No-self (mystic, followers, myth, Revelation, experience)

[Somkid]

After a long time of tossing the idea around in my mind I have come to a realization of what this notion is...not to say that this occurred due to my thinking about it...it was not figured out but witnessed.

Of course I bare the great risk of declaring to understand a thing (at least in part) that is nearly impossible for me to verify. But what I feel seems to illuminate words I have read in the canon and there is a strong urgency that this 'it' that I feel is something important and if I had to give it my own name I would call it the notion of no-self. I have experienced this years ago as a monk but now my life is busy and without mindfulness in many situations.

The best way to describe how I know this thing is not sequentially the first thing that I experienced to its effect but seems the best place to start. When asking who am I? or what am I? the only answers that can be given are in the form...I am not...that is to say I can only describe my self by what it is not rather than what it is because in fact there is no 'is-ness' to my self at least not in the way that my mind continually tries to create. I can only have a grasp of what or who I am by seeing what I am not..and what I am not is absolutely everything that I experience through time. At every moment of time there is a 'thing' of experience of whatever character and this thing is not me.

It is tricky to describe because of the inherent property of permanence that gets associated with the self.....I use the word permanence because I know it from reading Buddhist text but there could be other describers. It is a quality you don't even realize you possess until you become of aware of it...it is the desire for sameness...for idealness...for correctness...it is what you measure the world by until the world destroys it...and it is holding on to what has been destroyed even after the fact. It augments your perception and distances you from truths. The reflection of its presence is there when you run through a daily weekly yearly of even a continual routine and don't ever bother to ask why. It gives rise to the opposite of truthful investigation as well as bias and wrong views.

Anyway...I don't really want to say anymore because it will be too much for me to process. I believe I could do more to make myself clear. But I welcome any comments feedback or hints as to any flaws or oversights or misconceived ideas I may be representing.

[doppelgänger]

You might enjoy David Hume's writings about identity. What you call "permanence" might be what Hume referred to as "continuity". In A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume wrote:

We are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our self; we feel its existence and its continuing to exist, and are certain - more even than any demonstration could make us - both of its perfect identity and of its simplicity. The strongest sensations and most violent emotions, instead of distracting us from this view ·of our self·, only focus it all the more intensely, making us think about how these sensations and emotions affect our self by bringing it pain or pleasure. To offer further evidence of the existence of one’s self would make it less evident, not more, because no fact we could use as evidence is as intimately present to our consciousness as is the existence of our self. If we doubt the latter, we can’t be certain of anything . . .

"Perceptions" are the construction of sensations into thought - i.e. a sensation is related to other sensations and stored memories of other sensations in such a way as to bring it into "awareness." The sensation takes on a significance straining it out from all the other incoming sensory data, and selecting it to become a perception when it is identified through its meaning relative to other "things" perceived and the stored memory of other things perceived.

"Perspective" is all the memories and the relationships between them by which perceptions are brought into consciousness, including any particular thought as it is perceived. It is a process subject to ceaseless change as new perceptions are assimilated and existing relationships between perceptions are changed. As Hume explained:

I am willing to affirm of the rest of mankind that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions that follow each other enormously quickly and are in a perpetual flux and movement. Our eyes can’t turn in their sockets without varying our perceptions; our thought is still more variable than our sight; and all our other senses and faculties contribute to this change in our perceptions, with no one of them remaining unaltered for a moment. The mind is a kind of stage on which many perceptions successively make their appearance: they pass back and forth, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of positions and situations. Strictly speaking, there is no simplicity in the mind at one time and no identity through different times, no matter what natural inclination we may have to imagine that simplicity and identity.

So what does it mean to be "selfless" or to "transcend self"? If I can have moments of freedom from self, how could I experience them? The self has to be experiencing the self, for the self to know the self has transcended itself. So the only way to become selfless is to have no thoughts and no knowledge (Nirvana) or to disrupt the ordinary process in ways that allow conscious awareness to function, but without being limited by its own rules.

Is there a way to capture a head turning glimpse of selflessness, a momentary loss of identity that, because of its nature, cannot be assimilated into thought and language? This creates a sense that the self I imagine as the center of the web of relationships recognized as perceptions is not a "true" self. There is a sense that it is a construct of language and thought, one necessary to communication and for "existence" in social reality, but a construct nonetheless. But how can the experience of absence of self occur within the framework of thought that depends on the continuity of self?

Because I have self awareness I will have mystical experience, regardless of how I interpret it. Mystical experience and self-awareness are necessary compliments to one another. Without both, there is neither. The message of myth, art, science and love is finding that ever elusive crossover point from the reality of words and thoughts to the poetic "ultimate reality" outside of the reality of symbols.

