More on Not Self

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video More on "Not Self" with Diana Clark. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on May 30, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Michael: Hi, I'm Michael from San Jose. Alex: Alex, from Vancouver, BC.

Diana: Oh, from Vancouver! Fantastic. Well, welcome Jim, Bill, Natalie, Michael, and Alex. And I'm Diana—at least today I am, we'll see how I am later. [Laughter] Thank you all for that. I'll turn on the recording.

More on Not Self

Last week, I spoke a little bit about the concept of not-self^[1], and I thought I'd build a little bit on that today. It is the teaching, or the realization, that we don't have a core. We don't have an essence unto which experiences get added. It's not like we have this thing in the middle that stays the same, that tastes good food, comes from meditation, or speaks into a microphone that doesn't work. There isn't this core thing that experiences get added onto. Instead, there are just experiences. That's all there is.

This is one of the key teachings of the Buddha. It's one of the characteristics of things and people that they don't have this inherent, stable core or essence. This teaching is a little bit difficult to understand, and sometimes it feels a little bit silly. Because, of course, things have existence: I'm here, you guys are there, there are chairs there, there's a bell here. But we're talking about how there is not a permanent, unchanging core essence at the middle. There is just a collection of experiences, with "experiences" being anything that arises in the senses, including the mind.

One thing I wanted to talk about today is the misconceptions we might have about the teachings of not-self. We might hear this and misinterpret it. Jack Kornfield^[2] writes that sometimes there's an idea that we have an egocentric or self-centered ego, and we have to get rid of that. But that's not actually right, because there's nothing to get rid of; it's not actually there. The idea that there's a "bad part" that has to be eliminated is an old religious idea. It is sometimes why there are ascetic practices^[3], or why people will do extreme things, thinking it will purify or get rid of an unwanted part of themselves. That's not how Buddhists see this practice.

The idea of not-self also doesn't mean that there is an inner sense of apathy or meaninglessness. It doesn't point to emotional poverty or a sense of hollowness, as opposed to vitality or juiciness. We might feel a lack of well-being inside and think that somehow that's what's being pointed to when we talk about not-self. That couldn't be further from the truth. Sometimes we might think, "Oh yeah, I do have this inner hollowness, so I must be on the right spiritual path." But that's not what is being pointed to.

This experience of not-self is not an excuse to withdraw from life. It's not a way to reinforce underlying depressive feelings where we feel diminished, where we don't have the energy or desire to be with the world, or where we have a fear of the world or a lack of motivation. Not-self is not pointing to that either.

These not-self teachings are not suggesting that we should wipe out our ability to function in our lives—our ability to get up, get dressed, have breakfast, go to work, or go about our days. It's absolutely not pointing to the loss of our normal way of operating. In contrast to some of these misconceptions, joy and freedom are what characterize the experience of not-self. It's this beautiful spaciousness and unburdening that arises.

We definitely need to honor our personal identities. We aren't trying to get rid of those, either. We want to recognize the deep patterns and archetypes that make up our individuality, and then honor and transform them in a way that truly supports us. This practice is about transformation. We are not discarding or throwing anything away.

For example, maybe you have a critical intellect; you can use that to develop discriminating wisdom that helps with this path of practice. Maybe you have an appreciation and desire for beauty, or you're an artist; you can use that as a force to notice, build, and cultivate harmony so you are not in contention with your experience. Or maybe you have a capacity for intuition, a way of sensing how things are; you can transform that into a capacity for healing yourself and others by being sensitive to what is needed next.

To be sure, a strong and healthy sense of self is required for this path of practice. Part of the developmental course of a human is to have a distinct sense of self. The Buddha certainly had that. He had no confusion about who he was, what he did, or what he was going to do. He used the personal pronoun all over the place in his teachings. He had a very strong sense of self and a clear sense of boundaries about what was appropriate and what wasn't. For us, having a strong sense of self really supports our practice.

