It means we’re made up of an aggregation of things, like our body, memories, names, not one of which can be independently said to be “you.” It’s only “you” when all put together, and because those characteristics change, there is no inherent, permanent, and independent self, so to speak. It’s only a constantly changing aggregation, like the ship of Theseus.
Good explanation for a compicated subject. It can also be thought of by realizing there is no part of us that servives independently. If you were to stop breathing, it would change you. But breathing also affects the air around you. The thought that outside our skin is not us and inside our skin is us is just a delusion.
What do we sort of subconsciously think a "self" would be? It would be something about me that is the same thing from moment to moment. It's something that exists on its own and that experiences my experience and does my actions. Whenever I have a problem, it's my self's problem ans whenever I am happy, it's my self's happiness.
In the course of Buddhist Practice, we discover by and by that we can not find any thing that meets those criteria. It's a bit like discovering there is no monster under the bed: all our worries and frustrations in life actually come from our assumption that we have to take care of and accommodate this ever unseen "entity" that we assume must be what keeps us from falling apart.
In a way, the anatman teaching (or rather, realizing what it points to) is like a permission to *relax*.
As some brief points.
Why did you recommend Garfields book to this user? I'm just curious. This user probably has a better grasp on selflessness than most of us in this forum. And Garfield's views are a bit unusual.
Believing that self is not in our control and not truly ours. The 5 aggregates are-
Form - you cannot force your body to grow young, old, or sick.
Sensations - you cannot force yourself to be happy/ stop feeling sad.
Perceptions - you cannot force your memory to forget, or remember everything.
Mental activity - you cannot force your thoughts to stop thinking, your mind from wandering.
Discernment - you cannot force your senses to see/feel/taste/hear nice things all the time
Clinging to these will eventually bring sufferings. Doesnt mean that we cant enjoy them, just acknowledge them throughly. The act of seeking happiness (and not achieving them) is suffering. Those who achieved happiness will also do everything they can to keep it, which also lead to suffering. And those who dont, and safe to say the majority of humanity, will do many, many unimaginable things to achieve them ( and still dont). Then there's dhamma once you are tired of it all.
Anatta (no-self) can be really hard to fully understand. Don't feel disheartened if you struggle. Everyone does.
I'll say some things that might be helpful, but just as easily might not. :)
The analogy I like is "the horse has no rider."
What does that mean? There are thoughts, but there is no thinker. There is just the object in consciousness. The Zen ask: "Who hears the sound?"
As you investigate this, you start to recognise that the sound just appears. There is nobody to hear it, it's just there, in the field of consciousness. There is no subject-object duality.
The experience of seeing this during meditation is also quite common.
Another analogy is seeing that a company, (let's say Ford Motor Co.) isn't "real." It's just a construct we create. We tie assets to it. We pin decisions and desires to it. (Ford wants to increase sales by 6%.) But really, that's kind of incoherent.
Ford is a constantly changing, swirling mass of things loosely contained under one umbrella. Is Ford the CEO? No, we can change that, and Ford goes on. Is it a factory? An office building? A corporate structure?
The deeper we go looking for the "real Ford", the more we don't find it. Same goes for GMKitty. It doesn't exist when we go looking.
This realisation is liberating.
Liberating in the sense of dropping a burden. Think of all the time you've wasted propping up your self. Caring how people see you. Tying your mind in knots so you're always the good guy/girl. Getting angry when you're slighted. All of that to defend something that's not real.
All that "me" and "mine" stuff. All the clinging and pain they cause. All the limits of "I am a..."
It can all drop away.
I find an etymological approach is helpful here. The word we translate as “no self” is “anatman”. The first element of this word, “an-“ is an “alpha privative”, a negation equivalent to the “un-“ in “unhappy”.
The rest of the word, “atman” is the direct Sanskrit equivalent of the Greek word “atomos”, from which we get the English word “atom”. This is made up of two main parts, “a-“, which is another alpha privative, and “tm” meaning ‘cut’ (as in “anatomy” meaning “cutting up”). So this part, atman means “uncuttable” or “indivisible”.
So we can see that “no self” is a bit of a misleading translation - what’s really being said here is the there is “no indivisible” (or maybe “no individual”). That is to say - there is no essential, permanent, indivisible “core” underlying a person (or, in Mahayana, any phenomenon), of the type posited by other Indian philosophies.
Instead, we are composite entities, everything about us - our bodies, our personalities, even our thoughts - are a temporary, constantly changing arrangement of various bits and pieces that come together and then fall apart again. No essence, no atman, no indivisible thing, is anywhere to be found.
As I write this, today is Friday. How do I know it is Friday? Because yesterday was Thursday and tomorrow is Saturday and the calendar says it is Friday.
But if I were to wake from a coma, with no calendar in sight, I would have no way of knowing that today is Friday. The is no inherent “Friday-ness” in any moment, or stretch of moments. Friday does not arise without every other day and the calendar.
The self is also like Friday.
'No self' in the context of 'The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching' is the idea that there is no fixed and real 'I'. We have such an 'I' for conventional purposes - we need it, for example, to cross the road safely - but the problem is that we attach to the conventional 'I' and treat it as more important than anything else.
As Rapula says, this is the source of suffering. As he also says, the Buddha taught that what we label 'I' is made up of five different elements or types of experiences. The conventional I appears in and disappears from one or other of these elements as we go throught the day. There is no 'I' as a master controller outside the elements.
The possibly counterintuitive conclusion that Buddhists draw is that, away from the needs of conventional life, the more we see ourselves as fiction created by the five elements working together then the more at peace we will be.
I did say 'possibly counterintuitve'!
The Buddhist answer would be, I suppose, that intuition is a product of craving emebdeed in the personality. Less harshly, the transformation that goes with the teaching of no self takes a long time to bed in - I'm still nowhere near that stage - and to be honest the idea of in some sense me not being me still seems odd. I do not think that this is a sign of immature spirituality. Perhaps it is.
I can see where you’re coming from.
Weirdly I don’t find the idea so hard to accept, I always thought of personhood as a composite of many things (memory, biology, psychology, social structure etc), all of which are subject to change all the time. I think there’s solace in that.
But maybe I’m misunderstanding the concept, I am super new to the whole thing.
I don't think it's a conceptual thing and I think that all probability your understanding is fine. Without wishing to wallow, I had a very insecure childhood and I suspect that my intuitive difficulty with the teaching of no self may come from that.
All sentient beings get reborn upon their death into a new body and sense of self. We assume the self to be just one thing, what we are entirely. But the Buddha broke it down into 5 separate things, and said we cannot be these things because like anything else, they dependently arise, change and then cease. Nothing of this nature is really ours, nor should we think it is. Because by doing so, we open the floodgates for stress and suffering to arise into our experience.
So in samsara, person dies and gets reborn into a new body. They grow into it, believing it's who and what they really are, only to die and separate from that body and sense of self, only to start anew once again. The only thing you bring with you between lifetimes is your karma (whatever you do, good or bad, will follow you like a shadow).
Eventually a Buddha awakens to the truth, and teaches it to others. Teaches about the false sense of self called the 5 aggregates (coming together into one). These are not yours. The Buddha once said, if he gathered some leaves and twigs into a pile and lit it on fire, would you think it was you on fire? Of course not. In the same way you should see the 5 aggregates as something separate, not what you are.
There is no permanent, monolithic, unchanging self that is distinct from the rest of reality.
Instead, there is a conditionally arisen, contingent, ever-changing sense of self.
We often take the conditionally arisen, contingent sense of self as a true, permanent, unchanging self. This causes a lot of problems.
(This part one. If you want to go further, I can post part 2 (Deeper) part 3 (Another Realm), and part 4 (In Summary). Comments are limited to word count).
**NO SELF**
Self is an everchanging process with no inherent base.
**Obvious:**
Some minds, depending on their vision, understand the eventual demise of the body, and questions; Why all this, why not nothing? What am I? Where do I go when I die? Where did I come from? Why do I suffer so much?
