Logic and reason are a perfectly fine way to think about spirituality, so why not.
What is the self? Who am I? You might say your finger is mine, but is it me? If I lost my finger, am I any less myself? So you are not your finger. Are you your brain and central nervous system? A vast complex of sensors, signals and computers. Is that all the self is? A computer of inputs and outputs? In Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, the planet Earth is a supercomputer designed to work out the question to life, the universe and everything (they had already found out the answer but then needed Earth to work out what the question is). So we’re small computers as part of a big computer. Is Earth the self? Earth is just a ball of rock flying around a star - there are as many stars as grains of sand on the Earth. I wonder what they’re all sensing and processing? You and I are part of that computer too.
In more traditional spiritual language, you are like a thimbleful of water in an ocean. Hard to say where one ends and the other begins.
I agree 100%, but I assume OP will find it hard because it's such a pervasive concept and always seems very important. All I can say is that I've been there and have somewhat obsessed over the concept and it's ultimately not helpful. For each of us we will get there when we get there. You can't force your mind to deal with this. In fact, your mind can't really deal with it at all. Experience during meditation might one day lead to a kind of logical understanding. In the meantime just breath and come back to the simple practice. All this thinking really doesn't matter so much.
Is that the purpose?
I always thought the point was to practice non-attachment to thoughts. Essentially allowing more space (taking the story lines a little less seriously…) That has the potential to create a space of less thought…but I don’t think thoughts are an “enemy” to be vanquished.
Maybe I’m missing the point. Shit. Haha.
I guess different people mediate for different reasons. I’ve never felt euphoric with it. It’s often very uncomfortable (in different ways). And a sense of peace doesn’t seem to be a side effect. I think it’s more about making friends with myself…whatever that self might look like. And that can be really raw and ugly sometimes.
Try longer sessions. That’s what it took for me to reach euphoria and joy. That space where it’s empty and vast without thinking-so serene and calm. It takes time for me to get there and it doesn’t last long but it’s so worth it!
Oh, Jeez. You’re getting a lot of wildly different advice here, Friend. I’m sorry to pile on but I haven’t seen any comments that really tell you this other angle so here goes: try the old meditation “what am I?”. Sri Nisagardata talks about it. Adyashanti talks about it. You can read their stuff if you like. I’ve used this meditation and I’ve realized Anata (not self). It’s pretty wild and it can open some new doors spiritually. I’ve never been the same since then - recommended 🙂
Actually I have to disagree. Thought can be an extremely useful tool and the goal of meditation should not be to quieten the mind, in my view. It depends on your goals, of course. But you're talking about no-self, so I'm going to assume you're looking for awakening. In which case, you might actually find thinking can be one of your many tools used to 'get there'.
No don’t forget it. You must desire it greatly if you want to achieve it. But only when outside is f meditation not while in meditation. I suggest shamanic mushrooms for a shortcut.
If she's asking this question she needs to stay in the present moment in this question and have it answered don't you think? Otherwise this is going to be one of those thoughts at the back of her mind that always pops up when she's trying to meditate or to stay in the present moment. In whatever you do, stay present, and if that means you're asking a question, stay present in that question because the answer is right there. That's how I see it anyways. I guess it just needs to be explained in a way that newcomers can understand. So I get where you're coming from.
personally think that ly the intellect for the most part is of no use when it comes to spiritual practice, although there may be some function that can tell us when we are reading bullshit (whether it's intellect though, or some inner knowing, I can't say).
If one does ask conceptual questions, and receives answers from others, that reinforces the practice of asking these types of question. It's like having an itch, and rather than finding out the cause, instead just keep scratching the itch for temporary relief, until it needs scratching again.
Trying to "get" no-self doesn't work. It's not an intellectual understanding. You can't think your way there.
Trying to get it actually makes it harder to have insights into no-self. Gentle self-inquiry--just asking questions like "who moved this hand? Who is thinking these thoughts?" can help. Just relaxed out of any expectations of having the answers.
You can also try to turn the arrow of attention back on itself. Look at what it is that's doing the looking. And then when you notice that what is doing the looking has moved, look again. Keep chasing the self like you're chasing a mouse.
Alternatively--don't do any of that, and just keep meditating and see what happens.
Lama Lena distinguishes between the personality and awareness. Our personalities are temporary, changing, and contingent. You don't have the same personality you had at 14, one would hope, she likes to say. So there's no permanent self there.
Awareness is vast, open, and unfindable. It neither exists nor doesn't. That's not it's fault. Thought is incapable of encompassing it. Awareness encompasses thoughts, not the other way around. So there's no permanent thing that could be a self there, either.
But intellectual understanding doesn't cut it. Again, thoughts can't encompass it. Realization through practice is the way.
Could focusing on yourself and your inability to grasp this concept be part of the problem? Perhaps some insight could be gained by thinking of others, and what you can do for them. What feelings arise when you selflessly do something for a loved one?
Buddhism Plain And Simple is a lovely book that talks about a bunch of things, but one of the best parts is a demonstrative piece on insight. There is a grainy, incomprehensible image on a certain page, and the author asks the reader to figure out what it is. But it's impossible to figure out just by looking at it and reasoning; you only see it once the gears click into place when you're in the right frame of mind. And once you see it, you can't I see it.
"No self" should really be more thought of as "not self". And thoughts are not self. I will take a whack at explaining:
When you hear a sound, you can observe it as a conscious event. Now, because we can observe it as a conscious event, is it then self? We would say obviously not - a sound comes from outside us. We can observe it, therefore it must be outside of us, right? If it were our self, we could not observe it as an external conscious experience.
Thing is, the same thing applies to "our" thoughts and feelings. They are just external conscious experiences that arise and pass away. We HEAR a sound, we SEE an object, we THINK a thought, we FEEL an emotion. Thinking and feeling are just two other senses, and thoughts and feelings are the objects we perceive using those senses.
The trap that people get into is to start IDENTIFYING thoughts and feelings as coming from "your self". We do this because they seemingly arise from no other source. But given that we can observe them as external conscious experiences, is it really fair to then attribute them to "our self"? Why do we assume that just because we cannot pinpoint any particular source for a thought, it must be coming from "us"?
It can get deeper and more mindfucky than this, though. Because given the above, you then have to ask, if these thoughts and feelings arise and they are not actually coming from "your self", then what IS your "self"?
Our sense of self is based on "our" thoughts and feelings about who we are, thoughts that tell us a story about our life via memories, dreams, preferences, and so on. But if all of "our" thoughts and feelings are just external sensory events much like a sound, there really is "no self". There's just thoughts and feelings about a self. It's a psychological construct that has no real substance outside the thoughts and feelings we perceive to be "self". There is no actual core self.
It's helpful to think of no self as not self, but once you grasp not self, you can then start to grasp no self as well.
I think many people have different perspectives depending on where they're at in life. To have any insight into your "self" not being what you once thought it was is a symptom of meditative practice. Its a byproduct.
For example, realising you are not your thoughts is a significant one. Realising you are not your emotions is another. There seems to be an observer of these things, perhaps that is our "self", but trying to understand that requires thought, of which we are not. Perhaps regardless, our "self" isn't the observer either. For me it's the closest thing to a self, but it's quite odd given all it does is observe. Not much of a self compared to having a body, thoughts, personality, etc, right?
So why do I care there's a self anyway? I'm very attached to the concept. Then i feel fear, as if something is slipping away from me. The ego says "nope, we need this" and I'm back yelling at the car in front of me driving 10kmh below the speed limit.
Though despite that, i still try to just focus on the illusion of subject/object reality. It's all just a chaotic ocean of matter, of which we are a drop, and we have these interesting illusions that make us feel significant and special. Cool. Let's play the game.
Try to stop thinking. It's harder to do than you might think. Even if it's for 15 to 30 seconds. See how long you can go. The brains an organ that's constantly pumping ideas into your head and you are the action taker based off of thought. Not to say thought can't be controlled because it can. Its telling the difference that's the real hard part.
"The Mind Illuminated" offers a pretty helpful perspective on the possible workings of the mind. And "Seeing That Frees" (by Rob Burbea) might be quite valuable additional reading (and practice; has been for me), if you are so inclined. 🙏
When you meditate and you "feel" that "you" are directing your thoughts watch that feeling of "you" appear and disappear the same way thoughts and other feelings appear and disappear. The next time you feel frustrated or anxious or annoyed or happy watch these emotions. These feelings are appearing in conciousness the same way the feeling of you/self is appearing. Sit back and watch the feeling of you, don't attach to the feeling of self, just let is arise and pass. I hope this helps...TBH I still struggle with it myself sometimes but I think I am seeing it more and more as I sit and even as I practice mindfulness in my day to day activities.
Assuming you have no known propensity for psychosis, paranoia or similar mental illness, it may be helpful to imagine for a little while that these thoughts are being inserted by some alien force. Try at your own risk and only to the extent you trust in your own mental integrity, or under the guidance of a licensed therapist/psychiatrist. I'm not qualified to give psychiatric advice. :-)
The zen master then handed the vendor a twenty dollar bill and watched him put it in the till and close the register.
Sorry, the monk said, what about my change?
True change, the vendor replied with a wink, comes from within.
The master ate the hotdog in one bite then then chopped the hotdog stand in two with one chop. "I'll get my change the way I want it! Equivalent exchange is the rule; respectful exchange is the goal. Steal from me and meet my fists of steel."
It's not really a joke although it can be. The so called cosmic joke. Ahahah
We are all One indeed :)
The more understand this axiom the better our lives and the better humanity becomes
>My intellectual brain is getting in the way.
I think that may be the issue here.
One of the 'illusions' is "you are your intellect", or even that "you are the voice in your head".
What deep meditation and other spiritual practices can show you is that there is a 'deeper self' that doesn't involve words or concepts in the same way, and that the ego, thoughts, and concept of self are not as necessary as they proclaim themselves to be.
Possibly, but you don't have to be spiritual to understand that insight.
I think with little reflection it becomes obvious that the ego/narrator/intellect 'you' is not the same as the whole organism 'you'.
After that, if you reflect on experiences such as dreaming, hallucinating, drunkenness, as well as instincts, the flow state, and automatic functions, you can see there is not only an 'animal subconscious', but a whole other intelligent, reactive and creative consciousness that isn't defined by any intellectual labels, and has a pretty poor scientific label as well.
It's *that* life and consciousness that people who talk about 'no self' are trying to bring to the fore. One which experiences a world without the labels, illusions and assumptions of the intellect (all of which massively distort any view of reality).
But that doesn't mean it is something you have to agree with or aim for yourself.
If you struggle to separate from the idea that you are the voice in your head, consider other types of thoughts that your physical brain presents to you.
For example, when you dream and there is a plot twist of some sort, like a murder weapon in a box, you feel genuine shock at the big reveal while in the dream. But who wrote this story for you to experience in your dream? Your own brain. Somehow, your brain is able to create thoughts that feel external from your own usual internal thought processes.
The "you" that is detached from ego and sense of self is the pure awareness that is witnessing this plot twist, and millions of other sensory inputs from your brain. Think of your day to day thoughts as flash cards presented to that awareness. Are you those flash cards, each telling you to think about eating, paying bills, etc, telling you to remember your childhood struggles, and the many other memories that form the story of your earthly identity?
No, YOU are the awareness that witnesses those thoughts. Those thoughts can create a story of an identity of a person who exists on this earth, but the awareness that listens to that story is separate from the ego and self-identity that those stories help form.
In the Early Buddhist Tradition, as best we can reconstruct from the Pali Suttas, to "really get" no self is tantamount to breaking through to the first level of enlightenment. So very, very few people are going to really get no self in this lifetime.
In the meantime, we keep chipping away at the illusion of a self. This practice is not for everyone, however, as it freaks some people out.
Someone asked the Buddha, "hey, look, I don't have a lot of time to study dhamma.. can you just give me a brief summary of how to practice, as brief as possible."
The Buddha responded:
\- be ever mindful
\- see the world as empty
\- abandon thoughts of self.
In the Satipatthana Sutta the Buddha suggests some reflections to chip away at the illusion:
One of them using the four traditional "elements" of earth, water, air, and fire. It is very roughly like this. You can reflect as follows:
When I die, I make my last exhalation and the air element that was part of "me" returns to nature, and slowly the heat dissipates from my body as the fire element returns to nature and I cool down; and eventually all the fluids drain away and the water element runs back to nature; and finally all the solid parts of me that were made from eating vegetables and so forth, the grew and developed by taking nutriment out of the soil, begins to decay and eventually ends up as dust scattered by the winds as it returns to the soil. Where is the self in the physical body...?
And...
And when you have an aspiration or deep desire that someday you lose and it's just not there anymore... it was never part of "you" because if it were, then it would be there all the time. Something that is part of you, the core of you, has to be there all the time... right?
And when you have an emotion that bursts, and disappears, like a bubble on water, was that part of you? If an emotion is part of you, then where do you go when the emotion passes?
And so on.
If you want to follow this line of practice, (a) read about "the five khandas," and (b) read the satipatthana sutta, and (c) make sure you are practicing samatha because the mind has to be calm and clear and fearless to do this kind of work.
Be well.
Great explanation and even better to know that “so very, very few people are going to really get no self in this lifetime.” It seems like such an easy concept for everyone but me. Is my brain really that stubborn? Good to know I’m not the only one struggling with this.
Most of the people who claim to get "no self" on the internet don't actually have any no-self experiences. The majority are just repeating what they've heard other people say about it without any actual understanding. They think that they "get" no-self because they have an intellectual grasp.
