Still begins with ordinary machinery doing what machinery does: motion, breath, work, cause following cause. “No pilot inside.” “No owner behind.” Then the refrain strips the point down further: “Still moving. No mover.” In an early-Buddhist reading, this is anattā—not the claim that nothing happens, but the observation that no permanent controller can be found apart from the conditioned processes themselves. Form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness arise and cease through conditions; the extra claim “this is mine, this I am, this is my self” is what gets added. “No controller” points at causality without a sovereign center.
A short story about Bāhiya makes the same point from another direction. Bāhiya urgently asks the Buddha for the teaching that will finish the work. The instruction is to let seeing be just seeing, hearing just hearing, sensing just sensing, knowing just knowing—without constructing an owner around the event. When that appropriation drops, the imagined center has nowhere to stand. That is why “Still breathing. No breather.” is more radical than it first sounds: breathing remains, but the possessor of breathing cannot be located.
For an arahant, ordinary language and ordinary activity continue. Walking, speaking, choosing, and working still occur where conditions support them. What is absent is appropriation and the conceit “I am.” “Movement rests in itself.” points to action no longer carrying the burden of an owner. “Complete.”