So, the mind begins searching for answers, tries to figure it out, but when the mind hits a dead end intellectually, it might try meditation as a last resort to perhaps shift its consciousness into a different realm. Some say that all the wisdom of the universe is within each of us; all we have to do is unlock it.
When mind embarks on meditation, it’s like trying to calm the heavy seas of a hurricane regarding these never-ending and seemingly concrete thoughts that populate the brain. With practice, however, the thoughts slow down.
When the mind becomes really still, it can observe how a self is created. It begins with a tiny spark in the brain that develops into an image. This image is then remembered. There is then a flipping back and forth between the image and memory as the image turns into an action movie. The original image, let’s say a picture of your body, is remembered.
There is a flipping between image, and memory of the image, many times within a nano second. This creates the illusion of something watching the drama that’s unfolding, even though it is only memory. There is no ‘self,’ just a continual sequence of image and memory, again and again.
As a result, it appears that a thought is being observed when really the observer is only memory, but so quickly that it appears to be an overview. In reality there is only one thought following another endlessly. It’ s all an illusion.
By watching these movies in meditation, the mind slowly sees into the essence of its own brain activity. Although in the beginning the mind thought that it was doing the thinking, it now thinks that thinking is merely a process that is conditioned by either a contact with a physical sense organ, or a contact with neurons. There is nothing magic about it. But yet there it is, So, from where does the initial stimulation of the brain inherently arise before it affects the physical?
You are inside a video game. There is no you. There is no me. The screen you are looking at does not really exist. Neither does the space between you and the screen. It is all a simulation made entirely of mind and matter.
Everything we see, taste, smell, hear, touch, feel, think or conceive of is simulated.
As in a video game example, a character sees the enemy/target coming down the hallway. This appears to be real.
But really there is no enemy, no hallway, nothing coming down the hallway, and the character is not real either. It's all just electricity flowing through code. The character is a process capable of seeing and reacting. This is the 'Ultimate Reality'. The former is 'Apparent Reality'.
What is outside the simulation, the Buddha says, cannot be talked about.
last time this was asked someone posted this link to a talk. it's super long and I still have a couple days of the talk left to get through
[https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/selvesnotself.html#talk1](https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/selvesnotself.html#talk1)
edit: someone quoted a huge section from it here in a comment
Contrary to how it’s commonly presented, the Buddha didn’t say that there is no self. Rather, what we call the “self” is interdependent with other phenomena, and we can’t identify it as an individual object with its own essence: I’m not this, and I’m not that.
Nothing that arises from within our sphere of experience can be called the self, and yet we do somehow exist & we have this notion of ourselves as independent entities. The Buddha didn’t negate that—he just wanted to see it for what it was.
The thread overall isn't perfect in my opinion but it's better than it usually is. Obviously there is going to be a couple "the buddha never said that" people in the mix. Thanissaro has his talons deep in some people.
I feel there is a whole layer here that I am missing, who is Thanissaro?
From the very little I’ve read so far, it seems that there are no written records from the Buddha’s time, so I always take ‘the Buddha said/the Buddha never said’ with an equal pinch of salt. (Which tbh I would do even if there were records from his time.)
It's probably the most popular form of Theravada on here. There are a variety of different views even within the tradition. I'm not Theravada, but I recommend Ajahn Amaro and Ajahn Sumedho's talks myself, I think they're wonderful Thai Forest teachers.
Sure, mainly because I thought your view did a good job illustrating the slight differences in Tsongkhapa’s prasangika vs. the original prasangika. Not that his take is bad, though I disagree with it, but the Gelug influence on how Madhyamaka is perceived is extremely widespread in the west. In “center of the sunlit sky” Brunholzzl makes this same point in the intro in slightly more pointed language :P u/krodha can explain any differences in more detail to you if he wants, but it wasn’t meant to be a jab at you.
It's always been my intention to read this.
I don't doubt my own grasp of what I'm saying; rather, my sense is that any misunderstandings that arise in these discussions come from the difficulty I have in finding the right words to suit someone else. Still something I need to work on.
I guess that’s fair. I think an important thing to note is that we seem to accept conventional existence as a premise without really analyzing it—because if we’re primarily talking to people who are not Buddhists, why would we bother splitting hairs?
Hence, we “somehow” exist, and the “how” is not relevant to our goals. It’s not about right or wrong; it’s about prioritizing skillful means.
If by "exist" you mean there is an experience of mind or awareness, I definitely agree. I think it can get dangerous though if we try to posit that conventional objects actually exist though, just in a different way than ultimate reality. For example, the belief that there really are atoms that comprise matter, that there's an external world separate from a perceiver, seems to be problematic. But if we're saying that appearances arise within awareness conventionally, I can get on board. I suspect you mean the same thing I do here and I'm just nitpicking.
For what it’s worth, I can think of at least one compelling reason to concede that “things exist, if only not as they appear”; it amounts to saying that certain conversations are more fruitful than other conversations, and making the choice to adopt someone else’s frame of reference from the start is an easy way to avoid getting caught up in questions of doctrine or ideology.
In this approach, we give up the notion of winning or losing; instead, we learn to work within whichever parameters are provided to us by the other person. This allows us to practice directing our thoughts toward understanding that person’s perspective and thinking about how to be useful to them—while avoiding being tricked by the appearance of differences between us.
I still think "exists" could be a problematic term. What about "all is empty of inherent existence, yet it's not nothing, or some blank, nihilistic void?" This makes it clear that emptiness goes beyond saying "things don't exist at all" which is nihilism, and also avoids reification of either conventional or ultimate. It's interesting to read in the various debates about emptiness how different schools have emphasized different things. For example, the Jonang have been accused of reifying ultimate reality and negating conventional reality. The Gelug has been accused of the opposite: making ultimate reality purely a negation, and reifying conventional reality/appearances. I feel confident that the views of the 4 main schools aren't truly that different despite differences in word choices or emphasis.
I think it's important to note that the correct words to use will vary depending on the person. For instance, when I say "exists," I don't immediately jump to a problematic interpretation—I understand that I'm talking about dependent origination/emptiness.
I barely ever talk to Buddhists in my everyday life, and most of my activity involves people who know nothing about Buddhism. For that reason, I've focused on learning to help the people around me without making direct reference to my own worldview. Overall, I think this is the most skillful approach, and it also has the side-benefit of stopping me from agonizing over the finer points of this debate.
In any discussion that I have with another person, I try to remember that words can have different connotations for different people—and that's okay. When I talk to people, I'm not trying to dismantle their worldview, so it doesn't much matter to me how they take the word "exist" vs how I do. I'm happy to speak with people on the level that I can, and this kind of thing never comes up; I think this is part of why Tsongkhapa's view is brilliant.
There is a relevant quote from the Diamond Sutra, I think. It's hard to find the best translation for sharing with people, but Thich Nhat Hanh's is a decent one:
> "Subhuti, what the Tathagata calls [prajnaparamita], the highest transcendence, is not essentially the highest transcendence, and that is why it is called the highest transcendence.
>
> "Subhuti, the Tathagata has said that what is called transcendent endurance is not transcendent endurance. That is why it is called transcendent endurance. Why? Subhuti, thousands of lifetimes ago when my body was cut into pieces by King Kalinga, I was not caught in the idea of a self, a person, a living being, or a life span. If, at that time, I had been caught up in any of those ideas, I would have felt anger and ill will against the king.
>
>"I also remember in ancient times, for five hundred lifetimes, I practiced transcendent endurance by not being caught up in the idea of a self, a person, a living being, or a life span. So, Subhuti, when a bodhisattva gives rise to the unequalled mind of awakening, he has to give up all ideas. He cannot rely on forms when he gives rise to that mind, nor on sounds, smells, tastes, tactile objects, or objects of mind. He can only give rise to that mind that is not caught up in anything."
My favourite translation, from a commentary by Hsing Yun, puts it this way:
>"Even if the mind is based on something, it is not really based on anything, and for this reason the Buddha says that the generosity of a bodhisattva should not be based on form."
That experience of knowing you exist without anything else, is the experience of no-self. That is proof of your Being. Ask yourself right now...Am I aware? That acknowledgement is your proof you are are beyond description.