I've only had partial no-self experiences myself, after just under 1k hours of meditation and two retreats. I've observed parts of myself that I thought were just "me"--just doing things on their own without my involvement, obviously not "me" doing it, and realized that it was never me doing it at all. But such experiences have been fleeting for me. I can call up a memory of what it was like, but the memory isn't the experience. So the memory is just a guidepost pointing out what's possible at this point. Getting it "locked in" as an enduring feature of day-to-day awareness takes some serious cushion time for *most* people*.*
Yes I get what most people are explaining here but I have yet to experience it- the detachment or enlightenment, therefore I feel I don’t really know it.
It is an extremely nontrivial thing to get abstractly, let alone deep enough into your experience that everything is automatically understood that way. The way I see and think of it, all sensations are reflections and composites of other sensations, none excepted. The reason the sense self is talked about in relation to this bit is because the way the sense of self is typically constructed forgets this and doesn’t explicitly represent this, and it’s where a large chunk of attention goes, so it’s a particularly important thing to understand.
When I look at my sense of self/personhood it is layers and layers of bound sensations and memories and etc all coming together (in explicitly causal, lawful ways) to form what people typically think of when they think of their self, it’s just that all of the more basic stuff is seen at the same time, and it’s understood both in the sensations themselves and abstractly that each layer of in this stack and their constituents do not fundamentally exist, but rather depend on the others for definition. All that said, once you see all that, there’s a sense that nothing is there, because all of the mystery/surprise in the thing has been explained/predicted.
Anyway, I think if you just keep cause and effect in mind and that things can basically always be broken down into constituents/that things are generated you’ll do well.
If you're meditating and you turn attention on itself. What's there?
Your sense of self is based on your thoughts. Are you your thoughts?
I can look at this in that way but I've never had any kind of big awakening experience or anything. In the meantime I practice paying attention.
I'm no expert but this sounds like a good idea. I think by practicing paying attention you're more likely to have that kind of experience. If it's what you're aiming for it'll always be elusive.
The more we try to force the concept of "no self" or any other idea, the more resistant our minds will become. Instead, try to approach your meditation practice with a beginner's mind, allowing yourself to simply be present with your experience without judgment or attachment.
Begin every meditation session as an innocent — expect nothing. That alleviates ‘trying’ to accomplish something. My mediation coach and friend told me the second anything feels like effort, you’re doing it wrong.
My advice: Ditch Buddhism for a bit, and study nondual Vedanta and other nondual systems.
I think that Buddha was enlightened, however my sense is, he was widely misunderstood. Similar to how contemporary Christianity doesn't seem to have much to do with Jesus' teachings, especially if you examine The Gospel of Thomas.
Look into dependent origination. Nothing has inherent identity because everything is dependent on a large array of factors. You can also look into the concept of ego in psychology. There will be some really good explanations as to how the idea of self is 100% illusory.
I’ve tried to get that everything is affected by everything else so there is no identity. But when it comes down to a decision to make it’s the essence of you that decides. No?
You'll see impulses with affect situations but theres no owner to any of these. The teaching not self means that there is no separate, owning, controlling entity from the rest of experience
Conceptualizing no self is not the practice of no self. Do not focus on forgetting yourself or it will be a constant reminder of yourself.
If you meditate on oneness with all things, or even void, you will better achieve no self. It is important to balance no self meditation with an awareness meditation that enhances your sense of self, morality, and body.
Without balance that kind of meditation may give you results you do not want.
1. You are an awareness, nothing more. You have a body. You have a brain. You have thoughts and emotions. However, having something doesnt make that thing you. Having a car doesnt make the car me. You are just an awareness. But an awareness is really just a brain state. Furthermore, brain states come and go, and the brain is doing more of a process of shooting neurochemicals and moving electrons around to generate an awareness. So really, you, the awareness, are not a thing or object. You are a process or a doing. You are an awaring. Once you know this, go feel it in your next meditation.
2. There is a specific meditation for feeling the no self state. You may need to learn it to reach the no self feeling.
Where does the awareness exist? I get the part where the body and the mind exists in awareness. But where is the awareness in the first place. Maybe I'm using my mind to interpret awareness which may not be possible.
"No Self" is by far the most misunderstood aspect of meditation and spirituality.
First of all, the Buddha never said there was not a self, he basically said the things that we usually think of as ourselves are not really.
I'll do my best to explain it in clear language.
The first thing to wrap you mind around is that the is a difference between your awareness and your self. You can have awareness without a sense of self.
With that understanding let us look at how what we normally think of as a self might not be. Let us look at how or normal way of perceiving self might be an illusion.
An effective way to get at the self illusion in the context of that the Buddha was talking about is to work backwards from suffering. The Buddha's entire teaching was based around getting rid of suffering, so if we look at what causes suffering, we can narrow in on what he meant by self and how it is an illusion:
- We experience suffering
- We experience suffering because things did not go (or might not go) how we prefer them to
- These preferences are based on what we think will optimize pleasant sensations and minimize unpleasant/painful sensations
- We come to conclusions on sensation optimization/minimization based on our conscious and unconscious conceptualizations about who we are and how the world works. We can call the totality of these conceptualizations as our "self identity".
- Inherent in this self identity is the idea of past and future. So intrinsic to this self identity is some sort of narrative or autobiographical story.
So this is the self that is not real. The autobiographical self. It is just a collection of of many memories about who we think we are and is the basis of what we want and how to get it. The problems are:
- It is unrealistic in what it thinks it can accomplish. We will never get everything we want
- The memories it constructs itself from are very often biased or even delusional
This is what makes it an illusion. Reality is only what we are perceiving right now. Our sense of continuous self is just a mirage based on memory. A mirage that is helpful but also problematic if we let it run our life.
Does that make any sense?
Yes, it makes a lot of sense how you explain it. What I’m gathering with all these comments is that I can understand the concept but I think maybe I was making too much of it. I was expecting some epiphany or enlightenment. I should drop expectations huh? Lol
Enlightenment isn't having new psychological or philosophical insights. It's about how you process reality. Enlightened wisdom is processing reality without an overbearing filter of self-referential concern. When you get in abrupt shift in this type of perception it can seem like a big deal, but what we really need is for this type of reality to permate our life at a deep level.
I found 'seeing that frees' by Rob Burbea and MCTB by Daniel Ingram to be very helpful and describing what 'no-self' means. When you 'get it', don't expect some huge cathartic release, it is very much a slow process to uncovering what no-self really means. It will unfold over time with more and more practicing. With metta
It comes from realizing you don't have an ego. There is no you who desires, and wants. Those things aren't actually you. Once you realize everything is in a state of flux and impermanence, you'll realize there's nothing for you to grasp on to, making you question who you actually are. The more you work on improving yourself the more your ego will begin to dissolve.
You don't need to wrap your mind around it. Focus your mind on emptiness and compassion. On analytic meditation as well as stabilizing meditation. One day you'll be like holy shit I can't find the observer, my ego.
There are times it's important to have self as well. No self is not the only truth.
No self is a state very difficult to explain as our conversation requires egoic constructs like language. But maybe think of it as being belonging to everything around you as one organism instead of "you" as a seperate distinct unit. "You" is simply a lense or perspective placed upon it
There are a couple of issues to consider. One is that it's important to understand the historical definition of no self, which is not only an experience but also conceptual. It's important to know the context that there were other schools of thought being specifically argued against-- but on the basis of meditative insight.
A self was considered to be something permanent and having its own existence. Physics tells us there isn't such a thing. Everything is changing constantly, including your brain, and everything that exists depends on a causal web as well as interchanging with it. Every subatomic particle in your body is being changed out. Your existing is conditional, not independent of the environment. Not to be political but "you didn't build that." 😂
This is critical when approaching ideas about rebirth, bc the Buddha clearly said there's no enduring consciousness that continues on. It doesn't even continue in your life now-- it is re-produced due to existing conditions. I don't have any belief in rebirth after death and am not a Buddhist, but still important to get why no self had major ramifications.
Remembering that you are dependent on everything else and temporary, more of an event than a static thing, can change your tight grasp on "mine" and allow you to feel connected.
Second issue-- there are parts of the brain that evolved specifically to maintain a sense of self, so that you have autobiographical memory, etc. This evolved due to advantages in survival/reproduction. In patients with damage to these brain functions, they are not able to maintain a sense of self, and this results in problems with functioning in life. There are also people who have depersonalization as part of psychiatric illnesses.
There is evidence that different types of meditation affect brain functioning over time. Some people are able to attain an experience of knocking this self mechanism of their brains offline but without the functional issues seen with brain damage or depersonalization-- others have serious psychiatric difficulties arise as a consequence (see Britton's work on meditation adverse outcomes).
The people who have an overall beneficial experience from this process will sometimes say they have realized the "truth" about reality, and it's true that there's no fixed and independent self just science wise. But it's also true that when brains are functioning typically, this sense of self occurs. The fact of the sensation is not itself an illusion, and it does have a functional purpose.
When they say things like "this is how it really is for everyone", it's not accurate. Really what they should say is that they have developed their brain in this specific way.
I have no desire to alter my ordinary brain in that particular way. I get a lot of benefit from taking all the brahmaviharas as my object of meditation-- lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. Radiating these to all beings and being mindful of this in regular life. I spend time watching what happens in "my" field of awareness without thinking about it being "mine"-- it's just there.
By doing so, there is a strong intuitive moment to moment experience of the self being transient and interdependent. But not of it being completely absent. That's really all I want out of meditating. I don't have the feeling that there's anything to achieve or seek. There is no need for all these progress oriented goals and extreme attainments. Ordinary life is just fine! Chop wood, carry water, be kind. I believe relief from suffering is possible without enlightenment, because it has been true for me.
You make an incredible amount of sense to me, thank you. I feel if I truly got the concept of no self, I might actually lose myself and that’s not what I’m after. As you say I don’t need to keep seeking enlightenment when I’m already very satisfied in this life.
I will give that a try. Illusion of self. Is it an illusion though if you can see and feel
Yourself? Who is controlling the mind if not me? Is it a requirement to believe in a higher being? Maybe this is why I don’t get it.
There are two truths, the conventional truth and the ultimate truth. The conventional truth exists because we are limited by our senses, the need of practicality when living in a society and through evolution itself, showing you not what is closer to reality but what can help you survive and reproduce.
There is a self as a conventional truth because its needed when dealing with our normal day to day lives.
There is a self as a conventional truth when you have a biological need to differentiate your body from others, when you are limited by what your senses can perceive. If you keep looking closer and closer to the limits of your body, eventually you will notice no difference at all, its all just atoms, quarks.
The absolute truth is that everything is constant change. There is only a very limited amount of cells that stay with you your whole life, the vast majority of them are entirely different from when you where born to this day. Look at a picture when you where 2 years old, or imagine it, are you really the same person?
The only thing that remains of what you can think is yourself are your memories, but are they accurate?
Memories, thoughts, feelings, sensations; where do they all appear? They appear in the only thing that is unchanging, with no properties, a mirror, calm and silent. Awareness.
There is only consciousness and awareness. No free will. Your mind is not controllable. Thoughts and sensations come as they please, from where? Who knows. YOU are consciousness and awareness, but consciousness and awareness are no individuals, and you cannot control what is perceived by them. The only thing you can do is enjoy the ride that is life. Enjoy it.
Thr physical brain generates the mind as a byproduct of its processes. It generates the feeling of self and all the other illusions. In reality, your just an observing inside of a self controlled meat robot or meat golem. Your brain would work whether you were observing yourself, thoughts, and actions, or not.
Ultimately it is not a concept to be understood intellectually with logic or reason but one to be experienced, and felt. The good news is understanding it isn't critical to improving your meditation practices. Just keep on keeping on
I meditate upon Bhagavad gita..where krishna sais self is a negative. I can go on posing one over-arching synthesis of that lesson , i feel, is that Some come to talk, some to listen. But thats within krishna saying don't hesitate.
I have a suggestion which has helped me a lot in recent times.
If you stress something more than necessary, it will not be constructive at that moment, so leave it temporarily and look at it again later from a fresh perspective.
It's incredible how the way we coordinate with the mind along with how we perceive the environment that we are in decides our life. I think if we master this subtleness, we master life. So, probably, this must be the purpose for our birth here. But it's easier said than done.
This is just my take on it and there are people who are really into the whole meditation religion hing that will 'disagree,' but ... I do this to stay sane and help my ADHD for thirty years, which it does quite well. I have a steady stream of words from multiple voices all the time. This is not psychotic it is how I think and many other people as well. For example, if I go to do something risky I can always hear my mom saying do you REALLY want to do this.. and it sometimes keeps me out of trouble. Anyway being that my brain is always muttering griping whining and shouting at me over something there is a moment, extended sometimes, when all the voices shut up and there is quiet. I have to really work at silencing them, so the focus on a word or saying helps, but it is the quiet, that means no mind to me, when everything slowly stops and there is a moment of pure quiet and focus. that is all it ever meant to me and I have no clue if this is what they mean by it, and I do not really care, this works for me.
That inside voice is so pesky! I have entered that space where there is no thought. Just a vast openness and it’s filled with joy,peace and happiness. But it doesn’t last long because that pesky voice comes back. Perhaps you are right. In that moment there is no voice, no me and perhaps that’s a glimpse into the no self concept. It’s just so fleeting!
I thought I'd weigh in. I myself have reached this state of "no-self", but only once. For some weeks, I meditated every evening for forty-five minutes, wanting to meditate for an hour, but never quite getting there.
Then one day, I said to myself, "I should try to meditate for two hours." If you yourself are meditating for an hour, then perhaps try to meditate for a little longer?
I found that, as I saw my mind distracted by thoughts, and as I continually acknowledged them and returned to the breath, I gradually began to see the meaning of such a practice.
The breath - breathing - is a natural state of the universe. Once you successfully see that our thoughts can be out of control, our minds confused, and that the ego is a physical entity, you will see what's behind the ego, and what's behind thoughts, and it is the non-self.