But can I really have an experience outside of language and thought? It is only because I ordinarily function within a world constructed in thought that I can have a glimpse of the primordial illusion of conflating my perspective (the ceaseless ebb and flow of perceptions) with being and identity. More from Hume:

That action of the imagination, by which we consider the uninterrupted and invariable object, and that by which we reflect on the succession of related objects, are almost the same to the feeling, nor is there much more effort of thought required in the latter case than in the former. The relation facilitates the transition of the mind from one object to another, and renders its passage as smooth as if it contemplated one continued object. This resemblance is the cause of the confusion and mistake, and makes us substitute the notion of identity, instead of that of related objects. However at one instant we may consider the related succession as variable or interrupted, we are sure the next to ascribe to it a perfect identity, and regard it as enviable and uninterrupted. Our propensity to this mistake is so great from the resemblance above-mentioned, that we fall into it before we are aware; and though we incessantly correct ourselves by reflection, and return to a more accurate method of thinking, yet we cannot long sustain our philosophy, or take off this bias from the imagination. Our last resource is to yield to it, and boldly assert that these different related objects are in effect the same, however interrupted and variable. In order to justify to ourselves this absurdity, we often feign some new and unintelligible principle, that connects the objects together, and prevents their interruption or variation. Thus we feign the continued existence of the perceptions of our senses, to remove the interruption: and run into the notion of a soul, and self, and substance, to disguise the variation.

Short of losing the "I am" that is the perspective by which sensation becomes perception, what else is there besides a mythology of "souls" and "spirit" pointing to an experience that cannot be brought into conscious thought?

I'm a million different people from one day to the next, but I can't change my mode.

[Somkid]

Yes, good point I have read Hume actually I have to (don't want to) teach Hume as part of our Western philosophy program. I'm looking at this more in a Zen way and how it is working in my life now as opposed to when I was a monk.

[Scarlett Wampus]

Originally Posted by doppelgänger

So the only way to become selfless is to have no thoughts and no knowledge (Nirvana) or to disrupt the ordinary process in ways that allow conscious awareness to function, but without being limited by its own rules.

Depending on who you ask Anatta (non-self) isn't just a refutation of some kind of essential Atman, it can relate to an actual experience of inconsistency in identity, like asking "who am I" and being permeated with a sense there isn't anything to grab hold of. Such an experience can typically occur building up to and on the threshold of Kensho. Kensho itself radically changes perception and perspective, or at least it feels "radical" because it can be so unfamiliar as to come as a great shock.

Doppelgänger, I think what you said was really insightful but there might be more to non-self than you can get at there because, well, for instance to describe or understand what follows from Anatta when Kensho occurs in terms of what came before is a bit like trying to describe a painting using only physical sensations as a method of communication. To explain what I mean a little I personally wouldn't consider Kensho and the slow movement towards Satori to be a disruption of the normal rules of conscious awareness. Rather, it seems to me that conscious awareness is at least capable of more than one set of rules. In one rule set it can make sense to talk about self and non-self but in another rule set the spoken word doesn't have much use. The closest the first rule set can get to the second is in finding inconsistencies that betray a hole in its workings but it isn't equipped to explore that hole in any way other than simply acknowledging it can't.

[doppelgänger]

Originally Posted by Scarlett Wampus

Rather, it seems to me that conscious awareness is at least capable of more than one set of rules.

I agree. That's a very useful and powerful revelation.

Originally Posted by Scarlett Wampus

In one rule set it can make sense to talk about self and non-self but in another rule set the spoken word doesn't have much use.

And therein lies the rub, as followers pick up texts full of words written by mystics and think that the words themselves are the truth, instead of pointers to where to look for the truth.

Originally Posted by Scarlett Wampus

The closest the first rule set can get to the second is in finding inconsistencies that betray a hole in its workings but it isn't equipped to explore that hole in any way other than simply acknowledging it can't.

I agree. So what real use are the masters' tools to the many who are still seeking?

[Ozzie]

[quote]

Originally Posted by doppelgänger

You might enjoy David Hume's writings about identity. What you call "permanence" might be what Hume referred to as "continuity".

Skinner's conception of mind as a locus of interacting variables is also interesting here. Continuity brings permanence.

[Scarlett Wampus]

Originally Posted by doppelgänger

And therein lies the rub, as followers pick up texts full of words written by mystics and think that the words themselves are the truth, instead of pointers to where to look for the truth.

*nods* ouch. Being human is quite tragic with that...problem area. Its likely rubbed raw long before the text comes along and then it gets habitually used as a kind of temporarily effective anaesthetic without understanding that's what's happening.

We're all experts in alleviating suffering by avoidance. Absolute masters! No matter what we read we're likely to find ways to use it as a form of avoidance since our own use of language will have habitually become a tool to that end as well as everything else. What's more, so rarely are we actually exposed to words that suggest actually facing our suffering in stillness might be worth a go that its extremely easy to miss the point, let alone be able to follow something so counter-intuitive & bitter tasting for more than a very short time.

Originally Posted by doppelgänger

I agree. So what real use are the masters' tools to the many who are still seeking?

Not much, but I think its fair to say that most masters would overwhelmingly prefer the opportunity to train rather than accept the invitation to teach. No point wasting their own time as well as ours! "If I were to demonstrate the Great Matter in strict keeping with the teaching of the Patriarchal School, I simply couldn't open my mouth" - Rinzai