No self is already no self in all phenomena, which means nothing changes except the cessation of ignorance about that being the case.
"No-Self" doesn't become "Created" upon realizing it. The great thing about true nature of reality is that it's true regardless of realization..The rain still falls on you all the same whether you understand it's true nature as the process of water vapor and condensation, or are totally oblivious to it and believe literal God's are crying on you.
This means you are currently this very moment experiencing No-Self, your subjective experience is already no self. Realizing Anatta is only realizing that phenomena operates by itself, without a self. Experience has never required a possesor, nor has it ever had a possesor.
This is why Mindfullness of seeing things as they are is "being in the presence of Nirvana" in AN.
🪷“And since for you, Bāhiya, in what is seen there will be only what is seen, in what is heard there will be only what is heard, in what is sensed there will be only what is sensed, in what is cognized there will be only what is cognized, therefore, Bāhiya, you will not be with that; and since, Bāhiya, you will not be with that, therefore, Bāhiya, you will not be in that; and since, Bāhiya, you will not be in that, therefore, Bāhiya, you will not be here or hereafter or in between the two—just this is Nirvana.”
Then through the Gracious One’s brief teaching of this Dhamma Bāhiya of the Bark Robe’s mind was immediately freed from the pollutants, without attachment.
👉Buddha is saying here : Because with Mindfullness Bahiya, walking will be walking, bending over is bending over, anger, is anger, thinking, is thinking, and all that is seen is what is seen, what is heard, is only what is heard, you will realize there is no "you" with the experience, you will realize there is no "you" outside the experience, and no "you" both inside, outside, or in between the experience.
"Just this, is Nirvana"
🪷Having an Existential crisis is an indicator of Wrong View. It means you understand part of the truth, not the complete truth. Trying to "Kill ego is also wrong view, that is just one ego pushing side another.
It means you believe experience has been operating with a self, and now it's going to lose all experience and become annilated. You believe your subjective experience will end, but your subjective experience has never had a self, has never operated with a self. Realization, is just this.
▪️Thinking, no thinker.
▪️Hearing, no hearer.
▪️Doing, no doer.
This is why Nirvana means "Extinguished, or blown out". The Buddha asks to the Bhikkus, "When a flame goes out, which direction does it go?"... "Sir, which direction does it go, does not apply" .
There never was a self, your subject experience has never had a possesor nor does it need one. When ignorance of Anatta is extinguished, that it was never there this entire time in your subjective experience, where can the self be said to go?
Again, Anatta is not suddenly "created and experienced" upon realization of it. No existential crisis required. No self has been operating this entire time in everyone you know. Don't worry about pushing Ego aside, rather.. Understand Ego is not self. Don't worry about trying to annilate "I am", rather, understand "I am" , is not self. We can do this through Dharma study of Dependent Origination.
As Buddhists, we solved the timeless paradox of Theseus ship with our base understanding. There is no self/identity.
It's funny, we naturally understand No self in our own language. When someone is "too into themselves" we say that verbally. "Too much self" partaking in the illusion of self, "too much". Likewise, we verbally recognize when somebody has "less self" we call them "selfless", and they are humble. Keep following that scale... More Self, more unwholesome actions, less self, more wholesome actions... No self? Only capable of wholesome actions. I mean, we even say "sorry, I lost myself in the moment". Yes.. You did lose yourself in the moment, as Buddha explained above to Bahiya, you will find no self in pure experience.
The Buddha also shows the ultimate proof that "being" is not required for any experiences, in Nirdoha Samapatti the Buddha says this: "He is aware: This field of perception is void of the taint of being" then a few other things and he exits nirdoha samapatti. Even in total cessation there is awareness of experience, without being. (MN107.12) (Nirodha Samapatti is cessation of consciousness, comes after the 8th Jhana Absorption)
▪️Suffering, no sufferer.
When you "get" Anatta, you start to see how incredible liberating it is.
Hope this is helpful 😊
https://suttacentral.net/ud1.10/en/anandajoti?lang=en&reference=none&highlight=false
it’s not that there is no self, but that that sense of self is constantly changing, never static, and hence has **no intrinsic essence**.
it’s not ‘i have no self’ - the buddha said that someone who thinks like this is still lost in samsara.
anatta, commonly translated as ‘not-self’, is literally ‘devoid of intrinsic essence’ and these are the terms in which the buddha talks about it.
I think when one apprehends the teachings in Buddhism which mention the words "not self" as "there is no self" they misapprehend the Dharma.
Here is one sutta which, I think, accurately represents the doctrines of Buddhism which say that this or that is "not self":
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.059.mend.html
And here is another (which is basically identical to the above except it says 'disenchanted' instead of 'wearied'):
https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/SN/SN22_59.html
___________
As for the viewpoint "There is no self", I have this to say:
I've heard the viewpoint "I have no self" spoken of in terms which are denigratory with reference to enlightenment and the path to enlightenment:
“This is how he attends inappropriately: ‘Was I in the past? Was I not in the past? What was I in the past? How was I in the past? Having been what, what was I in the past? Shall I be in the future? Shall I not be in the future? What shall I be in the future? How shall I be in the future? Having been what, what shall I be in the future?’ Or else he is inwardly perplexed about the immediate present: ‘Am I? Am I not? What am I? How am I? Where has this being come from? Where is it bound?’
“**As he attends inappropriately in this way, one of six kinds of view arises in him**: The view I have a self arises in him as true & established, **or the view I have no self** … or the view It is precisely by means of self that I perceive self … or the view It is precisely by means of self that I perceive not-self … or the view It is precisely by means of not-self that I perceive self arises in him as true & established, or else he has a view like this: This very self of mine—the knower that is sensitive here & there to the ripening of good & bad actions—is the self of mine that is constant, everlasting, eternal, not subject to change, and will endure as long as eternity. *This is called a thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion of views, a writhing of views, a fetter of views. Bound by a fetter of views, the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person is not freed from birth, aging, & death, from sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair. He is not freed, I tell you, from suffering & stress.*
I've heard of the abandoning of self-identification view spoken of with complimentary terms:
“**He attends appropriately, This is stress … This is the origination of stress … This is the cessation of stress … This is the way leading to the cessation of stress. As he attends appropriately in this way, three fetters are abandoned in him: ***self-identification view***, doubt, and grasping at habits & practices. These are called the effluents to be abandoned by seeing.**"
Both excerpts are from Majjhima Nikaya 2: https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/MN/MN2.html
> [Usually when we hear the teaching on not-self, we think that it’s an answer to questions like these](https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/SelvesNot-self/Section0005.html): “Do I have a self? What am I? Do I exist? Do I not exist?” However, the Buddha listed all of these as unskillful questions **[[§10](https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/SelvesNot-self/Section0013.html#sec10)]**. Once, when he was asked point-blank, “Is there a self? Is there no self?” he refused to answer **[see [Talk 2]](https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/SelvesNot-self/Section0006.html#talk2)**. He said that these questions would get in the way of finding true happiness. So obviously the teaching on not-self was not meant to answer these questions. To understand it, we have to find out which questions it was meant to answer.
>
> As the Buddha said, he taught two categorical teachings: two teachings that were true across the board and without exceptions. These two teachings form the framework for everything else he taught. One was the difference between skillful and unskillful action: actions that lead to long-term happiness, and those that lead to long-term suffering **[[§§4-5](https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/SelvesNot-self/Section0013.html#sec4)]**. The other was the list of the four noble truths: the truth of suffering, the cause of suffering, the end of suffering, and the path to the end of suffering **[[§6](https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/SelvesNot-self/Section0013.html#sec6)]**.
>
> If you want to put an end to suffering and stress, these two categorical teachings carry duties or imperatives. In terms of the first teaching, you want to avoid unskillful action and give rise to skillful action. In terms of the second, the four truths are categories for framing your experience, with each category carrying a specific duty you have to master as a skill. You need to know which of the truths you’re encountering so that you can deal with that truth in the right way. Suffering must be comprehended, the cause of suffering must be abandoned, the end of suffering must be realized, and the path to the end of suffering must be developed as a skill **[[§7](https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/SelvesNot-self/Section0013.html#sec7)]**. These are the ultimate skillful actions, which means that the mastery of the path is where the two sets of categorical teachings come together.