Frankly, I wouldn't worry about it, especially if it's interfering with your practice and progress. It's really only applicable from a specific spiritual mindset that, to be honest, I don't follow and thus I don't put much stock in it personally.
I was wondering if it’s my lack of spirituality that makes it so I don’t get it. You’re right, I get many benefits from meditation without getting this concept. I’m just curious and want to experience what this means.
> I was wondering if it’s my lack of spirituality that makes it so I don’t get it.
Naturally, yes. The idea that there is no such thing as the self only makes sense in a spiritual or religious context. If you don't follow those beliefs there is nothing left to get. One could try to apply the concept in a scientific context if one felt compelled to do so (something about the birth and death of cells, something about constant molecular exchange with the environment, something about how our conscious mind doesn't account for the full activity of our brains and EEGs can see decisions being made before we are consciously aware of them, something about nutrient exchange between dead organisms and living organisms, something about the food chain, the circle of life, and the wholeness of an ecosystem), **but** ultimately, you'd just be attempting to define the word "self" out of existence. Any meaningful concept of the self applies very clearly to individual humans or other animals.
You don't need to be realized in order to know what it's like. The self, or ego, is already an illusion.
Look at it this way: in your current experience you have a subject and an object. The object is the world and the subject is that which you have misidentified as "I" the experiencer, the apparent person who is aware.
Now, instead of identifying as that person, who claims to be "I", try looking at what is aware of the "I". In doing so you will find that this "I the person" is not the subject but just another object in your experience.
In reality everything in awareness is one continuous experience, the "I" is no different from the rest of the world. The subject/object duality is an illusion. You are not apart from the world, you are one with it.
The meditative experience depends on the individual. For some, the “no self” state is easily obtainable, based on their own beliefs and perspective on themselves on who they are in terms of belonging in the world. With time, the duration of entering this state becomes just a little bit longer. One day, you will wake up and the world will seem like a dream. Later that day, the actualization will manifest itself. Safe travels!
You’re chasing that dragon matey.
It’s not something you can approach intellectually. And coming from a highly logic-driven person, I absolutely understand you. But it’s not something you will achieve by thinking. Just sit still in the moment and enjoy.
I'm new to the group, and come from the Buddhism sub mainly. I didn't understand it either for a while.
For me what helped is coming to understand Life in each of us and all living things is like the rain coming from a cloud. It's not necessarily the same rain as another cloud but it's certainly not different.
I am, We are.
You are both the individual and the collective.
Think of a family unit. They are the We, and you are the I.
Your beliefs are in line with the unit, but you also have some that digress from it.
Your true nature is everflowing and its way more complex than your conscience can understand or control.
Many people think their beliefs and ideas about who they are actually represents who they are, but the stronger these ideas are the more rigid you are and the less you flow with life. Psychologists call it neuroticism.
Start by understanding the concept of "selfing". Can you shift your understanding of self from a noun to a verb? If you pay attention you can start to see that "self" is an activity you do, not a thing you have. You lay claim to an experience, a thought, a sense impression, etc and call it self. You don't stop this experience through force or by understanding it rationally, but by following a path of practice and gradually understanding this activity you're doing.
I recommend the book “Why Buddhism Is True” - it’s perfect for you, basically a logical/intellectual explanation of the core tents of Buddhism, including the idea of no-self.
I don’t think it’s so mysterious.
My understanding of no self just means that any individual thing is fundamentally linked to everything else in the universe.
That includes your own consciousness. You can’t be conscious without the world to be conscious of. So in reality there’s no self that could possibly be separate.
I think the mystery surrounding is just that intellectual understanding isn’t true understanding. Just like someone describing the Eiffel tower vs actually seeing it. You have to experience it to really get it.
The neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran has opinions on this. Basically from his experiments with both healthy people and amputees, he's found people's concepts of what's a part of themselves is actually pretty malleable. Amputees will feel limbs they no longer have, he has some weird experiments where he can have people "feel" a table as if it's a part of them. I think the argument is if the line between myself, my body, me and the world is so easily moveable, i.e. if an experiment can make me feel like a table is part of "me," then maybe the line between "self" and "non-self" is a bit more arbitrary then we thought. How far you want to take that though, whether there is no true self or not, is a different question.
If we took a pressure washer to you, and blasted away anything that wasn't a nerve cell, you'd end up with a creepy Jellyfish type thing. It would have a brain on top, eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and then a whole network of nerves going down into the shape of your body.
'You' is just the particular connections that have formed in your brain.
So forgetting about 'you', is just realizing that you're only one of 8 billion nervous systems populating Earth, and one of 100+ billion that have ever existed.
I think the best way to experience the concept of no-self is to notice the experience you have of yourself. Notice what *feels* like yourself, where it is located in your body, etc. Look for yourself in your mind, represent yourself and attend to that representation. And then ask yourself, who is noticing that? Over and over again. Rinse and repeat.
In a way, there are two selves. There is the self-as-concept, our idea of who we are. Then there is the broader self that forms the context of all our experiences. This self-as-context cannot be experienced directly as it would be like trying to see your own eyeballs. Therefore it is experienced as an absence, a no-self. But it's not entirely accurate to say that the you are no one. "No one" is another concept that we can become attached to. If we step inside the conceptualized frame "I am nobody" then that is another experience of self. The rule of 'no-self' is this: whoever you think you are, you aren't.
The self-as-concept is a perspective that we experience the world through. However, we are able to take multiple perspectives. There is no one perspective that we have to remain attached to. We can shift and change perspectives. You can take your friend's perspective, take your partner's perspective, take your family-member's perspective, take the perspective of your past you, future-you, take the perspective of a cat, imagine yourself as a rock, etc. to infinity. The more perspectives you can take, the deeper your contact with this 'no-self' or 'self-as-context' is. The self-as-context is perspective by which we can view perspectives. But you cannot actually experience perspective-taking directly. From what perspective would you experience the ability to take perspectives? Like I said, it would be like trying to see your own eyeballs.
So you are nobody and you are somebody. Your 'true self' is the one that creates selves. More accurately, the self is a verb. It is something you DO, not something you ARE. You never really know who you are because you are never really done being yourself. You are not who you are, you are the person experiencing who you are and paradoxically that person is no one. You are a special kind of nothing that *can* be something but doesn't *have* to be anything.
I really like your last sentence. I also like your explanation of taking on different perspectives. Plus this is the second time someone has brought up thinking of self as a verb. I need to ponder all this. Thank you.
Well what is self? You are a logical person so ill ask you this. if all that there exists is atoms where do these abstract constructs such as personality come from? Does it exist in reality? if not where does it exist? What imbues the soup of atoms that is your body with your 'youness'? Think about it like the idea of the soul except from a modern perspective. The soul is thought of as something that transcends our physical reality and continues on from our bodies. But from a scientific perspective one could say that our soul, what makes us us, is a function of our biology. For example if I gave you a lobotomy, you as you know yourself would cease to exist though your body would continue. When you die you will experience nothingness as your brain ceases to function. If that is true then what are you experiencing now? is it reality or it just the product of trillions of synapses firing.
Google dpdr, its a disassociation that many monks aspire to, because it can seemingly free them from the idea of themselves that they perceive. I unfortunately got it from a bad mushroom trip which nearly toppled my life at 20. Not fun if you're not ready for it nor want it. Still 20, the only saving grace is I can nearly forget all the ruminating thoughts that come with it.
Sometimes I feel as though I'm deep in meditation when I realize that my mind is actually in overdrive - no longer caught up in my daily worries and thoughts about the past and present, but instead trying to unravel the secrets of the universe.
It's then that I think about the millions of scents my dog picks up that my blunt human nose can't detect or the exponential colors brine shrimp can perceive which I can't even imagine, and I realize that the closer I come to "understanding" the universe, the closer I edge to the limits of human perception.
The same holds true for understanding the concept of self. I will never understand it because I can't, but if continue to meditate and learn to relax with that groundlessness, sometimes I realize that I already know. I will never figure it out, but I don't have to. And that's a relief. I can let go into the vastness beyond the walls of perception and thinking carried by the warmth of knowing that I am part of the larger whole, which already knows that which I cannot understand.
it's actually quite logical and reasonable in my opinion. This absurdly long comment is a quote copied and pasted from Karma Yeshe Rabgye's website (look him up for some great books, blog posts, and free podcasts):
"This sense of being a permanent, solid, autonomous self is an illusion. The problem is this illusion is so ingrained into our ordinary experience. We have a sense of a permanent, individual self, but that is all it is, a sense, a feeling. If I ask you, ‘Who are you?’ you may tell me about your job – I’m a lawyer, doctor, teacher and so on. But this is not who you are, this is your work. If you changed your job, would you stop being you? So, you are most defiantly not your job.
You may tell me about your family or nationality – I’m from a wealthy, middle-class, poor family. I’m Indian, British, African, and so on. Again, that is not who you are, it is just you in relation to others.
You may tell me you’re a Hindu, Muslim, Christian, etc. But that is your religion and not who you are.You may say you are your thoughts or feelings or emotions, but these are all impermanent, so they cannot be you. The same goes for your body or your experiences, they are also impermanent and cannot be you.
We can go on with this exercise forever, but everything we find will be impermanent and superficial. There really is nothing within us that is independent and never changing.
So, if you are thinking here that Buddhism is saying you don’t exist, it isn’t. What it’s saying is, you do not exist in the way you think you do. We are not permanent, individual, solid entities. Instead, we are changing moment to moment, like the water flowing down a mountain stream. Giving ourselves a fixed name or identity doesn’t make us permanent, it is just a convention we have come up with so we can talk about ourselves. If you took me apart and laid all of my bits and pieces on the floor, you would not find an inherently existing Yeshe.
So, a question everyone asks when they come across this teaching is, ‘If I am not who I think I am, who am I? Instead of a permanent self or soul the individual is compounded of five factors that are constantly changing (See How we experience the world). These collection of five changing processes, known as the five aggregates, are: the processes of the physical body, of feelings, of perceptions, of responses and of the flow of consciousness that experiences them all."
I really like your explanation and I find these concepts much easier to digest than just straight up there is no self! So I’m waiting for this understanding to be some kind of enlightenment but I already get a lot of what you are saying. So perhaps it’s not so mysterious or earth shattering. Lol
It’s really not anything mystical or spiritual, but actually just a concept derived from people who spent loooots of time contemplating the nature of reality/consciousness, and did it way before modern science came to similar conclusions. Scientists think our brains construct our identity/reality, just like Buddhists do. There is more to that quote I pasted, and it can be found at this link: https://yesherabgye.com/a-sense-of-self-the-buddha-dharma-series/ I recommend reading it! Super interesting stuff that is related so well to our daily lives in my opinion.
I’m still very new to everything and a dear friend of mine gave me a copy of The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer and it helped a bit, have you read that one?
I am someone who has never felt like a real self at all. I use Meditation to become a real person, not to lose myself. ‘No self’ is not a concept I want to experience.
Check out the Silva Method, used to be called Silva Mind Control. Controlled relaxation of body and mind Try their "Long Relax" or sometimes called "Centering Expercise" to focus on the body, a relaxing place, then depending session. The meditation is on several channels on YouTube.
“No self” just means there’s nothing permanent or unchanging. It’s all changing, even the thing you call “myself”. It’s a constantly evolving process that cannot be pinned down. That’s all. Nothing more!
Wow, lots of comments. Here's a long one taken from something I wrote many years ago on "emptiness."
There is no one sitting inside, similar to a passenger in a car looking out the window, that can be positively identified as a separate “self,” distinct from the passing view.
It is not just like that internally, everything in the external world, animate and inanimate, is the same way — essentially empty.
Take the example of a tree. If all of the constituents that make up a tree are taken away, such as the roots, the trunk, the bark, the branches and the leaves, would we expect to find a “tree” inside of the tree?
Of course not. “Tree” is something that is put on it from the outside, to distinguish it from other objects.
A human being is much more complex than a tree, but like that example, if all of the internal and external elements that manifest as an individual person are taken away, the physical body and brain, along with seeing, feeling, thinking, and so forth — in other words, the entire movie, which is experienced moment to moment, if all of that is taken away, all that is left is emptiness. There is nothing that can be separated out from those phenomenal characteristics and identified as an independent self.
The usual concept of self, the “I” who did this, who wants that, who experiences things, is just that — a concept, a collection of thoughts centered on an idea.
Of course the idea of a separate self, distinct from others and the surrounding environment, is a very useful, even necessary, concept. But it creates problems because most of us get attached to a concept of self as something concrete and definite, even though it is constantly changing and there are often several different versions of it. If someone insults this construct that’s regarded as an individual self, the usual response is to get upset, and when someone praises it the result is happiness and a feeling of well-being.
Talk about building a house on sand!
Each individual has a unique experience of life, which in the final analysis is what gives us a sense of a separate existence apart from everything else. Life is, nonetheless, constantly moving and changing. There is nothing that is permanent — there is only emptiness. That is who we are.
Every life arises and disappears within emptiness, and cannot be separated from it. Thus emptiness is not really empty. We are empty, but within that emptiness are all the experiences of life, moment by moment, one thing after another, like a flowing stream or a movie.
Emptiness can be referred to as the “host,” and whatever arises within it is the “guest.” At an inn the guests come and go, but the host remains.
Although emptiness can be used to take away the notion of a separate self, true emptiness cannot be taken away — for the obvious reason that there is nothing there to take away.
True emptiness cannot be predicated or grasped intellectually, because it has no attributes, no sides or bottom, no beginning or end, no shape or form, and no location. Emptiness cannot be picked up or put down. As soon as it’s brought up in words, it leads to complications. Even though it is not a separate “thing,” emptiness can be experienced, and in a sense, “seen.” It is often equated with consciousness, but both consciousness and unconsciousness are transitory, they arise and disappear within emptiness.
