Anapanasati 18: No-Self

With this talk and meditation, we continue to lay the groundwork for the fourth set of Anapanasati contemplations. The talk centers on the idea of "no-self," an often misunderstood idea in Buddhism. Like in the talk on "no-form" and "no-thought" before this, we consider the idea of impermanence and the middle path, asking, "What is it to neither cling to nor push away what we encounter in life?" The talk is followed by a guided meditation and expressions of gratitude by the sangha.

Transcript

All right,

Well why don't we get started and if anybody else comes in I'll let him in.

So we're going to continue today to lay some groundwork for the fourth set of Anapanasati contemplations,

Impermanence,

Fading away,

Cessation and letting go.

We were talking recently about the middle way or the middle path,

A way between extremes.

In the Buddha's personal story,

This was his journey on the spiritual path between the opulent wealth of his childhood and the extreme physical deprivations that he was first practicing when he was practicing as a monk.

On our path as Buddhists,

This idea of the middle way,

The middle path can manifest in a variety of ways.

What we've been discussing in the context of Anapanasati has been the question something like what is it to neither crave something nor push it away.

Not a little bit of both,

But something different.

We've talked a lot about impermanence.

We always in Buddhism talk about dukkha or suffering or this idea of just this general sense of dis-ease.

Suffering is kind of an extreme word sometimes.

This general sense of dis-ease in life,

This sense of dis-ease or dukkha is inextricably linked with this idea of impermanence.

Most of you know this.

It isn't that one leads to the other.

Rather,

They're almost like two aspects of the same fact,

Two sides of the same coin.

Buddhist practice helps us with this reality not by assuring us that somehow we won't experience pain but rather that our practice changes our minds in a way which makes all the difference in relation to our suffering.

Impermanence is a fact.

Suffering is a fact.

But the key is in how our minds react to these things and this can mean the difference between naturally occurring pain and self-created torment.

And this is what the third noble truth tells us,

That there is a way out of suffering and that this path is the middle path,

The path between pain and torment,

Between rage and bliss,

Between clinging and aversion,

Between self and other.

Which brings us to this third concept which is at the heart of Buddhism.

Last week we talked about no form,

No feeling,

And then we bring in this idea of no self.

Impermanence,

Suffering,

No self.

These are really sort of the three legs of the tripod that Buddhism sits on.

And this idea of no self is the one that perplexes people.

It really can throw people off.

It can frighten them even,

But it really is an essential part of Buddha's message.

And what the idea of no self teaches,

Really just at the baseline,

Is that there is no enduring core to the self.

Self as we understand it,

As we cling to it,

It has no abiding substance.

This is perplexing because we spend our lives with notions of self,

Appropriating things from me,

Seeing them as mine,

Possessions of all kinds,

Having a better relationship,

Achieving recognition in the community,

Deeper concentration in meditation,

Having an enlightened experience.

We're always reaching out for things,

Trying to bring things into us,

And claiming them to our own sense of self.

This process is always happening,

And it's based in our idea of the existence of a permanent,

Unchanging self.

And according to the Buddha,

This is a delusion,

A high-class hallucination,

Larry Rosenberg calls it,

A spiritual disease that's at the heart of our suffering.

Even in the contemplations,

In Anapanasati contemplations that we've been through so far in one way or another,

We claim all of them as belonging to me,

As being mine,

My body,

My feelings,

My thoughts.

We identify with them and we create a self out of them.

It's a process that I've heard people refer to as selfing,

Almost as a verb.

So what the teaching of impermanence tells us is that everything that arises passes away.

We've talked about this a lot lately.

And we cause suffering by trying to hold on to these changing things as a concrete sense of self.

This is neatly illustrated for us in the Buddha's teaching on what are called the five skandhas.

In Pali,

Which was the language of the Buddha,

The word skandha means pile or heap.

And the five skandhas represent the five basic factors of human experience,

Form,

Feeling,

Perception,

Mental formations are our ideas,

And our consciousness at large.

And taken together,

These form the totality of what we think of as reality,

What we think of as the self.

Just sort of quickly define form,

The physical world.

Feeling are simple responses to experiences like we've been talking about in our meditation all this time.

Our dislikes,

Our likes,

Our feelings of indifference,

Perception,

The recognition of sense objects and our interpretation of them and our reaction to them.

And then mental formations,

The thoughts of our mind,

Which can bring suffering or joy and everything in between.

And consciousness and the overall sort of cognizance,

A structure created by these previous four,

Form,

Feeling,

Perception,

And ideas.