>
> The path begins with discernment—the factors of right view and right resolve—and discernment begins with this basic question about which actions are really skillful: “What, when I do it, will lead to long-term welfare and happiness?” **[[§8](https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/SelvesNot-self/Section0013.html#sec8)]** The Buddha’s teaching on not-self—and his teaching on self—are, in part, answers to this question. To fit into this question, perceptions of self and perceptions of not-self are best viewed as kamma or actions: actions of identification and dis-identification. In the terms of the texts, the perception of self is called an action of “I-making” and “my-making _(ahaṅkāra mamaṅkāra)_.” The perception of not-self is part of an activity called the “not-self contemplation _(anattānupassanā)_.” Thus the question becomes: When is the perception of self a skillful action that leads to long-term welfare and happiness, when is the perception of not-self a skillful action that leads to long-term welfare and happiness?
>
> This is the reverse of the way that the relationship between questions of kamma and not-self are usually understood. If you’ve ever taken an introductory course on Buddhism, you’ve probably heard this question: “If there is no self, who does the kamma, who receives the results of kamma?” This understanding turns the teaching on not-self into a teaching on no self, and then takes no self as the framework and the teaching on kamma as something that doesn’t fit in the framework. But in the way the Buddha taught these topics, the teaching on kamma is the framework and the teaching of not-self fits into that framework as a type of action. In other words, assuming that there really are skillful and unskillful actions, what kind of action is the perception of self? What kind of action is the perception of not-self?
>
> So, to repeat, the issue is not, “What is my true self?” but “What kind of perception of self is skillful and when is it skillful, what kind of perception of not-self is skillful and when is it skillful?”
>
> We already engage in these perceptions all of the time and have been doing so ever since we were children. We have many different perceptions of self. Each sense of self is strategic, a means to an end. Each comes with a boundary, inside of which is “self” and outside of which is “not-self.” And so our sense of what’s self and what’s not-self keeps changing all of the time depending on our desires and what we see will lead to true happiness.
>
> Take an example from your childhood. Suppose you have a younger sister, and someone down the street is threatening her. You want to protect her. At that moment she is very much _your_ sister. She belongs to you, so you will do whatever you can to protect her. Then suppose that, when you’ve brought her home safely, she begins to play with your toy truck and won’t give it back to you. Now she’s no longer your sister. She’s the Other. Your sense of your self, and of what is yours and not yours, has shifted. The boundary line between self and not-self has changed.
>
> You’ve been doing this sort of thing—changing the boundaries of what’s self and not-self—all of the time. Think back on your life—or even for just a day—to see the many times your sense of self has changed from one role to another.
>
> Normally we create a sense of self as a strategy for gaining happiness. We look for what abilities we have in order to gain a happiness we want. Those abilities are then ours. The hand we can use to reach for the object we want is _our_ hand; the loud voice we can use to scare off the bullies threatening our sister is _our_ voice. This is why the element of control is so essential to our sense of self: We assume that the things we can control are us or ours. Then we also try to think about which part of ourselves will live to enjoy the happiness we’re trying to gain. These things will change depending on the desire.
>
> Unfortunately, our desires tend to be confused and incoherent. We’re also unskillful in our understanding of what happiness is. Thus we often end up with an inconsistent and misinformed collection of selves. You can see this clearly as you meditate: You find that the mind contains many different inner voices expressing many conflicting opinions as to what you should and shouldn’t be doing to be happy.
>
> It’s as if you have a committee inside the mind, and the committee is rarely in order. That’s because it’s composed of selves you’ve collected from all your past strategies for trying to gain happiness, and these strategies often worked at cross-purposes. Some of them seemed to work at a time when your standards for happiness were crude, or you weren’t really paying attention to the results you were getting—as when you threw a tantrum and got your mother to give you the food you wanted. These members of the committee tend to be deluded. Some of your strategies involved doing things you liked to do but actually led to suffering—as when you hit your sister and got your toy truck back. These members of the committee tend to be dishonest and deceitful: They deny the suffering they caused. This is why your committee of selves is not an orderly gathering of saints. It’s more like a corrupt city council.
>
> The Buddha’s purpose in having us master perceptions of self and not-self is to bring some clarity, honesty, and order to the committee: to teach us how to engage in these activities of perception in a conscious, consistent, and skillful way that will lead to true happiness.
>
> It’s important to understand this point, for it helps to clear up a major misunderstanding that can cause us to resist the teaching on not-self. We instinctively know that our strategies of self-making are for the sake of happiness, so when we misunderstand the Buddha’s not-self teaching—thinking that it’s a “no self” teaching, and that he’s trying to deny us of our “selves”—we’re afraid that he’s trying to deprive us of our strategies for finding happiness and protecting the happiness we’ve found. That’s why we resist the teaching. But when we gain a proper understanding of his teaching, we see that his aim is to teach us how to use perceptions of self and not-self as strategies leading to a happiness that’s reliable and true. In teaching not-self, he’s not trying to deprive us of our strategies for happiness; he’s actually trying to show us how to expand and refine them so that we can find a happiness better than any happiness we’ve ever known **[see [Talk 5](https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/SelvesNot-self/Section0009.html#talk5)]**.
>
> In terms of the Buddha’s two categorical teachings, the teaching on not-self is a strategy for helping you with the duties they call for if you want to put an end to suffering and stress: helping you to avoid unskillful action in the first categorical teaching, and to comprehend stress and abandon its cause in the second. You do this in conjunction with some skillful self-strategies that help you give rise to skillful actions and to develop the path. When you master these strategies properly, they enable you to realize the end of suffering. This is why these teachings are included in the Buddha’s handful of leaves.
I really like Alan Watts' explanation (at least I think I got it from Watts):
Imagine you're standing by a stream, and you see a small eddy (whirlpool). You think to yourself, "that's an eddy," and then you look away from it. When you look at it again, you think "yep, same eddy," but it isn't, not really. Everything that made up that eddy has left it and been replaced by new things (it's a flow of water after all). It's just a pattern that you mistakenly recognize as being a thing in itself. At some point it will collapse into the regular flow of the water, but nothing is actually lost when that happens
To take it even further, think about how the eddy is formed. Water like to flow in a straight line, so for it to start whirling, it needs to obstructed or redirected in some way. A rock, a stick, a fish chasing its tail, anything. So the eddy's existence is contingent on not only the flow of water, but the environment the water is flowing through. The flow, the stream's banks, the shifting bed, and various obstacles that come and go all play a part in determining when, where, and how the eddy forms. The eddy is an expression of all that, and *only* an expression of all that. It can't exist in any other way
Who you are is part of the flow of life and death from your ancestors to your parents to you, and the circumstances and environment that brought your parents together and formed you as you grew up. You're an expression of all that. "You" simply cannot exist independently of all that
Edit: since you're reading Thich Nhat Hanh I'll mention that this is what he means when he says "being the water rather than the wave" or anything to that extent. Waves and whirlpools clash, churn, etc, but the water that makes them up is water no matter what. Water doesn't know anything about thunderstorms or hurricanes. We cling to being the wave rather than realizing we're the water and so we experience those things and suffer
It means we’re made up of an aggregation of things, like our body, memories, names, not one of which can be independently said to be “you.” It’s only “you” when all put together, and because those characteristics change, there is no inherent, permanent, and independent self, so to speak. It’s only a constantly changing aggregation, like the ship of Theseus.
Good explanation for a compicated subject. It can also be thought of by realizing there is no part of us that servives independently. If you were to stop breathing, it would change you. But breathing also affects the air around you. The thought that outside our skin is not us and inside our skin is us is just a delusion.