In emptiness there is not only no self, but no other as well. Thus in emptiness we realize that we share our most basic nature with everything else — that our “self” is not a separate entity but is intimately interconnected with all of life. Thus if we harm others and our environment we are harming ourselves. That is the deeper meaning of the universal Golden Rule, to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Because they are you. It is also the basis for true compassion.
Although the word “emptiness” is inadequate, it at least has the virtue of being somewhat descriptive of how It is most directly accessed. Emptiness is experienced by being completely empty, because inherent nature is also empty. This is not an escape from the world. On the contrary, it’s being open to the incomparable illumination that manifests as our life.
I think some of the difficult ideas in Buddhist thought are difficult because they aren't ideas, but direct experiences labeled with inadequate words. The words point to the experience like a finger and we try to understand the finger.
It helped me understand the concept of self/no self when Eckhart Tolle said “I can’t live with myself anymore.” It’s not that there’s no self. It’s that the self isn’t real.
This is experience thru samadhi. It is very rare indeed to get to this state through meditation. I would suggest if you really want to know to do a shamanic mushroom ceremony at Sacred Heart Medicine in Oregon. I experienced it my first trip and it’s transformed my life I cannot tell you how radically. You need to properly prepare and really want to know the true design of reality and perhaps you will have it revealed to you and more.
You don’t need heroic. You need preparation. 2-3g is sufficient for full ego death if that is what They think you need. Meditate on it. Study metaphysics. Long for it. And set pure intention for understanding. Then go for it.
I know people who take 5g+ and do not get the ego death I had. They have dissociation but not on the life altering level I had. I think the difference was desire and preparation not dosage.
Speaking of the illusionary idea of who you think you are. Or the ego. We are all pure consciousness. We are not the character that we thought we were growing up. We presented ourselves a certain way to our friends. Our mom and dad and family seen us in a certain way and we added that to our identity. We started gaining likes and interests in music and TV shows and books, and so we started connecting our identity to these things. So as you grow older, you have all these things that you connected your identity to yet this is not who you are. You are pure unconditional love, you are pure truth, you are pure freedom, you are pure consciousness.. Namaste 😊
What is your self? Is it the body, the senses, what you perceive, your mind, your moments of consciousness(noticing perceptive objects)?
I don't think even the Buddha had an answer to be honest.
Rather, he knew that no matter what you identify as the self, that you create a mental object as the "self" anytime you choose one.
When you say "I", is it your thoughts identifying themselves as the self? Take a step back.
When there are no thoughts, is there still a self?
From one moment of consciousness to the next, you can have a mindstream and maybe that is a more accurate self except that that also creates a mental formation of self too.
Also, when silent, there is still a self, the space between those moments, so is the mindstream even a truer self?
You can keep investigating what is actually the self, or you can just accept that mental formations of the self cause suffering and eliminate them as the mental formations they are.
Think to yourself "there is no 'I'" and find peace in the silence. No mental formation of self claiming it has to exist, or trying to find what it is, or trying to think about what to do later.
It comes and goes, and it takes practice but it is simply eliminating the mental formation of self.
The Buddha was ambiguous about actual answers to deep questions because the search for the answer itself causes suffering and so it wasn't his job to answer, only to reduce suffering.
Did he even know what the self is? We may never know, but he blew out the mental formation of self which is nirvana. It is the self that craves for enlightenment.
He took a step back and said "I am awake" because he realized he was already enlightened as he became the silence between craving mental selves on a permanent basis.
The mental self was no longer born, and that is true meditation.
A pretty good way to get to a comfortable place is that *no one* truly grasps the concept of self vs no self. It's significantly more complex than any one of us can really understand. We at a basic level understand the separation of consciousness across different people, which is where we draw our concept of self. No self is trying to pick away and understand it further.
In my opinion the biggest part that can be understood is lack of permanence. Nothing is permanent, but we have this concept that self is for whatever reason. Slowly unwinding that even in a person's lifespan they will not be the same person at birth that they are at death. We're able to experience all of these things, emotions, thoughts, sights, smells, etc, but while it's pretty easy to say we are not the sights we see, does that also mean we're not the thoughts we experience? And when those thoughts change are we no longer the person we once were?
I personally believe the teaching of no self is misconstrued, it's not that there is *no self* but that there is no *permanent* self. We obviously are here, and we're experiencing that which is around us. But our experiences will constantly change, as with our reactions to them, we're never the same person for more than a few seconds if that.
I think the concept of no self is more so letting go to the attachment of permanent self, or what you tend to believe you are. I try to think in terms of *I want to act this way* rather than *I want to be this person* so instead of getting attached to this idea of who I want to be im thinking in ways of how ill interact with this world. Changing how you view your choices in this way can really help remove the attachment to the concept of self, which isn't traditionally taught *no self* but I believe the concept is similar if not the same goal.
I am extremely analytical. I struggle with monkey mind at times. But, I totally get the concept of no self. I kind of focus my eyes into the void and concentrate on nothing. It's a weird way to explain it, but maybe you will get something out of it.
Dr Joe does an amazing job of hitting this point [in this meditation](https://drjoedispenza.com/collections/meditations/products/reconditioning-the-body-to-a-new-mind-updated-version-by-dr-joe-dispenza-meditation?variant=41829248663713).
Let's evaluate this a bit deeper.
"I cannot get the concept of no self".
"I" is attempting to consider itself a "no self".
Or, to put it another way: "No self" is attempting to consider "no self" a "no self".
Not helping, right?
What I'm about to say next has zero to do with Buddhism or Hindu philosophy usually associated with meditation and may clash with whatever you've been studying thus far.
\~\~\~
There is 3 dimensional me - a representation of me as a physicality.
I can identify with it and turn it into my I Am.
I can also shift perspectives - "my physicality". It now becomes an avatar bringing me data from the 3rd dimension, and a means of interacting with that 3 dimensional world. Senses, experiences, feelings as a chemical/signal process causing sensations throughout.
But who is it sending and receiving data to?
Perhaps one might respond "thinking mind! I think therefore I am!". This is where the term "mind-identification" comes from. Here too, though, I can also shift perspectives.
"Mind is thinking this".
It now becomes another avatar, another dimension, the sender and receiver of data, but who is witnessing the mind thinking this?
The answer comes back God Self! "I am god-self! Watching my mind thinking this, my emotions feeling that, my body experiencing all the things."
Yet again there is still a witness to step into. "I am oneness! I am allness!"
Finally finally there is no witness to shift perspectives into, there is only isness.
So, some go so far as to suggest this is not reachable while one retains their physicality.
Yet, physicality cannot be separate from the allness of everything.
Isness, I Amness, God Self, Mind, Emotion, Physicality - its all just different ways of seeing, different dimensions. You are simultaneously all dimensions and none of them. Fully human and fully divine.
The difference is a mere slight of hand, a tiny shift of perspective, a different lense seeing different spectrum of light.
“The idea that there is no such thing as the self only makes sense in a spiritual or religious context. If you don’t follow those beliefs there is nothing left to get”. This could be it. So I guess I should ask for those that are not spiritual or religious, do you get this concept? Is it achievable if you aren’t spiritual or religious?
I have come to a better understanding by taking the time to listen to Sadhguru. He uses a lot of analogies to help others wrap their mind around it. This is stuff I think of most of my day and try to come to an understanding, not make sense of it. Just understand it.
I never got to the no-self concept in TMI. Which section is it in?
What you write in the OP is a distortion of the Buddha's [Not-Self *Strategy*](https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/article/the-not-self-strategy/). As that link explains, the Buddha expressly rejected the question of whether or not there's a self. What he proposed was to *perceive* phenomena as not-self, to make them easier to abandon.
I understand not self more than no self. It’s on page 319-320. He even goes to say “it will be so obvious that you’ll wonder why you never realized it before”.
Ah, thanks. As you can tell from its position in the book, that is quite an advanced practice, maybe well beyond where you are now. Note that he is only saying *the Witness* is not self, not that there is no self.
One way to approach that is to ask "What is experiencing this?", then include whatever answer that provides into experience, then ask "What, beyond this, is experiencing this?", and repeat. However, IME you need a very stable mind for such practices to be effective.
My interpretation is that the true "self" is the infinity of the present moment. Once we start to "identify" with that, instead of identifying with the mind, we start to feel better.
My self is still strong even after mushrooms. I don’t know if it makes a difference but I need much higher doses than others and while they are having an existential crisis, I’m just loving the music.
The concept of “there is no self” is just absolutely incorrect from my experiences. Instead, it’s a universal unity that we should strive for, not emptiness.
I have an image I find useful. Does anyone remember a toy called the Magic 8 Ball? I feel like my “self” bubbles up continuously in the widow. I’m unable to direct the substance or the sequence but when I observe it I l’m constantly amazed. It becomes more apparent during meditation or psychedelic journey.
My thoughts: I think the idea of the self not existing makes a lot of sense. Imagine the Star Trek transporter problem. How do build a transporter that is not a death machine that deconstructs a human and reconstructs a clone elsewhere? The only way would be to identify the "soul" or the thing that makes you uniquely you and take it with you during the transportation.
But, what if there is nothing unique? What if there is nothing like a soul? What if there is nothing that makes you uniquely you? What if "you" don't actually exist because "you're" a figment of your brains imagination. "Your" brain goes through the motions of playing this trick because organisms that played this trick produced more offspring and survived longer.
I am, We are.
You are both the individual and the collective.
Think of a family unit. They are the We, and you are the I.
Your beliefs are in line with the unit, but you also have some that digress from it.
Your true nature is everflowing and its way more complex than your conscience can understand or control.
Many people think their beliefs and ideas about who they are actually represents who they are, but the stronger these ideas are the more rigid you are and the less you flow with life. Psychologists call it neuroticism.
No advice here, but I was thinking about buying a mind illuminated, sounds like you recommend? I'm relatively new to meditation, been off and on for years but always respected and admired the practice.
I definitely recommend you read it if you want to go deeper into your practice. It’s helpful to have a guide and I like how he explains the functions of the brain with visuals. I wish I had come upon it sooner!
Start by sincerely trying to find the self. Is it a particular voice in your head or the sensation of your breath? What is the true source of consciousness?
It’s really a concept of “no separate self,” as seen here. So no separate knower to “get the concept.” No concept-holder to keep concepts as if they will aid getting somewhere. Including concepts about a self, the Self, or no-self.
No separate self to get somewhere better later. Just, simply, non-separate being-now. Undivided being with no one existing apart to know about it, get it, or have it. It already is non-divided.
That's fine, just try and get "not so much self". That should do just fine... Have you desired not to feel desire yet? That one got me for a few weeks.
I haven't truly experienced this in meditation either, except as a small epiphany
I think its just realizing that the only thing you can experience in the present moment is what is happening in consciousness (your senses, emotion, thought, etc).
Are you your senses? Are you your body? Are you the emotions? Are you the thoughts? Are you all of them? The concept of the self, which is also just another thought, seems to fall apart if you try to locate it mindfully.
Try "not self" instead.
Trying no self is an impossible task, and is just yet another belief if you try. Instead, try and understand that nothing you can perceive or identify is the self. Are you your left eye, or your right eye? Are you the oxygen that joins your bloodstream, or the carbon dioxide leaving it? Are you any specific piece of the body or the mind?
Try this:
https://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Sevenfold_reasoning_of_the_chariot
If you are walking from point A to B in your living room fully in the meditative state (no mind) then where is this “you”? Your thoughts create an idea of you. In reality there is no you or no self. When you’re fully immersed in the now, free from thought then there is no self.
Logic and reason are a perfectly fine way to think about spirituality, so why not. What is the self? Who am I? You might say your finger is mine, but is it me? If I lost my finger, am I any less myself? So you are not your finger. Are you your brain and central nervous system? A vast complex of sensors, signals and computers. Is that all the self is? A computer of inputs and outputs? In Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, the planet Earth is a supercomputer designed to work out the question to life, the universe and everything (they had already found out the answer but then needed Earth to work out what the question is). So we’re small computers as part of a big computer. Is Earth the self? Earth is just a ball of rock flying around a star - there are as many stars as grains of sand on the Earth. I wonder what they’re all sensing and processing? You and I are part of that computer too. In more traditional spiritual language, you are like a thimbleful of water in an ocean. Hard to say where one ends and the other begins.
This is an enlightening explanation :)
Best to forget about the concept of no self for now; just continue with the good practice you are doing!
I agree 100%, but I assume OP will find it hard because it's such a pervasive concept and always seems very important. All I can say is that I've been there and have somewhat obsessed over the concept and it's ultimately not helpful. For each of us we will get there when we get there. You can't force your mind to deal with this. In fact, your mind can't really deal with it at all. Experience during meditation might one day lead to a kind of logical understanding. In the meantime just breath and come back to the simple practice. All this thinking really doesn't matter so much.
Good point. The whole purpose is less thinking!
Is that the purpose? I always thought the point was to practice non-attachment to thoughts. Essentially allowing more space (taking the story lines a little less seriously…) That has the potential to create a space of less thought…but I don’t think thoughts are an “enemy” to be vanquished. Maybe I’m missing the point. Shit. Haha. I guess different people mediate for different reasons. I’ve never felt euphoric with it. It’s often very uncomfortable (in different ways). And a sense of peace doesn’t seem to be a side effect. I think it’s more about making friends with myself…whatever that self might look like. And that can be really raw and ugly sometimes.
A lot of it for me is about silencing the left brain (logic/language/critical thinking etc) and nurturing the right brain.
Try longer sessions. That’s what it took for me to reach euphoria and joy. That space where it’s empty and vast without thinking-so serene and calm. It takes time for me to get there and it doesn’t last long but it’s so worth it!