In some meditative experiences, there can start to be a sense of dissolution, a fading away, or even a pixelating of the sense of self. This can be really disorienting or frightening if a person doesn't already have a strong sense of self. We need one so that as we go deeper into the practice, these experiences don't derail, frighten, or confuse us, making us feel like we're going in the wrong direction.

The interesting thing is that the development of a strong sense of self and a greater realization of not-self evolve together. A strong sense of self supports insight into not-self, and experiencing not-self supports a healthy sense of self. In our path of practice, there might be seasons where one or the other is emphasized, but both are essential.

When we hear teachings about not-self, we might feel puzzled: "I certainly feel like I have a self. I'm not quite sure what these Buddhists are talking about." I really appreciate how scholar Andrew Olendzki^[4] titled an article I Think I Am, pointing to the different ways we think we are a self.

First, he says, "I feel like the occupant of my body." When we stand or sit in one location, everything around us seems relative to us. We feel like we're the center, and the world moves with us. If we are just with our experience, we notice that what's near and far adjusts as we move through space, keeping us as the center.

Second, "I have a strong sense of being the beneficiary of the feeling tones." When things are pleasant, I'm the one who enjoys them. When they're unpleasant, I'm the victim who wants to get rid of them. We feel like we are the beneficiary or the victim of those positive, negative, or neutral experiences.

Third, "I am a person who expresses myself. I am the artiste." Whether we express ourselves artistically, through speaking, writing, the way we dress, or the cars we drive, we feel like we are uniquely expressing ourselves. We feel that no matter how humble or subtle these creations are, they uniquely come from us.

Fourth, "I feel like an agent." I feel like the one who makes choices, the one with decision, intention, and responsibility, moving through the world, doing things, and inheriting the consequences.

Fifth, "I have the view that I am some sort of essence." There's a belief that there's a continuous, permanent sense of self inside around which everything else congeals—something that feels like the heart of what it means to be "me."

Some of you will recognize that these five ways we construct a sense of self—being the center of experience, the beneficiary of feeling tones, the artiste, the agent, and the essence—align with the Five Aggregates^[5]. The Buddha categorized all experiences into these five psychophysical expressions. As humans, we often cling to one of these aggregates, and it's that clinging that creates a sense of self in a given moment.

However, all of those experiences are not constant; they are changing all the time and unfolding without any essence or core. There isn't a "me" making them happen. The experiences aren't mine, I don't own them, and I'm not controlling them. They are just arising and passing away. We cling to them in a really subtle way, and this subtle clinging makes us believe we have a sense of self. This sense of self is just a collection of variations of these five types of experiences. This is the human experience.

What I've described is a conceptual way of understanding it. While some of the Buddha's teachings are conceptual, it is often more helpful to feel into this experience of self and not-self. For me, it was meditative experiences that helped me truly understand what was being pointed to. Intellectually, when I heard paradigms like the Five Aggregates, I thought, "Am I supposed to believe this? What am I supposed to do with it?" It wasn't until I had meditative experiences and felt the freedom that is possible when clinging diminishes that I understood. As suffering diminishes, there is more and more freedom and ease. We can have a visceral, embodied experience of not-self rather than just an abstract exploration.

To point to this experience of being sensitive to the sense of self, I'd like to share a poem entitled Zazen^[6] by Virginia Hamilton Adair. I learned about this poem from Brian Lesage^[7]. We can imagine she is describing what happens during a meditation retreat. Early in the poem, she uses the expression "Saratoga trunk"^[8], which refers to a giant, old-fashioned suitcase.

When I first floundered in, no one knew me, not even myself, staggering under a Saratoga trunk crammed with humiliations bottled like urine samples, nail kegs of anger, carbons of abusive letters, chemistry quizzes with F's, even the horse I never had, and two casseroles left over from the diamond-dip supper. No one remarked that I had brought too much. I was wearing three fur hats donated by opulent cousins, my feet encased in cement ever since the failure of the patio project, and my mouth full of barbs as an old trout. No one praised my appearance.