The trick is that all of these factors,

These things that we judge as the constituents of our being,

Of ourselves,

They're ever changing.

They're impermanent.

They're subject to causes and conditions and they can't be pinned down.

We can see these as one thing,

But they quickly change to something else.

We seem so certain of our sense of self that each of us is somehow a solid,

Unchanging entity and we cling to what we see as a certainty and it gives rise to suffering when it changes as it inevitably does.

Because the truth is a self,

A constant unchanging reality can't be found in any of these things.

Form changes around us without cease.

We were talking last week or the week before about this idea that our body replicates a whole new set of cells on average about once every seven years.

So the cells that literally constitute your physical body are not the same ones that your body was made of eight,

Nine,

Ten years ago.

You are a completely different physical form.

Things change as we encounter different things during our days and we sort of sprint through cycles of liking and disliking or feelings of indifference and our interpretations of what we experience through the senses often change with our feelings and we create different mind states based on these interpretations and as all of this swirls,

Our sense of consciousness itself changes.

So where is this self that we depend on as a constant sense of reality?

Is it in our body?

The ways that we feel?

Is it how we experience the world around us?

How we understand it?

Is it in our ideas,

Our mental activities?

Is it our consciousness itself?

How we understand ourselves to be?

Logically we can see that all of these things exist in a state of flux,

Impermanent,

Subject to causes and conditions which perpetually change.

But the idea of no self is not to deny the existence of any of these skandhas,

Forms,

Feelings,

Etc.

Not to deny them but simply to help us see that none of them actually constitute a concrete,

Unchanging self.

We can't reach out and claim any one of them as me.

The ideas of no thought and no form that we talked about last week,

They don't deny thought and form,

Rather they encourage us to accept the changing nature of each of those,

To see their dependence on causes,

Conditions,

And to avoid our natural tendency to see them as something constant that we can hold onto.

To understand how our ideas and feelings affect them moment by moment and to see the suffering which comes from our processes of clinging and rejecting.

And so too with the idea of no self.

Something that we might see as self,

From our body to our feelings and mental states,

All these are changing.

None of them can be pinned down into that solid sense of self and we suffer when we try to.

Now as a skillful teacher the Buddha allowed for our attachment to these five skandhas,

Our attachment to form,

Our attachment to feelings,

Our attachment to our mind.

In Anapanasati meditation he gave us the first 12 contemplations that we've been working through,

Especially those of the mind,

To look at and consider and to work with these things as we establish a more healthy understanding of their changing nature.

But at some point when we've looked and we've looked we may finally get our fill of them.

We experience the content of our feelings and mental formations so many times that at last we become ready to move past them to a deeper kind of wisdom.

One which helps us to let go of the burden of attaching to things as me or mine and we can finally lay that burden down.

The real work is to look,

To listen,

To learn.

And every one of us has to do this work for ourselves,

Finding liberation and seeing that the self is an illusion,

Realizing this the way we might anything else,

Directly,

Clearly,

And more than once.

So as we practice,

Is it possible to come to a place where you contemplate this breathing body with no question that the breathing is happening but at the same time not finding a breather?

There's an old example that demonstrates interdependence about the idea of the giver,

The gift,

And the receiver.

And at the very moment when these things join in one action,

Can they really be distinguished?

And perhaps the same thing can be true for the breather and the breath.

In his book,

Breath by Breath,

Larry Rosenberg tells us this can be a wonderful feeling because the breather is just an ego disguised as a meditator.

There's a self-consciousness about the breather,

A sense of someone trying to meditate correctly.

And when that disappears,

It's just the innocence of a body sitting there breathing and knowing that it is.

There's a feeling of being breathed rather than the body breathing in order to accomplish something.

So it's not that there's no body or feelings or mind states.

The Buddha is not saying that.

Clearly there are these things.

But the question is,

Can we investigate these phenomena and notice that they are not us,

Not mine,

Not me,

Not yours,

Not you.

Can we instead experience them as natural processes that are happening to the body,

To the mind,

Because of certain causes and conditions?

And if so,

Then we don't need to cling to them because they will change.

And our clinging to either greed or hatred leads only to suffering.

And in this light,

This idea of no self is,

In my mind,

It's a matter of practicality.

It's a method of looking carefully at who you think you are and what you think you're doing.

So let's go ahead and sit.

Take a couple of good deep breaths.

Let your back be straight but not rigid.

Making sure your airway is unobstructed.