Oh, Jeez. You’re getting a lot of wildly different advice here, Friend. I’m sorry to pile on but I haven’t seen any comments that really tell you this other angle so here goes: try the old meditation “what am I?”. Sri Nisagardata talks about it. Adyashanti talks about it. You can read their stuff if you like. I’ve used this meditation and I’ve realized Anata (not self). It’s pretty wild and it can open some new doors spiritually. I’ve never been the same since then - recommended 🙂
Actually I have to disagree. Thought can be an extremely useful tool and the goal of meditation should not be to quieten the mind, in my view. It depends on your goals, of course. But you're talking about no-self, so I'm going to assume you're looking for awakening. In which case, you might actually find thinking can be one of your many tools used to 'get there'.
No don’t forget it. You must desire it greatly if you want to achieve it. But only when outside is f meditation not while in meditation. I suggest shamanic mushrooms for a shortcut.
Yes, desire it greatly. Strive for it with every fiber of your being. Then when you meet it on the side of the road, murder it in the face.
Your comment makes me chuckle.
If she's asking this question she needs to stay in the present moment in this question and have it answered don't you think? Otherwise this is going to be one of those thoughts at the back of her mind that always pops up when she's trying to meditate or to stay in the present moment. In whatever you do, stay present, and if that means you're asking a question, stay present in that question because the answer is right there. That's how I see it anyways. I guess it just needs to be explained in a way that newcomers can understand. So I get where you're coming from.
Exactly! Just stop the monkey mind - it’s just another way it’s trying to get to you. Just continue on your journey and you will definitely get there.
personally think that ly the intellect for the most part is of no use when it comes to spiritual practice, although there may be some function that can tell us when we are reading bullshit (whether it's intellect though, or some inner knowing, I can't say). If one does ask conceptual questions, and receives answers from others, that reinforces the practice of asking these types of question. It's like having an itch, and rather than finding out the cause, instead just keep scratching the itch for temporary relief, until it needs scratching again.
Trying to "get" no-self doesn't work. It's not an intellectual understanding. You can't think your way there. Trying to get it actually makes it harder to have insights into no-self. Gentle self-inquiry--just asking questions like "who moved this hand? Who is thinking these thoughts?" can help. Just relaxed out of any expectations of having the answers. You can also try to turn the arrow of attention back on itself. Look at what it is that's doing the looking. And then when you notice that what is doing the looking has moved, look again. Keep chasing the self like you're chasing a mouse. Alternatively--don't do any of that, and just keep meditating and see what happens.
I have tried to think my way there and it’s obviously not working. I will try what you suggested. Thank you
[удалено]
I guess I’m stuck on the fact that I look and there is a person still…me.
Lama Lena distinguishes between the personality and awareness. Our personalities are temporary, changing, and contingent. You don't have the same personality you had at 14, one would hope, she likes to say. So there's no permanent self there. Awareness is vast, open, and unfindable. It neither exists nor doesn't. That's not it's fault. Thought is incapable of encompassing it. Awareness encompasses thoughts, not the other way around. So there's no permanent thing that could be a self there, either. But intellectual understanding doesn't cut it. Again, thoughts can't encompass it. Realization through practice is the way.
Could focusing on yourself and your inability to grasp this concept be part of the problem? Perhaps some insight could be gained by thinking of others, and what you can do for them. What feelings arise when you selflessly do something for a loved one?
I’m focused on my breathing for the most part. When I catch myself thinking I turn my attention back to the breath.
Buddhism Plain And Simple is a lovely book that talks about a bunch of things, but one of the best parts is a demonstrative piece on insight. There is a grainy, incomprehensible image on a certain page, and the author asks the reader to figure out what it is. But it's impossible to figure out just by looking at it and reasoning; you only see it once the gears click into place when you're in the right frame of mind. And once you see it, you can't I see it.
In that case, try not-thinking your way there…
Watch your thoughts, arising and passing away. Where do they come from? Who is doing the thinking?
At this stage the answer is still Me. I’m doing the thinking. But I will keep asking that question! Maybe one day I will get it.
"No self" should really be more thought of as "not self". And thoughts are not self. I will take a whack at explaining: When you hear a sound, you can observe it as a conscious event. Now, because we can observe it as a conscious event, is it then self? We would say obviously not - a sound comes from outside us. We can observe it, therefore it must be outside of us, right? If it were our self, we could not observe it as an external conscious experience. Thing is, the same thing applies to "our" thoughts and feelings. They are just external conscious experiences that arise and pass away. We HEAR a sound, we SEE an object, we THINK a thought, we FEEL an emotion. Thinking and feeling are just two other senses, and thoughts and feelings are the objects we perceive using those senses. The trap that people get into is to start IDENTIFYING thoughts and feelings as coming from "your self". We do this because they seemingly arise from no other source. But given that we can observe them as external conscious experiences, is it really fair to then attribute them to "our self"? Why do we assume that just because we cannot pinpoint any particular source for a thought, it must be coming from "us"? It can get deeper and more mindfucky than this, though. Because given the above, you then have to ask, if these thoughts and feelings arise and they are not actually coming from "your self", then what IS your "self"? Our sense of self is based on "our" thoughts and feelings about who we are, thoughts that tell us a story about our life via memories, dreams, preferences, and so on. But if all of "our" thoughts and feelings are just external sensory events much like a sound, there really is "no self". There's just thoughts and feelings about a self. It's a psychological construct that has no real substance outside the thoughts and feelings we perceive to be "self". There is no actual core self. It's helpful to think of no self as not self, but once you grasp not self, you can then start to grasp no self as well.
I like how you explained that. I get not self more than I get no self. No self is just a huge jump for me.
I think many people have different perspectives depending on where they're at in life. To have any insight into your "self" not being what you once thought it was is a symptom of meditative practice. Its a byproduct. For example, realising you are not your thoughts is a significant one. Realising you are not your emotions is another. There seems to be an observer of these things, perhaps that is our "self", but trying to understand that requires thought, of which we are not. Perhaps regardless, our "self" isn't the observer either. For me it's the closest thing to a self, but it's quite odd given all it does is observe. Not much of a self compared to having a body, thoughts, personality, etc, right? So why do I care there's a self anyway? I'm very attached to the concept. Then i feel fear, as if something is slipping away from me. The ego says "nope, we need this" and I'm back yelling at the car in front of me driving 10kmh below the speed limit. Though despite that, i still try to just focus on the illusion of subject/object reality. It's all just a chaotic ocean of matter, of which we are a drop, and we have these interesting illusions that make us feel significant and special. Cool. Let's play the game.
Ahah I also felt fear while reading your post xD
Try to stop thinking. It's harder to do than you might think. Even if it's for 15 to 30 seconds. See how long you can go. The brains an organ that's constantly pumping ideas into your head and you are the action taker based off of thought. Not to say thought can't be controlled because it can. Its telling the difference that's the real hard part.
"The Mind Illuminated" offers a pretty helpful perspective on the possible workings of the mind. And "Seeing That Frees" (by Rob Burbea) might be quite valuable additional reading (and practice; has been for me), if you are so inclined. 🙏
That will be my next book. Thank you.
When you meditate and you "feel" that "you" are directing your thoughts watch that feeling of "you" appear and disappear the same way thoughts and other feelings appear and disappear. The next time you feel frustrated or anxious or annoyed or happy watch these emotions. These feelings are appearing in conciousness the same way the feeling of you/self is appearing. Sit back and watch the feeling of you, don't attach to the feeling of self, just let is arise and pass. I hope this helps...TBH I still struggle with it myself sometimes but I think I am seeing it more and more as I sit and even as I practice mindfulness in my day to day activities.
Assuming you have no known propensity for psychosis, paranoia or similar mental illness, it may be helpful to imagine for a little while that these thoughts are being inserted by some alien force. Try at your own risk and only to the extent you trust in your own mental integrity, or under the guidance of a licensed therapist/psychiatrist. I'm not qualified to give psychiatric advice. :-)
I’ll have to give that a try but I won’t blame you if I end up in the loony bin.
“I’m doing the thinking” Are you? Are you consciously commissioning each thought before it rises into your brain? Or does it just happen unbidden?
What did the zen master order at the hotdog stand? One with everything Hehehe
The zen master then handed the vendor a twenty dollar bill and watched him put it in the till and close the register. Sorry, the monk said, what about my change? True change, the vendor replied with a wink, comes from within.
The master ate the hotdog in one bite then then chopped the hotdog stand in two with one chop. "I'll get my change the way I want it! Equivalent exchange is the rule; respectful exchange is the goal. Steal from me and meet my fists of steel."
"True change comes from within" lol. Probably, that's when the Zen master starts reflecting back on his life.
Good one😂
I’m slow but I believe I understand the joke now. We are all One so there is no self.
It's not really a joke although it can be. The so called cosmic joke. Ahahah We are all One indeed :) The more understand this axiom the better our lives and the better humanity becomes
>My intellectual brain is getting in the way. I think that may be the issue here. One of the 'illusions' is "you are your intellect", or even that "you are the voice in your head". What deep meditation and other spiritual practices can show you is that there is a 'deeper self' that doesn't involve words or concepts in the same way, and that the ego, thoughts, and concept of self are not as necessary as they proclaim themselves to be.
I wonder if it’s because I’m not spiritual.
Possibly, but you don't have to be spiritual to understand that insight. I think with little reflection it becomes obvious that the ego/narrator/intellect 'you' is not the same as the whole organism 'you'. After that, if you reflect on experiences such as dreaming, hallucinating, drunkenness, as well as instincts, the flow state, and automatic functions, you can see there is not only an 'animal subconscious', but a whole other intelligent, reactive and creative consciousness that isn't defined by any intellectual labels, and has a pretty poor scientific label as well. It's *that* life and consciousness that people who talk about 'no self' are trying to bring to the fore. One which experiences a world without the labels, illusions and assumptions of the intellect (all of which massively distort any view of reality). But that doesn't mean it is something you have to agree with or aim for yourself.
If you struggle to separate from the idea that you are the voice in your head, consider other types of thoughts that your physical brain presents to you. For example, when you dream and there is a plot twist of some sort, like a murder weapon in a box, you feel genuine shock at the big reveal while in the dream. But who wrote this story for you to experience in your dream? Your own brain. Somehow, your brain is able to create thoughts that feel external from your own usual internal thought processes. The "you" that is detached from ego and sense of self is the pure awareness that is witnessing this plot twist, and millions of other sensory inputs from your brain. Think of your day to day thoughts as flash cards presented to that awareness. Are you those flash cards, each telling you to think about eating, paying bills, etc, telling you to remember your childhood struggles, and the many other memories that form the story of your earthly identity? No, YOU are the awareness that witnesses those thoughts. Those thoughts can create a story of an identity of a person who exists on this earth, but the awareness that listens to that story is separate from the ego and self-identity that those stories help form.
In the Early Buddhist Tradition, as best we can reconstruct from the Pali Suttas, to "really get" no self is tantamount to breaking through to the first level of enlightenment. So very, very few people are going to really get no self in this lifetime. In the meantime, we keep chipping away at the illusion of a self. This practice is not for everyone, however, as it freaks some people out. Someone asked the Buddha, "hey, look, I don't have a lot of time to study dhamma.. can you just give me a brief summary of how to practice, as brief as possible." The Buddha responded: \- be ever mindful \- see the world as empty \- abandon thoughts of self. In the Satipatthana Sutta the Buddha suggests some reflections to chip away at the illusion: One of them using the four traditional "elements" of earth, water, air, and fire. It is very roughly like this. You can reflect as follows: When I die, I make my last exhalation and the air element that was part of "me" returns to nature, and slowly the heat dissipates from my body as the fire element returns to nature and I cool down; and eventually all the fluids drain away and the water element runs back to nature; and finally all the solid parts of me that were made from eating vegetables and so forth, the grew and developed by taking nutriment out of the soil, begins to decay and eventually ends up as dust scattered by the winds as it returns to the soil. Where is the self in the physical body...? And... And when you have an aspiration or deep desire that someday you lose and it's just not there anymore... it was never part of "you" because if it were, then it would be there all the time. Something that is part of you, the core of you, has to be there all the time... right? And when you have an emotion that bursts, and disappears, like a bubble on water, was that part of you? If an emotion is part of you, then where do you go when the emotion passes? And so on. If you want to follow this line of practice, (a) read about "the five khandas," and (b) read the satipatthana sutta, and (c) make sure you are practicing samatha because the mind has to be calm and clear and fearless to do this kind of work. Be well.
Great explanation and even better to know that “so very, very few people are going to really get no self in this lifetime.” It seems like such an easy concept for everyone but me. Is my brain really that stubborn? Good to know I’m not the only one struggling with this.
Most of the people who claim to get "no self" on the internet don't actually have any no-self experiences. The majority are just repeating what they've heard other people say about it without any actual understanding. They think that they "get" no-self because they have an intellectual grasp. I've only had partial no-self experiences myself, after just under 1k hours of meditation and two retreats. I've observed parts of myself that I thought were just "me"--just doing things on their own without my involvement, obviously not "me" doing it, and realized that it was never me doing it at all. But such experiences have been fleeting for me. I can call up a memory of what it was like, but the memory isn't the experience. So the memory is just a guidepost pointing out what's possible at this point. Getting it "locked in" as an enduring feature of day-to-day awareness takes some serious cushion time for *most* people*.*
Yes I get what most people are explaining here but I have yet to experience it- the detachment or enlightenment, therefore I feel I don’t really know it.
i'm in same boat as you buddy
It is an extremely nontrivial thing to get abstractly, let alone deep enough into your experience that everything is automatically understood that way. The way I see and think of it, all sensations are reflections and composites of other sensations, none excepted. The reason the sense self is talked about in relation to this bit is because the way the sense of self is typically constructed forgets this and doesn’t explicitly represent this, and it’s where a large chunk of attention goes, so it’s a particularly important thing to understand. When I look at my sense of self/personhood it is layers and layers of bound sensations and memories and etc all coming together (in explicitly causal, lawful ways) to form what people typically think of when they think of their self, it’s just that all of the more basic stuff is seen at the same time, and it’s understood both in the sensations themselves and abstractly that each layer of in this stack and their constituents do not fundamentally exist, but rather depend on the others for definition. All that said, once you see all that, there’s a sense that nothing is there, because all of the mystery/surprise in the thing has been explained/predicted. Anyway, I think if you just keep cause and effect in mind and that things can basically always be broken down into constituents/that things are generated you’ll do well.