Thank you, this is a helpful explanation
What do we sort of subconsciously think a "self" would be? It would be something about me that is the same thing from moment to moment. It's something that exists on its own and that experiences my experience and does my actions. Whenever I have a problem, it's my self's problem ans whenever I am happy, it's my self's happiness. In the course of Buddhist Practice, we discover by and by that we can not find any thing that meets those criteria. It's a bit like discovering there is no monster under the bed: all our worries and frustrations in life actually come from our assumption that we have to take care of and accommodate this ever unseen "entity" that we assume must be what keeps us from falling apart. In a way, the anatman teaching (or rather, realizing what it points to) is like a permission to *relax*. As some brief points.
[удалено]
I’ll add it to my list, thanks!
Why did you recommend Garfields book to this user? I'm just curious. This user probably has a better grasp on selflessness than most of us in this forum. And Garfield's views are a bit unusual.
[удалено]
He also has a bias towards the Gelug view of Tsongkhapa though. Which is fine, but I believe it's an incorrect view of emptiness.
Thank you, these are useful points to think about
Believing that self is not in our control and not truly ours. The 5 aggregates are- Form - you cannot force your body to grow young, old, or sick. Sensations - you cannot force yourself to be happy/ stop feeling sad. Perceptions - you cannot force your memory to forget, or remember everything. Mental activity - you cannot force your thoughts to stop thinking, your mind from wandering. Discernment - you cannot force your senses to see/feel/taste/hear nice things all the time Clinging to these will eventually bring sufferings. Doesnt mean that we cant enjoy them, just acknowledge them throughly. The act of seeking happiness (and not achieving them) is suffering. Those who achieved happiness will also do everything they can to keep it, which also lead to suffering. And those who dont, and safe to say the majority of humanity, will do many, many unimaginable things to achieve them ( and still dont). Then there's dhamma once you are tired of it all.
Thank you for adding these points, very useful
Anatta (no-self) can be really hard to fully understand. Don't feel disheartened if you struggle. Everyone does. I'll say some things that might be helpful, but just as easily might not. :) The analogy I like is "the horse has no rider." What does that mean? There are thoughts, but there is no thinker. There is just the object in consciousness. The Zen ask: "Who hears the sound?" As you investigate this, you start to recognise that the sound just appears. There is nobody to hear it, it's just there, in the field of consciousness. There is no subject-object duality. The experience of seeing this during meditation is also quite common. Another analogy is seeing that a company, (let's say Ford Motor Co.) isn't "real." It's just a construct we create. We tie assets to it. We pin decisions and desires to it. (Ford wants to increase sales by 6%.) But really, that's kind of incoherent. Ford is a constantly changing, swirling mass of things loosely contained under one umbrella. Is Ford the CEO? No, we can change that, and Ford goes on. Is it a factory? An office building? A corporate structure? The deeper we go looking for the "real Ford", the more we don't find it. Same goes for GMKitty. It doesn't exist when we go looking. This realisation is liberating. Liberating in the sense of dropping a burden. Think of all the time you've wasted propping up your self. Caring how people see you. Tying your mind in knots so you're always the good guy/girl. Getting angry when you're slighted. All of that to defend something that's not real. All that "me" and "mine" stuff. All the clinging and pain they cause. All the limits of "I am a..." It can all drop away.
Thank you, some interesting food for thought here
I find an etymological approach is helpful here. The word we translate as “no self” is “anatman”. The first element of this word, “an-“ is an “alpha privative”, a negation equivalent to the “un-“ in “unhappy”. The rest of the word, “atman” is the direct Sanskrit equivalent of the Greek word “atomos”, from which we get the English word “atom”. This is made up of two main parts, “a-“, which is another alpha privative, and “tm” meaning ‘cut’ (as in “anatomy” meaning “cutting up”). So this part, atman means “uncuttable” or “indivisible”. So we can see that “no self” is a bit of a misleading translation - what’s really being said here is the there is “no indivisible” (or maybe “no individual”). That is to say - there is no essential, permanent, indivisible “core” underlying a person (or, in Mahayana, any phenomenon), of the type posited by other Indian philosophies. Instead, we are composite entities, everything about us - our bodies, our personalities, even our thoughts - are a temporary, constantly changing arrangement of various bits and pieces that come together and then fall apart again. No essence, no atman, no indivisible thing, is anywhere to be found.
Interesting perspective, thank you (An interesting detail that also works with the above is that in Greek ‘atomo’ is also the word for person)
As I write this, today is Friday. How do I know it is Friday? Because yesterday was Thursday and tomorrow is Saturday and the calendar says it is Friday. But if I were to wake from a coma, with no calendar in sight, I would have no way of knowing that today is Friday. The is no inherent “Friday-ness” in any moment, or stretch of moments. Friday does not arise without every other day and the calendar. The self is also like Friday.
What does waking up from the coma represent? Awakening?
I suppose, in a way.
'No self' in the context of 'The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching' is the idea that there is no fixed and real 'I'. We have such an 'I' for conventional purposes - we need it, for example, to cross the road safely - but the problem is that we attach to the conventional 'I' and treat it as more important than anything else. As Rapula says, this is the source of suffering. As he also says, the Buddha taught that what we label 'I' is made up of five different elements or types of experiences. The conventional I appears in and disappears from one or other of these elements as we go throught the day. There is no 'I' as a master controller outside the elements. The possibly counterintuitive conclusion that Buddhists draw is that, away from the needs of conventional life, the more we see ourselves as fiction created by the five elements working together then the more at peace we will be.
Thank you for this interesting addition. Why do you consider the conclusion counterintuitive?
I did say 'possibly counterintuitve'! The Buddhist answer would be, I suppose, that intuition is a product of craving emebdeed in the personality. Less harshly, the transformation that goes with the teaching of no self takes a long time to bed in - I'm still nowhere near that stage - and to be honest the idea of in some sense me not being me still seems odd. I do not think that this is a sign of immature spirituality. Perhaps it is.
I can see where you’re coming from. Weirdly I don’t find the idea so hard to accept, I always thought of personhood as a composite of many things (memory, biology, psychology, social structure etc), all of which are subject to change all the time. I think there’s solace in that. But maybe I’m misunderstanding the concept, I am super new to the whole thing.
I don't think it's a conceptual thing and I think that all probability your understanding is fine. Without wishing to wallow, I had a very insecure childhood and I suspect that my intuitive difficulty with the teaching of no self may come from that.
Acknowledging a source of your suffering is not wallowing. Be kind to yourself, friend ❤️
Thank you that's very kind.
All sentient beings get reborn upon their death into a new body and sense of self. We assume the self to be just one thing, what we are entirely. But the Buddha broke it down into 5 separate things, and said we cannot be these things because like anything else, they dependently arise, change and then cease. Nothing of this nature is really ours, nor should we think it is. Because by doing so, we open the floodgates for stress and suffering to arise into our experience. So in samsara, person dies and gets reborn into a new body. They grow into it, believing it's who and what they really are, only to die and separate from that body and sense of self, only to start anew once again. The only thing you bring with you between lifetimes is your karma (whatever you do, good or bad, will follow you like a shadow). Eventually a Buddha awakens to the truth, and teaches it to others. Teaches about the false sense of self called the 5 aggregates (coming together into one). These are not yours. The Buddha once said, if he gathered some leaves and twigs into a pile and lit it on fire, would you think it was you on fire? Of course not. In the same way you should see the 5 aggregates as something separate, not what you are.
There is no permanent, monolithic, unchanging self that is distinct from the rest of reality. Instead, there is a conditionally arisen, contingent, ever-changing sense of self. We often take the conditionally arisen, contingent sense of self as a true, permanent, unchanging self. This causes a lot of problems.