The trunk fell off my back, disgorging its unusual contents at my stone feet, which also came off. The fur hats tumbled like a moth-eaten avalanche, bearing a small monk. No one noticed. My sweat began to dry. I folded myself into one piece. No one.

I love the way she captures all these things we put in the trunks we carry around—these memories and stories that make up what we think it means to be "me". We get entangled with the narratives of our lives. I appreciate that she talks about casseroles from a dinner, the horse she never had, or grades from a chemistry quiz. These stories define how we see ourselves—whether we think we're smart, a good cook, or whatever it might be. We think these things define us, and we carry them around. It's heavy and burdensome.

There's nothing wrong with having narratives in our lives; we want our lives to make sense. But what is being pointed to is the clinging. Can we pick these stories up, but also put them down when they're not needed? When we accumulate all these ideas about ourselves, we create contraction, clinging, binding, and tension. We feel limited, penned in, imprisoned, and burdened by this sense of self. We're so used to it we don't even notice it until we have other experiences.

We've all had these experiences, perhaps not in meditation, but when seeing a beautiful sunset, vast expanses of the ocean, or sitting on a mountaintop. In those moments, the sense of self often diminishes, and we get a bigger sense of what is possible. We experience ease, spaciousness, flexibility, softening, and relief. It's a healing realization that we can put down everything that is extra—and it turns out, everything is extra.

This not-self teaching points to the movement from feeling imprisoned by the idea of "me" to aligning with the flowing nature of experience. Things are just unfolding. The idea of an individual who sits at the center making decisions is a caricature; life is more of a flowing. The notion of not-self is not a belief we have to adopt or force ourselves into. It's simply pointing to a potential for all of us as the sense of self softens.

This softening naturally happens when we're doing our favorite things—dancing to music, humming, or playing sports—when there isn't so much self-centeredness or self-consciousness. It's all pointing to the same movement.

I'll end there and open it up to see if there are any comments or questions. Thank you.

Q&A

Alex: I've been meditating for about two and a half to three years more seriously. Could you talk a little bit about how the experience of not-self might evolve over time as we meditate more?

Diana: Often, there is effort required at first. I like to use the analogy of a slide on a playground: there's a ladder going up, and then a slide going down. Initially, there's a sense of self that feels, "I have to do this, cultivate this, develop that." We follow lists like the Eightfold Path^[9] or the Seven Factors of Awakening^[10]. The sense of self that is developing qualities and behaving ethically is doing the work of climbing up the ladder to the top of the slide.

But then, there's a way in which things start just unfolding without so much effort. This can be experienced in states of samādhi^[11], when the mind and body begin to settle. It doesn't have to be a giant state of concentration; just a sense of settling. We sometimes call this "effortless effort." It feels more like, "Things are happening, but I'm not making them happen. I'm here, I'm not a victim, and it's not happening to me, but there's an ease and a flowing with what's arising."

Bill: Lately I've thought that I would like to cut through the philosophical thicket of whether there's a self or not, and instead just think of not-self this way: whenever I think in terms of my self, I create my own suffering. I think that relates to something you said about how concepts of self trap you. Could you elaborate on that?

Diana: Yes, ideas of self naturally create limits. If I define myself as "a person who likes vanilla but doesn't like chocolate," or "a person who does this but not that," I am also defining what I am not. While some of that might be functionally true, we are often imprisoning ourselves in those definitions instead of allowing the flowing of experience.

Bill: You're self-limiting.

Diana: Exactly. And there's a subtle feeling of contraction that comes with it. When there's a strong sense of self, there is a strong sense of separation between "me" and "everybody else." Feeling isolated and disconnected from others and our surrounding experience brings a certain amount of suffering.

Closing

Diana: Thank you all for joining. A warm welcome to those who traveled or tuned in online. If any of you would like to ask a question privately, you are welcome to come up. Otherwise, I wish you all a wonderful rest of your evening. Thank you.