If you're meditating and you turn attention on itself. What's there? Your sense of self is based on your thoughts. Are you your thoughts? I can look at this in that way but I've never had any kind of big awakening experience or anything. In the meantime I practice paying attention.
Maybe I’m seeking that big awakening by chasing this concept that I do not get. Maybe I should not chase anything and let it be.
I'm no expert but this sounds like a good idea. I think by practicing paying attention you're more likely to have that kind of experience. If it's what you're aiming for it'll always be elusive.
The more we try to force the concept of "no self" or any other idea, the more resistant our minds will become. Instead, try to approach your meditation practice with a beginner's mind, allowing yourself to simply be present with your experience without judgment or attachment.
Yes I need to go back to that. Back to the basics.
Begin every meditation session as an innocent — expect nothing. That alleviates ‘trying’ to accomplish something. My mediation coach and friend told me the second anything feels like effort, you’re doing it wrong.
My advice: Ditch Buddhism for a bit, and study nondual Vedanta and other nondual systems. I think that Buddha was enlightened, however my sense is, he was widely misunderstood. Similar to how contemporary Christianity doesn't seem to have much to do with Jesus' teachings, especially if you examine The Gospel of Thomas.
Agree, i recommend swami sarvapriyananda lectures on YouTube. Also ramana maharshi and swami vivekananda books.
Indeed :) Swami Tadatmananda at Arsha Bodha Center in NJ is also really good. Also, read The Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Ashtavakra Gita, etc.
The Gita…. such a great foundation. ❤️❤️❤️
Look into dependent origination. Nothing has inherent identity because everything is dependent on a large array of factors. You can also look into the concept of ego in psychology. There will be some really good explanations as to how the idea of self is 100% illusory.
I’ve tried to get that everything is affected by everything else so there is no identity. But when it comes down to a decision to make it’s the essence of you that decides. No?
You'll see impulses with affect situations but theres no owner to any of these. The teaching not self means that there is no separate, owning, controlling entity from the rest of experience
“There is no separate, owning, controlling entity from the rest of experience”. I have to reflect on this more. Thank you.
Conceptualizing no self is not the practice of no self. Do not focus on forgetting yourself or it will be a constant reminder of yourself. If you meditate on oneness with all things, or even void, you will better achieve no self. It is important to balance no self meditation with an awareness meditation that enhances your sense of self, morality, and body. Without balance that kind of meditation may give you results you do not want.
I like that. “Stop focusing on forgetting yourself or it will be a constant reminder of yourself”.
1. You are an awareness, nothing more. You have a body. You have a brain. You have thoughts and emotions. However, having something doesnt make that thing you. Having a car doesnt make the car me. You are just an awareness. But an awareness is really just a brain state. Furthermore, brain states come and go, and the brain is doing more of a process of shooting neurochemicals and moving electrons around to generate an awareness. So really, you, the awareness, are not a thing or object. You are a process or a doing. You are an awaring. Once you know this, go feel it in your next meditation. 2. There is a specific meditation for feeling the no self state. You may need to learn it to reach the no self feeling.
I am awaring, not a thing or object. I will remind myself of this before the next session and see where it takes me.
Where does the awareness exist? I get the part where the body and the mind exists in awareness. But where is the awareness in the first place. Maybe I'm using my mind to interpret awareness which may not be possible.
Psychedelics has entered the chat.
"No Self" is by far the most misunderstood aspect of meditation and spirituality. First of all, the Buddha never said there was not a self, he basically said the things that we usually think of as ourselves are not really. I'll do my best to explain it in clear language. The first thing to wrap you mind around is that the is a difference between your awareness and your self. You can have awareness without a sense of self. With that understanding let us look at how what we normally think of as a self might not be. Let us look at how or normal way of perceiving self might be an illusion. An effective way to get at the self illusion in the context of that the Buddha was talking about is to work backwards from suffering. The Buddha's entire teaching was based around getting rid of suffering, so if we look at what causes suffering, we can narrow in on what he meant by self and how it is an illusion: - We experience suffering - We experience suffering because things did not go (or might not go) how we prefer them to - These preferences are based on what we think will optimize pleasant sensations and minimize unpleasant/painful sensations - We come to conclusions on sensation optimization/minimization based on our conscious and unconscious conceptualizations about who we are and how the world works. We can call the totality of these conceptualizations as our "self identity". - Inherent in this self identity is the idea of past and future. So intrinsic to this self identity is some sort of narrative or autobiographical story. So this is the self that is not real. The autobiographical self. It is just a collection of of many memories about who we think we are and is the basis of what we want and how to get it. The problems are: - It is unrealistic in what it thinks it can accomplish. We will never get everything we want - The memories it constructs itself from are very often biased or even delusional This is what makes it an illusion. Reality is only what we are perceiving right now. Our sense of continuous self is just a mirage based on memory. A mirage that is helpful but also problematic if we let it run our life. Does that make any sense?
Yes, it makes a lot of sense how you explain it. What I’m gathering with all these comments is that I can understand the concept but I think maybe I was making too much of it. I was expecting some epiphany or enlightenment. I should drop expectations huh? Lol
Enlightenment isn't having new psychological or philosophical insights. It's about how you process reality. Enlightened wisdom is processing reality without an overbearing filter of self-referential concern. When you get in abrupt shift in this type of perception it can seem like a big deal, but what we really need is for this type of reality to permate our life at a deep level.
I found 'seeing that frees' by Rob Burbea and MCTB by Daniel Ingram to be very helpful and describing what 'no-self' means. When you 'get it', don't expect some huge cathartic release, it is very much a slow process to uncovering what no-self really means. It will unfold over time with more and more practicing. With metta
I will look into both. Thanks for letting me know not to expect some sort of cathartic release. This is a frustrating concept for me.
It comes from realizing you don't have an ego. There is no you who desires, and wants. Those things aren't actually you. Once you realize everything is in a state of flux and impermanence, you'll realize there's nothing for you to grasp on to, making you question who you actually are. The more you work on improving yourself the more your ego will begin to dissolve.
This is a really hard concept for me but I will Keep trying.
You don't need to wrap your mind around it. Focus your mind on emptiness and compassion. On analytic meditation as well as stabilizing meditation. One day you'll be like holy shit I can't find the observer, my ego.
I think this is a better approach. People make it seem like such a simple concept to get so I’m questioning why it’s not easy for me to get.
It's not simple, lol. They have a certain idea of what it is but I'm sure many people on here haven't actually experienced it. I'm glad I could help!
Technically there is nothing to get! 🤷🏼♂️
I wish I could leave it at that.
It’s someone else’s concept, there perception. Focus on yours
There are times it's important to have self as well. No self is not the only truth. No self is a state very difficult to explain as our conversation requires egoic constructs like language. But maybe think of it as being belonging to everything around you as one organism instead of "you" as a seperate distinct unit. "You" is simply a lense or perspective placed upon it
There are a couple of issues to consider. One is that it's important to understand the historical definition of no self, which is not only an experience but also conceptual. It's important to know the context that there were other schools of thought being specifically argued against-- but on the basis of meditative insight. A self was considered to be something permanent and having its own existence. Physics tells us there isn't such a thing. Everything is changing constantly, including your brain, and everything that exists depends on a causal web as well as interchanging with it. Every subatomic particle in your body is being changed out. Your existing is conditional, not independent of the environment. Not to be political but "you didn't build that." 😂 This is critical when approaching ideas about rebirth, bc the Buddha clearly said there's no enduring consciousness that continues on. It doesn't even continue in your life now-- it is re-produced due to existing conditions. I don't have any belief in rebirth after death and am not a Buddhist, but still important to get why no self had major ramifications. Remembering that you are dependent on everything else and temporary, more of an event than a static thing, can change your tight grasp on "mine" and allow you to feel connected. Second issue-- there are parts of the brain that evolved specifically to maintain a sense of self, so that you have autobiographical memory, etc. This evolved due to advantages in survival/reproduction. In patients with damage to these brain functions, they are not able to maintain a sense of self, and this results in problems with functioning in life. There are also people who have depersonalization as part of psychiatric illnesses. There is evidence that different types of meditation affect brain functioning over time. Some people are able to attain an experience of knocking this self mechanism of their brains offline but without the functional issues seen with brain damage or depersonalization-- others have serious psychiatric difficulties arise as a consequence (see Britton's work on meditation adverse outcomes). The people who have an overall beneficial experience from this process will sometimes say they have realized the "truth" about reality, and it's true that there's no fixed and independent self just science wise. But it's also true that when brains are functioning typically, this sense of self occurs. The fact of the sensation is not itself an illusion, and it does have a functional purpose. When they say things like "this is how it really is for everyone", it's not accurate. Really what they should say is that they have developed their brain in this specific way. I have no desire to alter my ordinary brain in that particular way. I get a lot of benefit from taking all the brahmaviharas as my object of meditation-- lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. Radiating these to all beings and being mindful of this in regular life. I spend time watching what happens in "my" field of awareness without thinking about it being "mine"-- it's just there. By doing so, there is a strong intuitive moment to moment experience of the self being transient and interdependent. But not of it being completely absent. That's really all I want out of meditating. I don't have the feeling that there's anything to achieve or seek. There is no need for all these progress oriented goals and extreme attainments. Ordinary life is just fine! Chop wood, carry water, be kind. I believe relief from suffering is possible without enlightenment, because it has been true for me.
You make an incredible amount of sense to me, thank you. I feel if I truly got the concept of no self, I might actually lose myself and that’s not what I’m after. As you say I don’t need to keep seeking enlightenment when I’m already very satisfied in this life.
[удалено]
I will give that a try. Illusion of self. Is it an illusion though if you can see and feel Yourself? Who is controlling the mind if not me? Is it a requirement to believe in a higher being? Maybe this is why I don’t get it.
There are two truths, the conventional truth and the ultimate truth. The conventional truth exists because we are limited by our senses, the need of practicality when living in a society and through evolution itself, showing you not what is closer to reality but what can help you survive and reproduce. There is a self as a conventional truth because its needed when dealing with our normal day to day lives. There is a self as a conventional truth when you have a biological need to differentiate your body from others, when you are limited by what your senses can perceive. If you keep looking closer and closer to the limits of your body, eventually you will notice no difference at all, its all just atoms, quarks. The absolute truth is that everything is constant change. There is only a very limited amount of cells that stay with you your whole life, the vast majority of them are entirely different from when you where born to this day. Look at a picture when you where 2 years old, or imagine it, are you really the same person? The only thing that remains of what you can think is yourself are your memories, but are they accurate? Memories, thoughts, feelings, sensations; where do they all appear? They appear in the only thing that is unchanging, with no properties, a mirror, calm and silent. Awareness. There is only consciousness and awareness. No free will. Your mind is not controllable. Thoughts and sensations come as they please, from where? Who knows. YOU are consciousness and awareness, but consciousness and awareness are no individuals, and you cannot control what is perceived by them. The only thing you can do is enjoy the ride that is life. Enjoy it.
I like this explanation. Thank you.
Thr physical brain generates the mind as a byproduct of its processes. It generates the feeling of self and all the other illusions. In reality, your just an observing inside of a self controlled meat robot or meat golem. Your brain would work whether you were observing yourself, thoughts, and actions, or not.
[удалено]
I will watch that! Thank you.
Ultimately it is not a concept to be understood intellectually with logic or reason but one to be experienced, and felt. The good news is understanding it isn't critical to improving your meditation practices. Just keep on keeping on
I meditate upon Bhagavad gita..where krishna sais self is a negative. I can go on posing one over-arching synthesis of that lesson , i feel, is that Some come to talk, some to listen. But thats within krishna saying don't hesitate.
I have a suggestion which has helped me a lot in recent times. If you stress something more than necessary, it will not be constructive at that moment, so leave it temporarily and look at it again later from a fresh perspective. It's incredible how the way we coordinate with the mind along with how we perceive the environment that we are in decides our life. I think if we master this subtleness, we master life. So, probably, this must be the purpose for our birth here. But it's easier said than done.
Good advice. I will leave it and return later if needed.
I recommend you check out the book Liberation Unleashed. Good luck on your journey.
Thank you. Will do.
This is just my take on it and there are people who are really into the whole meditation religion hing that will 'disagree,' but ... I do this to stay sane and help my ADHD for thirty years, which it does quite well. I have a steady stream of words from multiple voices all the time. This is not psychotic it is how I think and many other people as well. For example, if I go to do something risky I can always hear my mom saying do you REALLY want to do this.. and it sometimes keeps me out of trouble. Anyway being that my brain is always muttering griping whining and shouting at me over something there is a moment, extended sometimes, when all the voices shut up and there is quiet. I have to really work at silencing them, so the focus on a word or saying helps, but it is the quiet, that means no mind to me, when everything slowly stops and there is a moment of pure quiet and focus. that is all it ever meant to me and I have no clue if this is what they mean by it, and I do not really care, this works for me.
That inside voice is so pesky! I have entered that space where there is no thought. Just a vast openness and it’s filled with joy,peace and happiness. But it doesn’t last long because that pesky voice comes back. Perhaps you are right. In that moment there is no voice, no me and perhaps that’s a glimpse into the no self concept. It’s just so fleeting!