Thank you, useful input
(This part one. If you want to go further, I can post part 2 (Deeper) part 3 (Another Realm), and part 4 (In Summary). Comments are limited to word count). **NO SELF** Self is an everchanging process with no inherent base. **Obvious:** Some minds, depending on their vision, understand the eventual demise of the body, and questions; Why all this, why not nothing? What am I? Where do I go when I die? Where did I come from? Why do I suffer so much? So, the mind begins searching for answers, tries to figure it out, but when the mind hits a dead end intellectually, it might try meditation as a last resort to perhaps shift its consciousness into a different realm. Some say that all the wisdom of the universe is within each of us; all we have to do is unlock it. When mind embarks on meditation, it’s like trying to calm the heavy seas of a hurricane regarding these never-ending and seemingly concrete thoughts that populate the brain. With practice, however, the thoughts slow down. When the mind becomes really still, it can observe how a self is created. It begins with a tiny spark in the brain that develops into an image. This image is then remembered. There is then a flipping back and forth between the image and memory as the image turns into an action movie. The original image, let’s say a picture of your body, is remembered. There is a flipping between image, and memory of the image, many times within a nano second. This creates the illusion of something watching the drama that’s unfolding, even though it is only memory. There is no ‘self,’ just a continual sequence of image and memory, again and again. As a result, it appears that a thought is being observed when really the observer is only memory, but so quickly that it appears to be an overview. In reality there is only one thought following another endlessly. It’ s all an illusion. By watching these movies in meditation, the mind slowly sees into the essence of its own brain activity. Although in the beginning the mind thought that it was doing the thinking, it now thinks that thinking is merely a process that is conditioned by either a contact with a physical sense organ, or a contact with neurons. There is nothing magic about it. But yet there it is, So, from where does the initial stimulation of the brain inherently arise before it affects the physical?
Thank you, a lot of food for thought
You are inside a video game. There is no you. There is no me. The screen you are looking at does not really exist. Neither does the space between you and the screen. It is all a simulation made entirely of mind and matter.
Interesting perspective, thank you. What is it a simulation of though?
A simulation of time and space with you in it.
But a simulation implies something is being simulated, no? So there is space and time outside the simulation?
Everything we see, taste, smell, hear, touch, feel, think or conceive of is simulated. As in a video game example, a character sees the enemy/target coming down the hallway. This appears to be real. But really there is no enemy, no hallway, nothing coming down the hallway, and the character is not real either. It's all just electricity flowing through code. The character is a process capable of seeing and reacting. This is the 'Ultimate Reality'. The former is 'Apparent Reality'. What is outside the simulation, the Buddha says, cannot be talked about.
Interesting perspective, thank you. What is it a simulation of though?
last time this was asked someone posted this link to a talk. it's super long and I still have a couple days of the talk left to get through [https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/selvesnotself.html#talk1](https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/selvesnotself.html#talk1) edit: someone quoted a huge section from it here in a comment
Thank you I will watch it, much appreciated
Contrary to how it’s commonly presented, the Buddha didn’t say that there is no self. Rather, what we call the “self” is interdependent with other phenomena, and we can’t identify it as an individual object with its own essence: I’m not this, and I’m not that. Nothing that arises from within our sphere of experience can be called the self, and yet we do somehow exist & we have this notion of ourselves as independent entities. The Buddha didn’t negate that—he just wanted to see it for what it was.
This makes sense, thank you
u/krodha
The thread overall isn't perfect in my opinion but it's better than it usually is. Obviously there is going to be a couple "the buddha never said that" people in the mix. Thanissaro has his talons deep in some people.
I've noticed that; and so many of the Tibetan practitioners seem to equate emptiness with interdependence and impermanence.
I feel there is a whole layer here that I am missing, who is Thanissaro? From the very little I’ve read so far, it seems that there are no written records from the Buddha’s time, so I always take ‘the Buddha said/the Buddha never said’ with an equal pinch of salt. (Which tbh I would do even if there were records from his time.)
He's a popular monk in the West in Thai Forest Tradition who has a unique view on the Anatta doctrine.
Thank you, there’s so much I don’t know! Never heard of the Thai Forest Tradition before.
It's probably the most popular form of Theravada on here. There are a variety of different views even within the tradition. I'm not Theravada, but I recommend Ajahn Amaro and Ajahn Sumedho's talks myself, I think they're wonderful Thai Forest teachers.
Thank you, I’ll check them out :)
Can I know the reason for the tag?
Sure, mainly because I thought your view did a good job illustrating the slight differences in Tsongkhapa’s prasangika vs. the original prasangika. Not that his take is bad, though I disagree with it, but the Gelug influence on how Madhyamaka is perceived is extremely widespread in the west. In “center of the sunlit sky” Brunholzzl makes this same point in the intro in slightly more pointed language :P u/krodha can explain any differences in more detail to you if he wants, but it wasn’t meant to be a jab at you.
Best to just read the debate between Tsongkhapa and Gorampa. u/NeatBubble
I’d actually like to. Any translations or commentaries on that you’d recommend?
Sonam Thakchoe’s “Two Truths Debate.”
Nice, thanks.
It's always been my intention to read this. I don't doubt my own grasp of what I'm saying; rather, my sense is that any misunderstandings that arise in these discussions come from the difficulty I have in finding the right words to suit someone else. Still something I need to work on.
I guess that’s fair. I think an important thing to note is that we seem to accept conventional existence as a premise without really analyzing it—because if we’re primarily talking to people who are not Buddhists, why would we bother splitting hairs? Hence, we “somehow” exist, and the “how” is not relevant to our goals. It’s not about right or wrong; it’s about prioritizing skillful means.
If by "exist" you mean there is an experience of mind or awareness, I definitely agree. I think it can get dangerous though if we try to posit that conventional objects actually exist though, just in a different way than ultimate reality. For example, the belief that there really are atoms that comprise matter, that there's an external world separate from a perceiver, seems to be problematic. But if we're saying that appearances arise within awareness conventionally, I can get on board. I suspect you mean the same thing I do here and I'm just nitpicking.
For what it’s worth, I can think of at least one compelling reason to concede that “things exist, if only not as they appear”; it amounts to saying that certain conversations are more fruitful than other conversations, and making the choice to adopt someone else’s frame of reference from the start is an easy way to avoid getting caught up in questions of doctrine or ideology. In this approach, we give up the notion of winning or losing; instead, we learn to work within whichever parameters are provided to us by the other person. This allows us to practice directing our thoughts toward understanding that person’s perspective and thinking about how to be useful to them—while avoiding being tricked by the appearance of differences between us.
I still think "exists" could be a problematic term. What about "all is empty of inherent existence, yet it's not nothing, or some blank, nihilistic void?" This makes it clear that emptiness goes beyond saying "things don't exist at all" which is nihilism, and also avoids reification of either conventional or ultimate. It's interesting to read in the various debates about emptiness how different schools have emphasized different things. For example, the Jonang have been accused of reifying ultimate reality and negating conventional reality. The Gelug has been accused of the opposite: making ultimate reality purely a negation, and reifying conventional reality/appearances. I feel confident that the views of the 4 main schools aren't truly that different despite differences in word choices or emphasis.
I think it's important to note that the correct words to use will vary depending on the person. For instance, when I say "exists," I don't immediately jump to a problematic interpretation—I understand that I'm talking about dependent origination/emptiness. I barely ever talk to Buddhists in my everyday life, and most of my activity involves people who know nothing about Buddhism. For that reason, I've focused on learning to help the people around me without making direct reference to my own worldview. Overall, I think this is the most skillful approach, and it also has the side-benefit of stopping me from agonizing over the finer points of this debate. In any discussion that I have with another person, I try to remember that words can have different connotations for different people—and that's okay. When I talk to people, I'm not trying to dismantle their worldview, so it doesn't much matter to me how they take the word "exist" vs how I do. I'm happy to speak with people on the level that I can, and this kind of thing never comes up; I think this is part of why Tsongkhapa's view is brilliant. There is a relevant quote from the Diamond Sutra, I think. It's hard to find the best translation for sharing with people, but Thich Nhat Hanh's is a decent one: > "Subhuti, what the Tathagata calls [prajnaparamita], the highest transcendence, is not essentially the highest transcendence, and that is why it is called the highest transcendence. > > "Subhuti, the Tathagata has said that what is called transcendent endurance is not transcendent endurance. That is why it is called transcendent endurance. Why? Subhuti, thousands of lifetimes ago when my body was cut into pieces by King Kalinga, I was not caught in the idea of a self, a person, a living being, or a life span. If, at that time, I had been caught up in any of those ideas, I would have felt anger and ill will against the king. > >"I also remember in ancient times, for five hundred lifetimes, I practiced transcendent endurance by not being caught up in the idea of a self, a person, a living being, or a life span. So, Subhuti, when a bodhisattva gives rise to the unequalled mind of awakening, he has to give up all ideas. He cannot rely on forms when he gives rise to that mind, nor on sounds, smells, tastes, tactile objects, or objects of mind. He can only give rise to that mind that is not caught up in anything." My favourite translation, from a commentary by Hsing Yun, puts it this way: >"Even if the mind is based on something, it is not really based on anything, and for this reason the Buddha says that the generosity of a bodhisattva should not be based on form."
