Discussions

This little inquiry, which I think I got from Tara Brach, is how I practice. When you have sat for a while and settled your mind, try to find where you feel your "self." What sensations do you find? Try to breathe into them. If you can locate "self" sensations, try to find what is perceiving them. You intuit that "you" see, hear and feel your other sensations, so what is feeling the sensations you think are you?

A variation on this, based on tonglen: on the inhaled breath, breathe into your sense of yourself; on the exhaled breath, let your attention shift to the perception of the space around your body. Try to feel that attention shift as a release of your awareness into the space around you, a letting go. What happens?

Buddhism asks us to reconsider basic assumptions about self.

What is the heart? It's part of the circulatory system, of course. A book on anatomy will include a section on the heart in its circulatory system chapter. Students have to learn about the heart itself as well as the system it belongs to. To say that the heart doesn't exist in isolation is not to say that it doesn't exist at all.

My thinking about self is somewhere between the extremes of the totalitarian collective and the individualism of Ayn Rand. Rand seemed to think of the individual as a self-created being, which is absurd. But she had a point when she said, "To say I love you, there must be the word 'I'." The word 'I' is also needed in "I will not participate in this criminal activity." We should consider that some crimes are the work of individuals and others are the work of collectives. Being a "team player" is not always the right thing.

nope clear enough linda. I have been reading or hearing that strain of not-self from other quarters. I just haven't internalised it myself yet. It seems quite legitimate and practical what you suggest. I am referring mainly to your second paragraph.

It's not "a thing" but more of a concept, or a construct we make from many concepts.]

I think the our experience of the self is more than either a concept or a construct. I think a person without words would have the experience of self being differeniated from other people and things and beings. I think its very very bound up in being human (at least). I think its the buddha's concept which is also true, but on another level from what we normally know, that we have to work at to make more real to us.

I found two things really helped to create ah-hah moments for me in getting the not-self teachings:

Inspecting mental objects for impermanence, suffering, and yes, not-self

Reading the latest in neurobiology for lay people, as much research and study is going into how the brain creates not one, but two illusory selves and why

I understand Candol's confusion in sitting there asking is this me, is that me, etc. Now when I do that, I totally get it. But in the beginning this voice inside would scream, yes *I'm* right here, stupid. Of course there is a me! Indeed there is a me, not just one, but two, three, four, and now I see literally hundreds of me arises in a single day! But here is what I discovered. . . .

In focusing on impermanence of mental objects: thoughts, judgements, emotions, etc., I saw the fleeting nature of my mind. Thoughts not only come and go, I have no control over what kind of thoughts arise. I do seem to have some control over which I choose to follow. More importantly, I started discovering attachments to certain thoughts, identification with certain thoughts as me. But I often change my mind, opinions, and thoughts zip in and out continuously. So why identify with them? Why allow these shifting winds to define who I am? Suddenly it seemed absurd to do so.

In being mindful of my thinking processes, I realized I could let go of attachments to my ideas. I didn't have to be right. In fact, in watching closely, I discovered I'm sometimes wrong! I felt myself opening more other others in this process. The me I'd been clinging to, trying to define through my mental ideas was shrinking, become less important. I realized, ah, this is what Buddha meant by we are not our thoughts. There isn't a static, permanent self in thoughts. They are simply thoughts we can allow to pass through.

I also saw how many of my mental processes caused my own suffering, by my being attached to my own ideas, by ego bubble bursting when I'd realize I was wrong about something, and the way my thoughts would feed anger, sadness, judgements. Now, because I'm just seeing thoughts as fleeting things passing through, they have lost the power to create so much suffering for me.

The neurobiology books helped hugely in explaining how interconnected networks create an illusory sense of self through processes. The self is not a thing, it's a multitude of processes. The brain doesn't have a central processor like a computer, a driver, but instead creates this illusory, or feeling of self, so that you'll care enough to eat and protect yourself. The other self it creates, that seems to be more a human mental process, is the self that observes itself, or what we experience. This is vital to learning.

When I read about this in terms of biology and evolution, it made perfect sense physically, and it helped make sense of what the Buddha taught and what I was observing in my meditation and mindfulness throughout the day.

The problem is not that we have a sense of self. We need that for survival, for learning, for creativity. The problem is when we "identify" through these impermanent processes. I had this thought, therefore it is true, and anyone who challenges me is going to piss me off! THAT is a problem. Whereas if you are mindful of your mental processes and see how fleeing there are, you can be flexible and dynamic, willing to let them go if they are determined to build some story that fuels anger, or let them go when you discover they're just wrong.

That was probably way longer an explanation than anyone wants, but that has been my discovery and understanding of not-self. It's learning not to identify with and build ego around our thoughts, our bodies, and create this sensitive, destructive illusory self. I suspect this is just the surface of the the not-self teaching, but I find it all fascinating!

BTW, this was an area that I was determined to prove the Buddha wrong, wrong, wrong because I felt sure my intellect was ME! Thankfully I've discovered that just isn't so! I feel more dynamic for letting go of the ideas and attachments I had about myself.

The most beneficial teaching for me was the idea that most of us see ourselves like a piece of cork, thrashed about and carried in a stream, when in reality, we are more like the stream itself (or, if you prefer, "... the ceaseless becoming of the universe..."). That helped me with anicca and anatta. Once I was able to verify these as true about myself, it was more easy to apply anatta to the phenomena I perceive as external for the sake of brevity.

I'm in the midst of taking a Stoic correspondence course, and the idea of not-self in Buddhism dovetails quite nicely with "what is in one's control" in Stoicism - think the Buddha's second sermon explaining about how if the 5 khandas are "you" then "you" could just tell them what to do and they'd do it! But they don't, so they're not.