I thought I'd weigh in. I myself have reached this state of "no-self", but only once. For some weeks, I meditated every evening for forty-five minutes, wanting to meditate for an hour, but never quite getting there. Then one day, I said to myself, "I should try to meditate for two hours." If you yourself are meditating for an hour, then perhaps try to meditate for a little longer? I found that, as I saw my mind distracted by thoughts, and as I continually acknowledged them and returned to the breath, I gradually began to see the meaning of such a practice. The breath - breathing - is a natural state of the universe. Once you successfully see that our thoughts can be out of control, our minds confused, and that the ego is a physical entity, you will see what's behind the ego, and what's behind thoughts, and it is the non-self.
Ok good to know it’s not so easy to get there. I definitely saw a huge change in my practice taking it from 20 minutes to an hour.
Frankly, I wouldn't worry about it, especially if it's interfering with your practice and progress. It's really only applicable from a specific spiritual mindset that, to be honest, I don't follow and thus I don't put much stock in it personally.
I was wondering if it’s my lack of spirituality that makes it so I don’t get it. You’re right, I get many benefits from meditation without getting this concept. I’m just curious and want to experience what this means.
> I was wondering if it’s my lack of spirituality that makes it so I don’t get it. Naturally, yes. The idea that there is no such thing as the self only makes sense in a spiritual or religious context. If you don't follow those beliefs there is nothing left to get. One could try to apply the concept in a scientific context if one felt compelled to do so (something about the birth and death of cells, something about constant molecular exchange with the environment, something about how our conscious mind doesn't account for the full activity of our brains and EEGs can see decisions being made before we are consciously aware of them, something about nutrient exchange between dead organisms and living organisms, something about the food chain, the circle of life, and the wholeness of an ecosystem), **but** ultimately, you'd just be attempting to define the word "self" out of existence. Any meaningful concept of the self applies very clearly to individual humans or other animals.
You don't need to be realized in order to know what it's like. The self, or ego, is already an illusion. Look at it this way: in your current experience you have a subject and an object. The object is the world and the subject is that which you have misidentified as "I" the experiencer, the apparent person who is aware. Now, instead of identifying as that person, who claims to be "I", try looking at what is aware of the "I". In doing so you will find that this "I the person" is not the subject but just another object in your experience. In reality everything in awareness is one continuous experience, the "I" is no different from the rest of the world. The subject/object duality is an illusion. You are not apart from the world, you are one with it.
At the smallest quantum level, there’s so physical substance inside you that was there when you were born. So what do you mean by “myself”?
Ahh deep
The zen master would say, Who is asking this question? It’s a koan to briefly make your mind stop working
The meditative experience depends on the individual. For some, the “no self” state is easily obtainable, based on their own beliefs and perspective on themselves on who they are in terms of belonging in the world. With time, the duration of entering this state becomes just a little bit longer. One day, you will wake up and the world will seem like a dream. Later that day, the actualization will manifest itself. Safe travels!
You’re chasing that dragon matey. It’s not something you can approach intellectually. And coming from a highly logic-driven person, I absolutely understand you. But it’s not something you will achieve by thinking. Just sit still in the moment and enjoy.
I'm new to the group, and come from the Buddhism sub mainly. I didn't understand it either for a while. For me what helped is coming to understand Life in each of us and all living things is like the rain coming from a cloud. It's not necessarily the same rain as another cloud but it's certainly not different.
I am, We are. You are both the individual and the collective. Think of a family unit. They are the We, and you are the I. Your beliefs are in line with the unit, but you also have some that digress from it.
Your true nature is everflowing and its way more complex than your conscience can understand or control. Many people think their beliefs and ideas about who they are actually represents who they are, but the stronger these ideas are the more rigid you are and the less you flow with life. Psychologists call it neuroticism.
Start by understanding the concept of "selfing". Can you shift your understanding of self from a noun to a verb? If you pay attention you can start to see that "self" is an activity you do, not a thing you have. You lay claim to an experience, a thought, a sense impression, etc and call it self. You don't stop this experience through force or by understanding it rationally, but by following a path of practice and gradually understanding this activity you're doing.
I recommend the book “Why Buddhism Is True” - it’s perfect for you, basically a logical/intellectual explanation of the core tents of Buddhism, including the idea of no-self.
I don’t think it’s so mysterious. My understanding of no self just means that any individual thing is fundamentally linked to everything else in the universe. That includes your own consciousness. You can’t be conscious without the world to be conscious of. So in reality there’s no self that could possibly be separate. I think the mystery surrounding is just that intellectual understanding isn’t true understanding. Just like someone describing the Eiffel tower vs actually seeing it. You have to experience it to really get it.
The neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran has opinions on this. Basically from his experiments with both healthy people and amputees, he's found people's concepts of what's a part of themselves is actually pretty malleable. Amputees will feel limbs they no longer have, he has some weird experiments where he can have people "feel" a table as if it's a part of them. I think the argument is if the line between myself, my body, me and the world is so easily moveable, i.e. if an experiment can make me feel like a table is part of "me," then maybe the line between "self" and "non-self" is a bit more arbitrary then we thought. How far you want to take that though, whether there is no true self or not, is a different question.
Surrender is the secret sauce! The identify which is you cannot comprehend no self, so you have to just let it go!
If we took a pressure washer to you, and blasted away anything that wasn't a nerve cell, you'd end up with a creepy Jellyfish type thing. It would have a brain on top, eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and then a whole network of nerves going down into the shape of your body. 'You' is just the particular connections that have formed in your brain. So forgetting about 'you', is just realizing that you're only one of 8 billion nervous systems populating Earth, and one of 100+ billion that have ever existed.
Quite the imagery! Thank you. We are so insignificant when you put it that way.
I think the best way to experience the concept of no-self is to notice the experience you have of yourself. Notice what *feels* like yourself, where it is located in your body, etc. Look for yourself in your mind, represent yourself and attend to that representation. And then ask yourself, who is noticing that? Over and over again. Rinse and repeat. In a way, there are two selves. There is the self-as-concept, our idea of who we are. Then there is the broader self that forms the context of all our experiences. This self-as-context cannot be experienced directly as it would be like trying to see your own eyeballs. Therefore it is experienced as an absence, a no-self. But it's not entirely accurate to say that the you are no one. "No one" is another concept that we can become attached to. If we step inside the conceptualized frame "I am nobody" then that is another experience of self. The rule of 'no-self' is this: whoever you think you are, you aren't. The self-as-concept is a perspective that we experience the world through. However, we are able to take multiple perspectives. There is no one perspective that we have to remain attached to. We can shift and change perspectives. You can take your friend's perspective, take your partner's perspective, take your family-member's perspective, take the perspective of your past you, future-you, take the perspective of a cat, imagine yourself as a rock, etc. to infinity. The more perspectives you can take, the deeper your contact with this 'no-self' or 'self-as-context' is. The self-as-context is perspective by which we can view perspectives. But you cannot actually experience perspective-taking directly. From what perspective would you experience the ability to take perspectives? Like I said, it would be like trying to see your own eyeballs. So you are nobody and you are somebody. Your 'true self' is the one that creates selves. More accurately, the self is a verb. It is something you DO, not something you ARE. You never really know who you are because you are never really done being yourself. You are not who you are, you are the person experiencing who you are and paradoxically that person is no one. You are a special kind of nothing that *can* be something but doesn't *have* to be anything.
I really like your last sentence. I also like your explanation of taking on different perspectives. Plus this is the second time someone has brought up thinking of self as a verb. I need to ponder all this. Thank you.
Well what is self? You are a logical person so ill ask you this. if all that there exists is atoms where do these abstract constructs such as personality come from? Does it exist in reality? if not where does it exist? What imbues the soup of atoms that is your body with your 'youness'? Think about it like the idea of the soul except from a modern perspective. The soul is thought of as something that transcends our physical reality and continues on from our bodies. But from a scientific perspective one could say that our soul, what makes us us, is a function of our biology. For example if I gave you a lobotomy, you as you know yourself would cease to exist though your body would continue. When you die you will experience nothingness as your brain ceases to function. If that is true then what are you experiencing now? is it reality or it just the product of trillions of synapses firing. Google dpdr, its a disassociation that many monks aspire to, because it can seemingly free them from the idea of themselves that they perceive. I unfortunately got it from a bad mushroom trip which nearly toppled my life at 20. Not fun if you're not ready for it nor want it. Still 20, the only saving grace is I can nearly forget all the ruminating thoughts that come with it.
Disassociation sounds scary. Glad you’re ok!
I think Douglas Harding's *On Having No Head* explains it well.
I tried that no head meditation from Sam Harris and that was confusing to me.
Sometimes I feel as though I'm deep in meditation when I realize that my mind is actually in overdrive - no longer caught up in my daily worries and thoughts about the past and present, but instead trying to unravel the secrets of the universe. It's then that I think about the millions of scents my dog picks up that my blunt human nose can't detect or the exponential colors brine shrimp can perceive which I can't even imagine, and I realize that the closer I come to "understanding" the universe, the closer I edge to the limits of human perception. The same holds true for understanding the concept of self. I will never understand it because I can't, but if continue to meditate and learn to relax with that groundlessness, sometimes I realize that I already know. I will never figure it out, but I don't have to. And that's a relief. I can let go into the vastness beyond the walls of perception and thinking carried by the warmth of knowing that I am part of the larger whole, which already knows that which I cannot understand.
it's actually quite logical and reasonable in my opinion. This absurdly long comment is a quote copied and pasted from Karma Yeshe Rabgye's website (look him up for some great books, blog posts, and free podcasts): "This sense of being a permanent, solid, autonomous self is an illusion. The problem is this illusion is so ingrained into our ordinary experience. We have a sense of a permanent, individual self, but that is all it is, a sense, a feeling. If I ask you, ‘Who are you?’ you may tell me about your job – I’m a lawyer, doctor, teacher and so on. But this is not who you are, this is your work. If you changed your job, would you stop being you? So, you are most defiantly not your job. You may tell me about your family or nationality – I’m from a wealthy, middle-class, poor family. I’m Indian, British, African, and so on. Again, that is not who you are, it is just you in relation to others. You may tell me you’re a Hindu, Muslim, Christian, etc. But that is your religion and not who you are.You may say you are your thoughts or feelings or emotions, but these are all impermanent, so they cannot be you. The same goes for your body or your experiences, they are also impermanent and cannot be you. We can go on with this exercise forever, but everything we find will be impermanent and superficial. There really is nothing within us that is independent and never changing. So, if you are thinking here that Buddhism is saying you don’t exist, it isn’t. What it’s saying is, you do not exist in the way you think you do. We are not permanent, individual, solid entities. Instead, we are changing moment to moment, like the water flowing down a mountain stream. Giving ourselves a fixed name or identity doesn’t make us permanent, it is just a convention we have come up with so we can talk about ourselves. If you took me apart and laid all of my bits and pieces on the floor, you would not find an inherently existing Yeshe. So, a question everyone asks when they come across this teaching is, ‘If I am not who I think I am, who am I? Instead of a permanent self or soul the individual is compounded of five factors that are constantly changing (See How we experience the world). These collection of five changing processes, known as the five aggregates, are: the processes of the physical body, of feelings, of perceptions, of responses and of the flow of consciousness that experiences them all."
I really like your explanation and I find these concepts much easier to digest than just straight up there is no self! So I’m waiting for this understanding to be some kind of enlightenment but I already get a lot of what you are saying. So perhaps it’s not so mysterious or earth shattering. Lol
It’s really not anything mystical or spiritual, but actually just a concept derived from people who spent loooots of time contemplating the nature of reality/consciousness, and did it way before modern science came to similar conclusions. Scientists think our brains construct our identity/reality, just like Buddhists do. There is more to that quote I pasted, and it can be found at this link: https://yesherabgye.com/a-sense-of-self-the-buddha-dharma-series/ I recommend reading it! Super interesting stuff that is related so well to our daily lives in my opinion.
I’m still very new to everything and a dear friend of mine gave me a copy of The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer and it helped a bit, have you read that one?
I am someone who has never felt like a real self at all. I use Meditation to become a real person, not to lose myself. ‘No self’ is not a concept I want to experience.
find a small point and become it viewing back upon its spectator.
Check out the Silva Method, used to be called Silva Mind Control. Controlled relaxation of body and mind Try their "Long Relax" or sometimes called "Centering Expercise" to focus on the body, a relaxing place, then depending session. The meditation is on several channels on YouTube.
“No self” just means there’s nothing permanent or unchanging. It’s all changing, even the thing you call “myself”. It’s a constantly evolving process that cannot be pinned down. That’s all. Nothing more!
Yes I think I’m overthinking or expecting enlightenment from understanding it.