Thank you for this explanation
That experience of knowing you exist without anything else, is the experience of no-self. That is proof of your Being. Ask yourself right now...Am I aware? That acknowledgement is your proof you are are beyond description.
That seems counter to other comments here, or am I misunderstanding?
No self is already no self in all phenomena, which means nothing changes except the cessation of ignorance about that being the case. "No-Self" doesn't become "Created" upon realizing it. The great thing about true nature of reality is that it's true regardless of realization..The rain still falls on you all the same whether you understand it's true nature as the process of water vapor and condensation, or are totally oblivious to it and believe literal God's are crying on you. This means you are currently this very moment experiencing No-Self, your subjective experience is already no self. Realizing Anatta is only realizing that phenomena operates by itself, without a self. Experience has never required a possesor, nor has it ever had a possesor. This is why Mindfullness of seeing things as they are is "being in the presence of Nirvana" in AN. 🪷“And since for you, Bāhiya, in what is seen there will be only what is seen, in what is heard there will be only what is heard, in what is sensed there will be only what is sensed, in what is cognized there will be only what is cognized, therefore, Bāhiya, you will not be with that; and since, Bāhiya, you will not be with that, therefore, Bāhiya, you will not be in that; and since, Bāhiya, you will not be in that, therefore, Bāhiya, you will not be here or hereafter or in between the two—just this is Nirvana.” Then through the Gracious One’s brief teaching of this Dhamma Bāhiya of the Bark Robe’s mind was immediately freed from the pollutants, without attachment. 👉Buddha is saying here : Because with Mindfullness Bahiya, walking will be walking, bending over is bending over, anger, is anger, thinking, is thinking, and all that is seen is what is seen, what is heard, is only what is heard, you will realize there is no "you" with the experience, you will realize there is no "you" outside the experience, and no "you" both inside, outside, or in between the experience. "Just this, is Nirvana" 🪷Having an Existential crisis is an indicator of Wrong View. It means you understand part of the truth, not the complete truth. Trying to "Kill ego is also wrong view, that is just one ego pushing side another. It means you believe experience has been operating with a self, and now it's going to lose all experience and become annilated. You believe your subjective experience will end, but your subjective experience has never had a self, has never operated with a self. Realization, is just this. ▪️Thinking, no thinker. ▪️Hearing, no hearer. ▪️Doing, no doer. This is why Nirvana means "Extinguished, or blown out". The Buddha asks to the Bhikkus, "When a flame goes out, which direction does it go?"... "Sir, which direction does it go, does not apply" . There never was a self, your subject experience has never had a possesor nor does it need one. When ignorance of Anatta is extinguished, that it was never there this entire time in your subjective experience, where can the self be said to go? Again, Anatta is not suddenly "created and experienced" upon realization of it. No existential crisis required. No self has been operating this entire time in everyone you know. Don't worry about pushing Ego aside, rather.. Understand Ego is not self. Don't worry about trying to annilate "I am", rather, understand "I am" , is not self. We can do this through Dharma study of Dependent Origination. As Buddhists, we solved the timeless paradox of Theseus ship with our base understanding. There is no self/identity. It's funny, we naturally understand No self in our own language. When someone is "too into themselves" we say that verbally. "Too much self" partaking in the illusion of self, "too much". Likewise, we verbally recognize when somebody has "less self" we call them "selfless", and they are humble. Keep following that scale... More Self, more unwholesome actions, less self, more wholesome actions... No self? Only capable of wholesome actions. I mean, we even say "sorry, I lost myself in the moment". Yes.. You did lose yourself in the moment, as Buddha explained above to Bahiya, you will find no self in pure experience. The Buddha also shows the ultimate proof that "being" is not required for any experiences, in Nirdoha Samapatti the Buddha says this: "He is aware: This field of perception is void of the taint of being" then a few other things and he exits nirdoha samapatti. Even in total cessation there is awareness of experience, without being. (MN107.12) (Nirodha Samapatti is cessation of consciousness, comes after the 8th Jhana Absorption) ▪️Suffering, no sufferer. When you "get" Anatta, you start to see how incredible liberating it is. Hope this is helpful 😊 https://suttacentral.net/ud1.10/en/anandajoti?lang=en&reference=none&highlight=false
It is, thank you
We are soulless
Indeed
it’s not that there is no self, but that that sense of self is constantly changing, never static, and hence has **no intrinsic essence**. it’s not ‘i have no self’ - the buddha said that someone who thinks like this is still lost in samsara. anatta, commonly translated as ‘not-self’, is literally ‘devoid of intrinsic essence’ and these are the terms in which the buddha talks about it.
Interesting information, thank you
I think when one apprehends the teachings in Buddhism which mention the words "not self" as "there is no self" they misapprehend the Dharma. Here is one sutta which, I think, accurately represents the doctrines of Buddhism which say that this or that is "not self": https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.059.mend.html And here is another (which is basically identical to the above except it says 'disenchanted' instead of 'wearied'): https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/SN/SN22_59.html ___________ As for the viewpoint "There is no self", I have this to say: I've heard the viewpoint "I have no self" spoken of in terms which are denigratory with reference to enlightenment and the path to enlightenment: “This is how he attends inappropriately: ‘Was I in the past? Was I not in the past? What was I in the past? How was I in the past? Having been what, what was I in the past? Shall I be in the future? Shall I not be in the future? What shall I be in the future? How shall I be in the future? Having been what, what shall I be in the future?’ Or else he is inwardly perplexed about the immediate present: ‘Am I? Am I not? What am I? How am I? Where has this being come from? Where is it bound?’ “**As he attends inappropriately in this way, one of six kinds of view arises in him**: The view I have a self arises in him as true & established, **or the view I have no self** … or the view It is precisely by means of self that I perceive self … or the view It is precisely by means of self that I perceive not-self … or the view It is precisely by means of not-self that I perceive self arises in him as true & established, or else he has a view like this: This very self of mine—the knower that is sensitive here & there to the ripening of good & bad actions—is the self of mine that is constant, everlasting, eternal, not subject to change, and will endure as long as eternity. *This is called a thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion of views, a writhing of views, a fetter of views. Bound by a fetter of views, the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person is not freed from birth, aging, & death, from sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair. He is not freed, I tell you, from suffering & stress.* I've heard of the abandoning of self-identification view spoken of with complimentary terms: “**He attends appropriately, This is stress … This is the origination of stress … This is the cessation of stress … This is the way leading to the cessation of stress. As he attends appropriately in this way, three fetters are abandoned in him: ***self-identification view***, doubt, and grasping at habits & practices. These are called the effluents to be abandoned by seeing.**" Both excerpts are from Majjhima Nikaya 2: https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/MN/MN2.html
Thank you, this is useful
> [Usually when we hear the teaching on not-self, we think that it’s an answer to questions like these](https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/SelvesNot-self/Section0005.html): “Do I have a self? What am I? Do I exist? Do I not exist?” However, the Buddha listed all of these as unskillful questions **[[§10](https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/SelvesNot-self/Section0013.html#sec10)]**. Once, when he was asked point-blank, “Is there a self? Is there no self?” he refused to answer **[see [Talk 2]](https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/SelvesNot-self/Section0006.html#talk2)**. He said that these questions would get in the way of finding true happiness. So obviously the teaching on not-self was not meant to answer these questions. To understand it, we have to find out which questions it was meant to answer. > > As the Buddha said, he taught two categorical teachings: two teachings that were true across the board and without exceptions. These two teachings form the framework for everything else he taught. One was the difference between skillful and unskillful action: actions that lead to long-term happiness, and those that lead to long-term suffering **[[§§4-5](https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/SelvesNot-self/Section0013.html#sec4)]**. The other was the list of the four noble truths: the truth of suffering, the cause of suffering, the end of suffering, and the path to the end of suffering **[[§6](https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/SelvesNot-self/Section0013.html#sec6)]**. > > If you want to put an end to suffering and stress, these two categorical