "placid and even cheerful." Hume had arrived at equanimity through temperament. The Buddhist path cultivates this equanimity through training. Integrity: This video takes no verdict. The comparison of Hume's bundle theory and anattā is a convergence in analytical result, not an identity of doctrine. "Hume's bundle = anattā" is an overclaim and is avoided. anattā is not a metaphysical claim that there is no self. Hume's "labyrinth" quote: Treatise of Human Nature, Appendix, §10. All non-canonical interpretations labeled. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ EGO is a Buddhism podcast exploring ancient wisdom through philosophy, science, and modern life. New episodes every two weeks.