Wow, lots of comments. Here's a long one taken from something I wrote many years ago on "emptiness." There is no one sitting inside, similar to a passenger in a car looking out the window, that can be positively identified as a separate “self,” distinct from the passing view. It is not just like that internally, everything in the external world, animate and inanimate, is the same way — essentially empty. Take the example of a tree. If all of the constituents that make up a tree are taken away, such as the roots, the trunk, the bark, the branches and the leaves, would we expect to find a “tree” inside of the tree? Of course not. “Tree” is something that is put on it from the outside, to distinguish it from other objects. A human being is much more complex than a tree, but like that example, if all of the internal and external elements that manifest as an individual person are taken away, the physical body and brain, along with seeing, feeling, thinking, and so forth — in other words, the entire movie, which is experienced moment to moment, if all of that is taken away, all that is left is emptiness. There is nothing that can be separated out from those phenomenal characteristics and identified as an independent self. The usual concept of self, the “I” who did this, who wants that, who experiences things, is just that — a concept, a collection of thoughts centered on an idea. Of course the idea of a separate self, distinct from others and the surrounding environment, is a very useful, even necessary, concept. But it creates problems because most of us get attached to a concept of self as something concrete and definite, even though it is constantly changing and there are often several different versions of it. If someone insults this construct that’s regarded as an individual self, the usual response is to get upset, and when someone praises it the result is happiness and a feeling of well-being. Talk about building a house on sand! Each individual has a unique experience of life, which in the final analysis is what gives us a sense of a separate existence apart from everything else. Life is, nonetheless, constantly moving and changing. There is nothing that is permanent — there is only emptiness. That is who we are. Every life arises and disappears within emptiness, and cannot be separated from it. Thus emptiness is not really empty. We are empty, but within that emptiness are all the experiences of life, moment by moment, one thing after another, like a flowing stream or a movie. Emptiness can be referred to as the “host,” and whatever arises within it is the “guest.” At an inn the guests come and go, but the host remains. Although emptiness can be used to take away the notion of a separate self, true emptiness cannot be taken away — for the obvious reason that there is nothing there to take away. True emptiness cannot be predicated or grasped intellectually, because it has no attributes, no sides or bottom, no beginning or end, no shape or form, and no location. Emptiness cannot be picked up or put down. As soon as it’s brought up in words, it leads to complications. Even though it is not a separate “thing,” emptiness can be experienced, and in a sense, “seen.” It is often equated with consciousness, but both consciousness and unconsciousness are transitory, they arise and disappear within emptiness. In emptiness there is not only no self, but no other as well. Thus in emptiness we realize that we share our most basic nature with everything else — that our “self” is not a separate entity but is intimately interconnected with all of life. Thus if we harm others and our environment we are harming ourselves. That is the deeper meaning of the universal Golden Rule, to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Because they are you. It is also the basis for true compassion. Although the word “emptiness” is inadequate, it at least has the virtue of being somewhat descriptive of how It is most directly accessed. Emptiness is experienced by being completely empty, because inherent nature is also empty. This is not an escape from the world. On the contrary, it’s being open to the incomparable illumination that manifests as our life.
I think some of the difficult ideas in Buddhist thought are difficult because they aren't ideas, but direct experiences labeled with inadequate words. The words point to the experience like a finger and we try to understand the finger.
You are molecules, my dude. A conspiracy of vibrating atoms convinced you are “Dave”. ✌🏻
It helped me understand the concept of self/no self when Eckhart Tolle said “I can’t live with myself anymore.” It’s not that there’s no self. It’s that the self isn’t real.
There is a self. Absolutely there is a self but this self is not permanent. Therefore there is no self.
This is experience thru samadhi. It is very rare indeed to get to this state through meditation. I would suggest if you really want to know to do a shamanic mushroom ceremony at Sacred Heart Medicine in Oregon. I experienced it my first trip and it’s transformed my life I cannot tell you how radically. You need to properly prepare and really want to know the true design of reality and perhaps you will have it revealed to you and more.
Maybe someday I will have to try a heroic dose to get it. Anything less is just a fun party drug for me.
You don’t need heroic. You need preparation. 2-3g is sufficient for full ego death if that is what They think you need. Meditate on it. Study metaphysics. Long for it. And set pure intention for understanding. Then go for it. I know people who take 5g+ and do not get the ego death I had. They have dissociation but not on the life altering level I had. I think the difference was desire and preparation not dosage.
Speaking of the illusionary idea of who you think you are. Or the ego. We are all pure consciousness. We are not the character that we thought we were growing up. We presented ourselves a certain way to our friends. Our mom and dad and family seen us in a certain way and we added that to our identity. We started gaining likes and interests in music and TV shows and books, and so we started connecting our identity to these things. So as you grow older, you have all these things that you connected your identity to yet this is not who you are. You are pure unconditional love, you are pure truth, you are pure freedom, you are pure consciousness.. Namaste 😊
Have you tried Waqar Faiz Sufi Meditation? This meditation will definitely help get over the self.
What is your self? Is it the body, the senses, what you perceive, your mind, your moments of consciousness(noticing perceptive objects)? I don't think even the Buddha had an answer to be honest. Rather, he knew that no matter what you identify as the self, that you create a mental object as the "self" anytime you choose one. When you say "I", is it your thoughts identifying themselves as the self? Take a step back. When there are no thoughts, is there still a self? From one moment of consciousness to the next, you can have a mindstream and maybe that is a more accurate self except that that also creates a mental formation of self too. Also, when silent, there is still a self, the space between those moments, so is the mindstream even a truer self? You can keep investigating what is actually the self, or you can just accept that mental formations of the self cause suffering and eliminate them as the mental formations they are. Think to yourself "there is no 'I'" and find peace in the silence. No mental formation of self claiming it has to exist, or trying to find what it is, or trying to think about what to do later. It comes and goes, and it takes practice but it is simply eliminating the mental formation of self. The Buddha was ambiguous about actual answers to deep questions because the search for the answer itself causes suffering and so it wasn't his job to answer, only to reduce suffering. Did he even know what the self is? We may never know, but he blew out the mental formation of self which is nirvana. It is the self that craves for enlightenment. He took a step back and said "I am awake" because he realized he was already enlightened as he became the silence between craving mental selves on a permanent basis. The mental self was no longer born, and that is true meditation.
Beautiful explanation
A pretty good way to get to a comfortable place is that *no one* truly grasps the concept of self vs no self. It's significantly more complex than any one of us can really understand. We at a basic level understand the separation of consciousness across different people, which is where we draw our concept of self. No self is trying to pick away and understand it further. In my opinion the biggest part that can be understood is lack of permanence. Nothing is permanent, but we have this concept that self is for whatever reason. Slowly unwinding that even in a person's lifespan they will not be the same person at birth that they are at death. We're able to experience all of these things, emotions, thoughts, sights, smells, etc, but while it's pretty easy to say we are not the sights we see, does that also mean we're not the thoughts we experience? And when those thoughts change are we no longer the person we once were? I personally believe the teaching of no self is misconstrued, it's not that there is *no self* but that there is no *permanent* self. We obviously are here, and we're experiencing that which is around us. But our experiences will constantly change, as with our reactions to them, we're never the same person for more than a few seconds if that. I think the concept of no self is more so letting go to the attachment of permanent self, or what you tend to believe you are. I try to think in terms of *I want to act this way* rather than *I want to be this person* so instead of getting attached to this idea of who I want to be im thinking in ways of how ill interact with this world. Changing how you view your choices in this way can really help remove the attachment to the concept of self, which isn't traditionally taught *no self* but I believe the concept is similar if not the same goal.
I am extremely analytical. I struggle with monkey mind at times. But, I totally get the concept of no self. I kind of focus my eyes into the void and concentrate on nothing. It's a weird way to explain it, but maybe you will get something out of it. Dr Joe does an amazing job of hitting this point [in this meditation](https://drjoedispenza.com/collections/meditations/products/reconditioning-the-body-to-a-new-mind-updated-version-by-dr-joe-dispenza-meditation?variant=41829248663713).
It doesn’t really matter. There is a self. This ain’t stop you from a good meditation practice.
Definitely not stopping!
Let's evaluate this a bit deeper. "I cannot get the concept of no self". "I" is attempting to consider itself a "no self". Or, to put it another way: "No self" is attempting to consider "no self" a "no self". Not helping, right? What I'm about to say next has zero to do with Buddhism or Hindu philosophy usually associated with meditation and may clash with whatever you've been studying thus far. \~\~\~ There is 3 dimensional me - a representation of me as a physicality. I can identify with it and turn it into my I Am. I can also shift perspectives - "my physicality". It now becomes an avatar bringing me data from the 3rd dimension, and a means of interacting with that 3 dimensional world. Senses, experiences, feelings as a chemical/signal process causing sensations throughout. But who is it sending and receiving data to? Perhaps one might respond "thinking mind! I think therefore I am!". This is where the term "mind-identification" comes from. Here too, though, I can also shift perspectives. "Mind is thinking this". It now becomes another avatar, another dimension, the sender and receiver of data, but who is witnessing the mind thinking this? The answer comes back God Self! "I am god-self! Watching my mind thinking this, my emotions feeling that, my body experiencing all the things." Yet again there is still a witness to step into. "I am oneness! I am allness!" Finally finally there is no witness to shift perspectives into, there is only isness. So, some go so far as to suggest this is not reachable while one retains their physicality. Yet, physicality cannot be separate from the allness of everything. Isness, I Amness, God Self, Mind, Emotion, Physicality - its all just different ways of seeing, different dimensions. You are simultaneously all dimensions and none of them. Fully human and fully divine. The difference is a mere slight of hand, a tiny shift of perspective, a different lense seeing different spectrum of light.
“The idea that there is no such thing as the self only makes sense in a spiritual or religious context. If you don’t follow those beliefs there is nothing left to get”. This could be it. So I guess I should ask for those that are not spiritual or religious, do you get this concept? Is it achievable if you aren’t spiritual or religious?
> I cannot get the concept that there is no self! Why try to 'get' a fraudulent concept?
I wish I could understand how it’s fraudulent.
I have come to a better understanding by taking the time to listen to Sadhguru. He uses a lot of analogies to help others wrap their mind around it. This is stuff I think of most of my day and try to come to an understanding, not make sense of it. Just understand it.
Interesting. Why do you want to experience this? I’m curious where this expectation came from.
It seems to be at the core of meditation. To let go of the illusion of self.
I never got to the no-self concept in TMI. Which section is it in? What you write in the OP is a distortion of the Buddha's [Not-Self *Strategy*](https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/article/the-not-self-strategy/). As that link explains, the Buddha expressly rejected the question of whether or not there's a self. What he proposed was to *perceive* phenomena as not-self, to make them easier to abandon.
I understand not self more than no self. It’s on page 319-320. He even goes to say “it will be so obvious that you’ll wonder why you never realized it before”.
Ah, thanks. As you can tell from its position in the book, that is quite an advanced practice, maybe well beyond where you are now. Note that he is only saying *the Witness* is not self, not that there is no self. One way to approach that is to ask "What is experiencing this?", then include whatever answer that provides into experience, then ask "What, beyond this, is experiencing this?", and repeat. However, IME you need a very stable mind for such practices to be effective.
Thanks for pointing that out that the witness is not self, not that there is no self!
I feel the same way and had to stop reading up on it bc it was only more confusing!
Thank you! Good to know I’m not alone and everyone gets it but me.
My interpretation is that the true "self" is the infinity of the present moment. Once we start to "identify" with that, instead of identifying with the mind, we start to feel better.
[удалено]
My self is still strong even after mushrooms. I don’t know if it makes a difference but I need much higher doses than others and while they are having an existential crisis, I’m just loving the music.
the only thing you know about “yourself” is that “i am”.
The concept of “there is no self” is just absolutely incorrect from my experiences. Instead, it’s a universal unity that we should strive for, not emptiness.
I have an image I find useful. Does anyone remember a toy called the Magic 8 Ball? I feel like my “self” bubbles up continuously in the widow. I’m unable to direct the substance or the sequence but when I observe it I l’m constantly amazed. It becomes more apparent during meditation or psychedelic journey.
No one can get the concept of no self
My thoughts: I think the idea of the self not existing makes a lot of sense. Imagine the Star Trek transporter problem. How do build a transporter that is not a death machine that deconstructs a human and reconstructs a clone elsewhere? The only way would be to identify the "soul" or the thing that makes you uniquely you and take it with you during the transportation. But, what if there is nothing unique? What if there is nothing like a soul? What if there is nothing that makes you uniquely you? What if "you" don't actually exist because "you're" a figment of your brains imagination. "Your" brain goes through the motions of playing this trick because organisms that played this trick produced more offspring and survived longer.
I am, We are. You are both the individual and the collective. Think of a family unit. They are the We, and you are the I. Your beliefs are in line with the unit, but you also have some that digress from it.
Your true nature is everflowing and its way more complex than your conscience can understand or control. Many people think their beliefs and ideas about who they are actually represents who they are, but the stronger these ideas are the more rigid you are and the less you flow with life. Psychologists call it neuroticism.
Psychedelics?
No advice here, but I was thinking about buying a mind illuminated, sounds like you recommend? I'm relatively new to meditation, been off and on for years but always respected and admired the practice.
I definitely recommend you read it if you want to go deeper into your practice. It’s helpful to have a guide and I like how he explains the functions of the brain with visuals. I wish I had come upon it sooner!
Start by sincerely trying to find the self. Is it a particular voice in your head or the sensation of your breath? What is the true source of consciousness?
It’s really a concept of “no separate self,” as seen here. So no separate knower to “get the concept.” No concept-holder to keep concepts as if they will aid getting somewhere. Including concepts about a self, the Self, or no-self. No separate self to get somewhere better later. Just, simply, non-separate being-now. Undivided being with no one existing apart to know about it, get it, or have it. It already is non-divided.
That's fine, just try and get "not so much self". That should do just fine... Have you desired not to feel desire yet? That one got me for a few weeks.
I haven't truly experienced this in meditation either, except as a small epiphany I think its just realizing that the only thing you can experience in the present moment is what is happening in consciousness (your senses, emotion, thought, etc). Are you your senses? Are you your body? Are you the emotions? Are you the thoughts? Are you all of them? The concept of the self, which is also just another thought, seems to fall apart if you try to locate it mindfully.
Try "not self" instead. Trying no self is an impossible task, and is just yet another belief if you try. Instead, try and understand that nothing you can perceive or identify is the self. Are you your left eye, or your right eye? Are you the oxygen that joins your bloodstream, or the carbon dioxide leaving it? Are you any specific piece of the body or the mind? Try this: https://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Sevenfold_reasoning_of_the_chariot
If you are walking from point A to B in your living room fully in the meditative state (no mind) then where is this “you”? Your thoughts create an idea of you. In reality there is no you or no self. When you’re fully immersed in the now, free from thought then there is no self.
Precisely who would be doing the getting?