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Mindfulness of Oneself (4 of 5) This is Not-Self

So, this week we're talking about the topic of self and no-self in Buddhism. To review these first three days: on Monday, I talked about the positive understanding of self and people that the early tradition has. I didn't mention it, but there are some very clear words that correspond to the English words "individual" or "person" that are different from the word for "self." Even though there are positive uses of the word self, there's no questioning or negating in any way the idea of an individual. We are a person, and that person is important. It's to be fulfilled, to become abundant, to become free. The capacity for that is really at the heart of Buddhism: the capacity for an individual to become really free.

But one of the things we become free of is the self. That involves a number of things, but it involves, a lot, the ways in which we're "selfing"—the contribution we make in our mind to construct identity, construct ideas of self, construct selfishness, conceit, and arrogance. These are activities of the mind, and that was Tuesday's topic. Then yesterday, we explored how part of this construction is really projection, where we project self and identity onto things. For instance, if we have a thought and we project onto it, "That's my thought." If it was a wonderful thought, we pat ourselves on the back. If it was a horrible thought, we feel bad about ourselves or embarrassed. Another option is just to have a thought and not tie it to any kind of identity or definition of oneself. It's just a thought. It can seem second nature or inherent that we should always measure ourselves by whatever thought we have, but that's a form of selfing. It's a projection, a construct—the idea that every thought somehow has some bearing, reflecting back on the idea of who we are.

As we go deeper into Buddhist meditation, the activities of the mind get quieter and quieter, so we're no longer actively constructing these projections or operating through them. For example, to use a variation of an example from yesterday: I'm sitting here at the IMC meditation hall, and we have a lot of meditation cushions for people to sit on. Someone could come here when we're open and pull down one of IMC's cushions from the shelf, place it on the floor, sit down, and then get up and go to the bathroom. If they come back and someone's sitting on their zafu^[1]—it wasn't theirs before they came here, but because they claimed it for the hour, now it becomes "theirs." That's a projection. It's an idea. It's a reasonable one, as we kind of go along with ideas of possession, but still, it's a construct. So they come back and see someone sitting on it, and they associate that with all kinds of other slights they've had, insults they've had, and harm that's been caused to them where people weren't caring for them or ignored them. A lot of anger arises, and the anger is about "me, myself, and mine."

Another option is a person who sat on it for a little while and has gotten very, very quiet and calm. They go to the bathroom, come back, and someone is sitting on that cushion. But because the mind is so calm and peaceful, the person can watch the thought, "Oh, that's my cushion." That thought arises, and maybe they feel a little bit of the stress of that thought. But because they are so calm, the person says, "Wait a minute, do I really need to go down that road? Do I really need to pick up and be involved with that thought that this is my cushion? You know, it's not really mine, it belongs to IMC. And now there are more cushions on the shelf, there are more spaces to sit, and I don't really need to get into the stress, into the activation of all the series of things—the cascade of thoughts that can happen once I say it's my cushion and the person is sitting on my cushion." So there's a freedom there to decide on what to do. They can say, "Okay, it's not my cushion, and you know it's fine. I'll let it go and let it be." So this idea of seeing things as "this is not me, this is not personal," becomes clearer and clearer. It becomes more and more an aspect of meditation practice as we get quieter and quieter.

If you were sitting here, sometimes there are train whistles and train sounds nearby. I'm sitting here and I hear the sound, and I can just let it be sound, or I can make it very personal. I could think, "The sound is coming into the IMC meditation hall, and the sound is maybe being projected onto YouTube, and all these people are hearing it, and it's disturbing their meditation. If it disturbs their meditation, then I'm not being a good teacher. In order to make a good impression, I have to figure out how to get more soundproof windows." Now I've made the story very personal. The alternative is seeing it as impersonal: "Okay, I don't have to pick it up and make a self out of this experience." I can be responsible for it a little bit if I need to take care of something, but the constructs and projections of self are not only stressful in small ways by themselves, but they can very quickly escalate into all these associations. It's a magnet for our history, our memories, our past experiences, our values, our conceits, and it can become very big, very quickly.

In meditation, as we sit and more and more appreciate what happens moment by moment, we see that a lot of it is impersonal: this thing is not myself. If you're sitting there and a breeze comes through, it goes over maybe the top of the hand, and you can say, "Okay, that's not self. It's just a breeze, just sensations." If I get involved in the liking and disliking of it, that kind of begins creating more energy around the breeze. I might believe that that's who I am—the liking and disliking, or the pleasure and the discomfort of the breeze. But the pleasantness or unpleasantness of the breeze is also just nature: pleasant and unpleasant. It turns out that the first arising or appearing of liking and disliking also has a quality that's impersonal. It's just the system working, and it can kind of arise out of nowhere^[2]—that's not quite the right word, but it just appears without a plan, without an intention for it to be. It's almost spontaneous; the system creates liking and disliking. For a moment, before latching onto it, it's just impersonal: "Oh look, the experience of liking is happening." It's possible to see that experience of liking without any attribution of "this is me, myself, and mine," without any projection of self onto it, without the activity of making it or associating myself with it.