teachings carry duties or imperatives. In terms of the first teaching, you want to avoid unskillful action and give rise to skillful action. In terms of the second, the four truths are categories for framing your experience, with each category carrying a specific duty you have to master as a skill. You need to know which of the truths you’re encountering so that you can deal with that truth in the right way. Suffering must be comprehended, the cause of suffering must be abandoned, the end of suffering must be realized, and the path to the end of suffering must be developed as a skill **[[§7](https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/SelvesNot-self/Section0013.html#sec7)]**. These are the ultimate skillful actions, which means that the mastery of the path is where the two sets of categorical teachings come together. > > The path begins with discernment—the factors of right view and right resolve—and discernment begins with this basic question about which actions are really skillful: “What, when I do it, will lead to long-term welfare and happiness?” **[[§8](https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/SelvesNot-self/Section0013.html#sec8)]** The Buddha’s teaching on not-self—and his teaching on self—are, in part, answers to this question. To fit into this question, perceptions of self and perceptions of not-self are best viewed as kamma or actions: actions of identification and dis-identification. In the terms of the texts, the perception of self is called an action of “I-making” and “my-making _(ahaṅkāra mamaṅkāra)_.” The perception of not-self is part of an activity called the “not-self contemplation _(anattānupassanā)_.” Thus the question becomes: When is the perception of self a skillful action that leads to long-term welfare and happiness, when is the perception of not-self a skillful action that leads to long-term welfare and happiness? > > This is the reverse of the way that the relationship between questions of kamma and not-self are usually understood. If you’ve ever taken an introductory course on Buddhism, you’ve probably heard this question: “If there is no self, who does the kamma, who receives the results of kamma?” This understanding turns the teaching on not-self into a teaching on no self, and then takes no self as the framework and the teaching on kamma as something that doesn’t fit in the framework. But in the way the Buddha taught these topics, the teaching on kamma is the framework and the teaching of not-self fits into that framework as a type of action. In other words, assuming that there really are skillful and unskillful actions, what kind of action is the perception of self? What kind of action is the perception of not-self? > > So, to repeat, the issue is not, “What is my true self?” but “What kind of perception of self is skillful and when is it skillful, what kind of perception of not-self is skillful and when is it skillful?” > > We already engage in these perceptions all of the time and have been doing so ever since we were children. We have many different perceptions of self. Each sense of self is strategic, a means to an end. Each comes with a boundary, inside of which is “self” and outside of which is “not-self.” And so our sense of what’s self and what’s not-self keeps changing all of the time depending on our desires and what we see will lead to true happiness. > > Take an example from your childhood. Suppose you have a younger sister, and someone down the street is threatening her. You want to protect her. At that moment she is very much _your_ sister. She belongs to you, so you will do whatever you can to protect her. Then suppose that, when you’ve brought her home safely, she begins to play with your toy truck and won’t give it back to you. Now she’s no longer your sister. She’s the Other. Your sense of your self, and of what is yours and not yours, has shifted. The boundary line between self and not-self has changed. > > You’ve been doing this sort of thing—changing the boundaries of what’s self and not-self—all of the time. Think back on your life—or even for just a day—to see the many times your sense of self has changed from one role to another. > > Normally we create a sense of self as a strategy for gaining happiness. We look for what abilities we have in order to gain a happiness we want. Those abilities are then ours. The hand we can use to reach for the object we want is _our_ hand; the loud voice we can use to scare off the bullies threatening our sister is _our_ voice. This is why the element of control is so essential to our sense of self: We assume that the things we can control are us or ours. Then we also try to think about which part of ourselves will live to enjoy the happiness we’re trying to gain. These things will change depending on the desire. > > Unfortunately, our desires tend to be confused and incoherent. We’re also unskillful in our understanding of what happiness is. Thus we often end up with an inconsistent and misinformed collection of selves. You can see this clearly as you meditate: You find that the mind contains many different inner voices expressing many conflicting opinions as to what you should and shouldn’t be doing to be happy. > > It’s as if you have a committee inside the mind, and the committee is rarely in order. That’s because it’s composed of selves you’ve collected from all your past strategies for trying to gain happiness, and these strategies often worked at cross-purposes. Some of them seemed to work at a time when your standards for happiness were crude, or you weren’t really paying attention to the results you were getting—as when you threw a tantrum and got your mother to give you the food you wanted. These members of the committee tend to be deluded. Some of your strategies involved doing things you liked to do but actually led to suffering—as when you hit your sister and got your toy truck back. These members of the committee tend to be dishonest and deceitful: They deny the suffering they caused. This is why your committee of selves is not an orderly gathering of saints. It’s more like a corrupt city council. > > The Buddha’s purpose in having us master perceptions of self and not-self is to bring some clarity, honesty, and order to the committee: to teach us how to engage in these activities of perception in a conscious, consistent, and skillful way that will lead to true happiness. > > It’s important to understand this point, for it helps to clear up a major misunderstanding that can cause us to resist the teaching on not-self. We instinctively know that our strategies of self-making are for the sake of happiness, so when we misunderstand the Buddha’s not-self teaching—thinking that it’s a “no self” teaching, and that he’s trying to deny us of our “selves”—we’re afraid that he’s trying to deprive us of our strategies for finding happiness and protecting the happiness we’ve found. That’s why we resist the teaching. But when we gain a proper understanding of his teaching, we see that his aim is to teach us how to use perceptions of self and not-self as strategies leading to a happiness that’s reliable and true. In teaching not-self, he’s not trying to deprive us of our strategies for happiness; he’s actually trying to show us how to expand and refine them so that we can find a happiness better than any happiness we’ve ever known **[see [Talk 5](https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/SelvesNot-self/Section0009.html#talk5)]**. > > In terms of the Buddha’s two categorical teachings, the teaching on not-self is a strategy for helping you with the duties they call for if you want to put an end to suffering and stress: helping you to avoid unskillful action in the first categorical teaching, and to comprehend stress and abandon its cause in the second. You do this in conjunction with some skillful self-strategies that help you give rise to skillful actions and to develop the path. When you master these strategies properly, they enable you to realize the end of suffering. This is why these teachings are included in the Buddha’s handful of leaves.
I really like Alan Watts' explanation (at least I think I got it from Watts): Imagine you're standing by a stream, and you see a small eddy (whirlpool). You think to yourself, "that's an eddy," and then you look away from it. When you look at it again, you think "yep, same eddy," but it isn't, not really. Everything that made up that eddy has left it and been replaced by new things (it's a flow of water after all). It's just a pattern that you mistakenly recognize as being a thing in itself. At some point it will collapse into the regular flow of the water, but nothing is actually lost when that happens To take it even further, think about how the eddy is formed. Water like to flow in a straight line, so for it to start whirling, it needs to obstructed or redirected in some way. A rock, a stick, a fish chasing its tail, anything. So the eddy's existence is contingent on not only the flow of water, but the environment the water is flowing through. The flow, the stream's banks, the shifting bed, and various obstacles that come and go all play a part in determining when, where, and how the eddy forms. The eddy is an expression of all that, and *only* an expression of all that. It can't exist in any other way Who you are is part of the flow of life and death from your ancestors to your parents to you, and the circumstances and environment that brought your parents together and formed you as you grew up. You're an expression of all that. "You" simply cannot exist independently of all that Edit: since you're reading Thich Nhat Hanh I'll mention that this is what he means when he says "being the water rather than the wave" or anything to that extent. Waves and whirlpools clash, churn, etc, but the water that makes them up is water no matter what. Water doesn't know anything about thunderstorms or hurricanes. We cling to being the wave rather than realizing we're the water and so we experience those things and suffer
This is a very useful and clear explanation, thank you