Find full deep breaths.

Your diaphragm expanding as you inhale.

Attracting as you exhale.

Let yourself root into your posture.

For just a moment,

Consider your surroundings,

The room that you're in,

Place that is provided for you,

The safety it offers,

The opportunity to practice with your breath and with this sangha assembled.

Giving a sense of gratitude for that.

And I would ask you to set an intention,

Leaving behind the worries of the world and in this time,

In this place,

To engage your practice.

Let a sense of conscious awareness,

Mindfulness rise up around you.

Holding you like a friend.

Giving your attention to your breath.

The inhalations,

The exhalations.

Think of your breath as your closest friend.

The one thing you can turn to in all times.

Times of need.

Times of joy.

The one thing that is always with you.

First thing we do.

And the last.

And as you breathe,

Let your attention expand.

Let it include your body.

Not just parts of your body,

But let it suffuse through your entire form.

Let your mindfulness come down out of your head.

Find a unity of mindfulness and breath.

And just dwell.

Body and breath in this moment.

Now you can spread that moment with it.

Body and breath are an important part of being.

But they're not all of it,

Because as you sit,

You may find a certain contentment.

It may expand out into a sense of joy.

Such a gift to be present with the breath.

Such a blessing to be cognizant and aware in the moment.

I encourage you to hold yourself open to contentment,

Joy,

Happiness.

Let your mindfulness of body and breath begin to move into the background.

Your peripheral awareness still there is still very real.

Breath is the foundation of our practice.

But allow yourself to become more present with the feelings.

We do this from our position of contentment.

We examine the things we've experienced during the day.

Our feelings are our simple reactive patterns to the things that happen around us.

Feelings which gnaw on us in just small little ways.

And it's not even worth unpacking what caused them,

But rather to simply see them.

And this is so much of our practice.

To see things as they arise.

And without clinging and without pushing away.

Rather from a middle path.

Allow the feelings to rise.

To be and to fall away.

To bring our consciousness and an open compassion.

To each feeling as it comes.

As it goes.

These feelings are not us.

Just something that is experienced.

They don't define us.

This portion of the practice is one that's worth staying with.

Getting to recognize these feelings that come up for us through the day.

They're things that often lead us to lay things on to other people like irritation,

Petty jealousies,

Impatience.

And to be able to see them when they're happening.

Just observe them.

They start to take their power away.

They start to fade.

And we let them.

A gift we bring to ourselves and to those around us.

And this becomes easier to do when we consider the impermanent nature of the feelings.

They simply don't last unless we hold on to them,

Unless we try to make something of them that we can grasp.

But we suffer so when we do.

Things rile us up.

They keep us jittery.

We learn to let them pass and we become more calm.

The sutra tells us breathing in I am aware of my feelings.

Breathing out I calm my feelings.

Our feelings are not us.

They are experienced.

But they don't define us.

And as they calm,

Like when a falling wind allows the water to become smooth,

We're able to go deeper.

And to consider the nature of our mind,

The content of our mind.

Mind is where we carry so much.

Some of it good.

Some of it not.

There are things here that we wish desperately to get rid of.

That we just don't want to have to carry any longer.

And there are things here that we jealously guard.

Secrets that we hold,

Affections that we offer,

And fear will disappear.

But from a position of the feelings having calmed,

Perhaps we can see these things in the mind more clearly,

More gently and openly.

Just as we did with feelings,

We see each mind state arise,

Exists and fall.

What is it to neither grasp nor push away?

Can we practice a sense of no self?

Change the thought from I am experiencing this,

Simply to this is an experience.

This is something that is happening.

But it doesn't form me.

Doesn't define me.

I don't need to hold it as mine.

But with open hands,

An open heart,

See our suffering thoughts arise.

Watch them as they be.

Watch them as they fall.

All things are impermanent.

And even suffering thoughts pass through our open hands.

This too is a fine place to dwell in the practice.

This third set of contemplations on the mind help us to build concentration.

And to internalize impermanence,

To feel it as a lived experience,

Not simply a point of philosophy.

And as we grow more adept at letting suffering mind states rise and fall,

We begin to find places in between,

Places of clarity,

Places of calm,

And we gladden our minds in these places.

Take heart and know that we can help ourselves.

If you'd like to take a minute and stretch or do some walking meditation,

Get a drink of water,

I invite you to do that.

I'll ring the lower sounding bell in a few minutes.

You can come back to your seats.

Brigards.

Stateley.

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Reviews

Thank you Sheldon!