For people who don't meditate and get quiet, what I'm saying might not be understandable. The self, and selfing, and taking things personally—it's like that's who we are. If of course that's just who we are, then it's like, "How can I be different?" It's all just part of it all. But as we get quieter in meditation and mindfulness gets stronger, we begin to deconstruct all the constructions we have, all the ways in which we latch onto things. For example, if I have preferences—liking and disliking the simple breeze across my hand—I could start to coalesce around that a little bit. I could start getting involved, believing it, holding onto it, picking it up, and thinking, "Well, I like this. How can I have more of it?" That coalescing around it can also be a little bit physical: a little more energy there, a little more pressure, coalescing tension. That gives a sense of, "Oh, there's a location here. I am the place of my location, there's a 'me' here," because of this sense of pressure or tension that gives location to that kind of engagement with liking and disliking. Then there are thoughts about it: "Well, I like it, so now let's plan to have a breeze more often. What would it take to get a fan here at IMC? And what speed fan? We have to get a quiet fan." The mind goes off. But those thoughts can also be seen as impersonal, and it's really freeing to start doing that.

Many people believe, "I think, therefore I am." The energy around thinking is strong enough that it again reinforces the idea that there's some coalesced energy, coalesced pressure, tension, or sensations. "Oh, this is who I am. I am my thinking." This idea of "I am"—that itself is a construct. That's also believing in an impersonal phenomenon, as it's just a thought that arises. But by the time a lot of this stuff arises, there's this whole construct and coalescence of ideas, associations, energies, and tensions, and it all seems like a big self. It seems like, "Of course I'm here, this is me." But as we meditate, there's a deconstruction process, and we start seeing this marvelous thing: "This is not me. This is not me." The Buddha's teaching on not-self, anatta^[3], is not a metaphysical teaching, but rather it's a teaching that is always about something particular. This is very important to understand: it's always about something in particular, a particular sensation or a particular perception. It's the recognition that this particular perception is not me, this is not self. Not-self is a characteristic—it's called a characteristic, lakkhaṇa^[4]—of things. It's always a characteristic of particular things, not a generalized statement that "there is no self."

For example, if you cut your fingernail and have the fingernail clipping on the table in front of you, it might be relatively easy to say, "That is not myself. There's no self there, that's not who I am. That was my fingernail clipping." But if you look at the fingernail on your finger, some people might make a big self out of it. There are a lot of personal associations, a lot of self-concern about how it seems—"It's nice," "It's not nice," "I have to do something with it to make it nice"—and there's a beginning of creating a self. Or, it's possible to just look at a fingernail and say, "This is just nature growing fingernails, and it's just impersonal. This is not self in itself." It's beginning to see in the particulars of experience, the moment-by-moment particulars of perception, how many things are not-self. Not-self, not-self. Not because you have to believe it like it's a philosophy—that you have to believe "there is no self"—but it becomes a little bit like looking at the finger clipping on the table: "Oh, that's not me anymore, that's impersonal. Now it's like outside of me." We can actually see that so much of our experience is that way, like finger clippings. This is not to diminish its value or importance in life or in nature, but it begins loosening up the grip of self. It loosens up the holding on of self, the associations, the constructs, and the projections we have.

It's phenomenally relaxing and freeing to do that. It's phenomenally inspiring sometimes to feel like we're in this natural world of things just arising and passing; it's nature doing its thing. To start feeling the freedom, the emptiness, the lack of self that's attributed, projected, and made up in relationships—just breathing, being animate, being alive, feeling, sensing, and experiencing the world. That absence of projections, selfing, weight, planning, associations, judgments, comparisons, and all the stuff we do around the self is such a relief. It provides a wonderful experience of freedom. Knowing that freedom teaches us about the potential of how free, open, and relaxed we can be. Then, when we start getting involved in the world of projections, selfing, and taking things personally again, we can do it with a very light touch. We can do it without attachment. Instead, we do it as it's needed, as it's appropriate. When it's not appropriate and not needed, we're happy to put it down. So we wear the self as lightly as we'd wear a very light shirt, or a very light coat that we take on and off as we need. That's the heart of the Buddhist teachings on not-self. I hope you have some taste of not living in a world of the constructed and projected self. Thank you.