So one of my main practices of not-self is by noting things (feelings, sensations, possessions, situations) as being "not mine" (Buddhist way of labeling) and "not under my control" and "not concerning me" (Stoic way of labeling). This is a kind of "note-and-label" process.

The other was I use not-self is in shifting perspective for mindfulness of physical sensations and vedana - with practice, one's perception of these events can shift so that they can be seen as phenomena that are occuring, and not happening "to me".

yes you may not have total control over the thoughts that come into your mind, or the feelings that arise but you are able to control what you do with them all, are you not?

Yes - as long as I can remember/am mindful that I can.

Perhaps the outlook isn't as grim as you make it sound.

I'm not sure if you're referring to yourself viewing the situation as grim or as reading me as seeing it to be grim. If it's the latter, I don't see it as grim. It's quite interesting and freeing much of time.

I wonder how well we're able to separate our thinking selves from our emotional selves. Isn't emotion a combined interplay of mental states and physical ones? Seems to be that way when I take a look at them in meditation, and set aside my reaction to what's going on (which usually sweeps me away!).

Maybe we can view it as a taming of the mind / emotion complex. Personally I've always found the chaining of the elephant metaphor to be horribly cruel to a thinking being, and would like to see something else used.

Ted and Dana, an experience I have been having frequently as I meditate these days is, crudly described, that of first locating the sensations of the energy of my thinking and the energy of my emotions. Then as I watch I experience them as not separate at all but different manifestations of the same energy.

I am not intelligent enough to get this no-self thing.

If the self emerge out of what the body does.
Then the actions of the body produces the
sense of being a self. a natural process.

Then is it not logical to say
that as long as you have a body
then the potential self does emerge.

Sure you can get a blow to the head
of that body and the blood inside
make the self impossible to emerge.

So is the intelectual self separate
from the emotional self? Maybe it is.

My mother had either a bleeding that
destroyed much of her intellectual self.

She lost very much of being able to grasp
abstract things even as easy things as yes and no.

We could tell her that we have to know if she wanted
to go to the loo or not. And that she had to decide on
what sign with the hands she want to use to indicate
she had to go to the loo.

That totally failed during the ten years she survived
that bleeding. She never regained speech or ability
to make a sign that meant yes or no or have to go to loo.

But her emotional self where intact. She had memories
of faces and showed she got happy when she recognized
a relative she had not seen in years. She smiled or
cried out of happiness when I visited her. She where
eager to show pictures of grandkids growing up and
knew where the pictures where and the newspaper clips
of the Sport result and so on.

but she held the newspaper up and down not realizing
that I needed to read the text the other way.

Her emotional self as I get it where intact
she did react the same way to things that I
remember she always had done to things like
weather or taste of food or obstacles coming
her way when trying to walk and so on.

Some cruel atheist teased me with some
clever words. I don't remember them but
something like this.

No body - no self you are a nobody!

I guess it was his nasty way to tell me
that I am not a good thinker and I admit that.

Do you remember the first time you saw photographs of the earth taken from outer space and it seemed strange that there were no borders? You didn't really expect to see borders unless you were a young child, but it still looked strange. The obvious fact about borders, county lines, and city limits is that they only "exist" because we believe in them. It's like that with the self. I don't generally think of myself as my elementary school or the places my great-grandparents lived, but in a sense those things are part of me. The border I draw to define myself doesn't include them. But borders are arbitrary. A place will be outside the city limits one day and in them the next. First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.

Candol, I think you are missing Tom's point. It seems to me he isn't saying there is no physical border -- the description of Earth and geography and national borders was a metaphor meant to be applied loosely, not exactly -- but he's talking about the borders we draw around the self, as separate. What is the self made of? The five aspects the Buddha talks about (the khandha) aren't limited to form "our own" and feelings "our own" -- we can build self-image through how we relate to form outside us ("He with the most toys wins" we are what we possess); or other's feelings ("I am a good person because I make others feel good.") The definitions we use are dependent a great deal on what other people tell us about ourselves.

But even physically, there are fewer borders than you seem to be suggesting. We do depend on things outside us for the support of our bodies -- and the world reacts when we move. No, we don't have absolute control over everything around us but -- guess what! -- we don't have absolute control over our own bodies either.

Non self leads the way toward compassion for others. While that is the direction one may work toward as a bodhisattva, the practice for me also encourages self compassion. Non-self is fluidity in action. Thoughts arise as the wind does, they are reactions to the landscape and the physical processes involved. Nothing stable about these thoughts and in many ways I have come to view them as closed doors to feelings.

Self compassion relates in this way for me, as these thoughts have certainly led me to pursue actions that can have consequences they are not forever! I do have the choice in what to do next. So I am an ass one moment, the next moment is brand new. Once I appreciated that fluidity it led to the recognition that others are the same.

One way I have recently started to apply this compassion is reminding myself of the story about the elephant and the 9 blind men. As the blind men all have different views of what an elephant is, they argue about who is correct. Of course no one is correct because they only "see" a portion of the elephant. As I see my world as just a bunch of thoughts, perception and feelings that are constructing a self, the basis of my world is just that, a singular vision that is not reality. When the term dream is used- Take everything as if it were a dream, my intuition says that is what is being referred to. Others have this self too that they hold onto as solid and when I am able to have compassion for their holding, then I have less struggle and can be compassionate for them.

Candol, consider dependent ordination. The name "Tom" stands for a physical object encapsulated by skin, but the name also stands for phenomena. The phenomena was in Ohio and Kentucky, where my great-grandparents lived. Right now, it's in South Africa, where you are reading this.

Ellen123, as you have said, we can choose. Belief in dependent ordination is not the same as fatalism.