How did you understand non-self?

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zavk
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Re: How did you understand non-self?

Post by zavk »

retrofuturist wrote:Greetings RYB,
rowyourboat wrote:How did you understand the non-self/not-self through your meditation? I think it is something worth talking about as it might point others in a useful direction (no guarantees though!) and is our duty as kalyanamittas. Undestanding non-self does not mean that person is enlightened and not even a stream entrant if I understand the insight knowledges correctly so please feel free to say how you feel. :smile:
I observe it indirectly, via anicca.

I could elaborate further, but I'd merely be duplicating what I wrote earlier in this topic...

Anatta as the basis for insight - What object? What benefit?
http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=3529" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Metta,
Retro. :)

Yeah... I've been thinking about how I could answer this question. But I find that I can't really articulate my understanding of anatta. I mean, there is the theoretical understanding. But there's also a felt, experiential (pre-theoretical?) understanding of anatta which has slowly developed over time. There's definitely greater appreciation of how fragile and arbitrary any notion of self is. But it is hard to actually put a finger on how I've come to this understanding-experience.

What I can say though, without describing the details here, is that I have experienced anicca intensely during retreats and also more generally in everyday life.
With metta,
zavk
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Ben
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Re: How did you understand non-self?

Post by Ben »

Hi Zavk and all
zavk wrote: But I find that I can't really articulate my understanding of anatta. I mean, there is the theoretical understanding. But there's also a felt, experiential (pre-theoretical?) understanding of anatta which has slowly developed over time. There's definitely greater appreciation of how fragile and arbitrary any notion of self is. But it is hard to actually put a finger on how I've come to this understanding-experience.

What I can say though, without describing the details here, is that I have experienced anicca intensely during retreats and also more generally in everyday life.
Same here. The experience defies articulation or to articulate it in any shape or form that would benefit another. Perhaps that's why the ancient ariyans resorted to poetics. Not that I put my understanding or experience on the same level as them. My roadmap seems to have been similar to yours and Retro's: experience of anatta via experience of anicca and dukkha.
kind regards

Ben
“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725

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rowyourboat
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Re: How did you understand non-self?

Post by rowyourboat »

Hi Zavk, Retro, Ben

Seeing anicca seems to be the most commonest way of understanding anatta in your experience and mine.

Ben, did seeing dukkha help in your understanding of anatta? I'm curious as this is how most suttas would phrase it. Anicca-->dukkha-->anatta. However I have yet to come across anyone who understood it quite that way. I suspected that this was because of the understanding of the atta/self was fused with it being pleasant (the radiant samadhi 'self') of ancient India. However we now approach it through other means.

with muditha
With Metta

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rowyourboat
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Re: How did you understand non-self?

Post by rowyourboat »

Hello 'reductor.

I loved your explanation of how you understood anatta. Permission to post it anonymously to another site please? :smile:

with metta

RYB
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Ben
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Re: How did you understand non-self?

Post by Ben »

Hi RYB
rowyourboat wrote: Ben, did seeing dukkha help in your understanding of anatta?
Yes, definitely. I was on retreat some years ago and experienced a visceral and profound "knowingness" of anatta. Preceding that was the growing awareness of the dukkha characteristic of all and everything that I was encountering in observing vedana. It just seemed that the 'contemplation' of dukkha seemed to just happen naturally and automatically when my meditation was deep and stable (for want of better expression).
I hope that helps.
metta

Ben
“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725

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Reductor
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Re: How did you understand non-self?

Post by Reductor »

rowyourboat wrote:Hello 'reductor.

I loved your explanation of how you understood anatta. Permission to post it anonymously to another site please? :smile:

with metta

RYB
Sure, go ahead.
rowyourboat
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Re: How did you understand non-self?

Post by rowyourboat »

Hi Ben

Thanks for the reply. I should be clear in my questions: did your understanding of dukkha lead to (proximate cause!) your understanding of anatta, or was it something else?

with metta
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Re: How did you understand non-self?

Post by Ben »

I believe so, yes.
kind regards

Ben
“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725

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Re: How did you understand non-self?

Post by retrofuturist »

Greetings,

A sutta framework I find useful for understanding anatta...

SN 22.95: Phena Sutta
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... .than.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Form is like a glob of foam;
feeling, a bubble;
perception, a mirage;
fabrications, a banana tree;
consciousness, a magic trick
Metta,
Retro. :)
"Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."
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Ben
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Re: How did you understand non-self?

Post by Ben »

Beautiful!
Thanks mate.

B
“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725

Compassionate Hands Foundation (Buddhist aid in Myanmar) • Buddhist Global ReliefUNHCR

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zavk
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Re: How did you understand non-self?

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rowyourboat wrote:Hi Ben

Thanks for the reply. I should be clear in my questions: did your understanding of dukkha lead to (proximate cause!) your understanding of anatta, or was it something else?

with metta

Interesting question. In a manner of speaking, I would say yes too. It is by confronting dukkha directly at the level of nama and rupa that I learn to understand what dukkha really is. And the more I understand what dukkha really is the more I begin to understand anicca and anatta.

Yet, to say that my understanding of dukkha was the 'proximate cause' for my understanding of anatta doesn't quite describe my experience, if by 'proximate cause' we mean 'that which is immediately responsible for causing an observed result'. This is one of those things that's hard to articulate because it is a kind of felt understanding. Maybe I can explain my experience with the notion of dependent origination.

Proximate cause implies linear causality. To this extent, it doesn't sit well with dependent origination. Dependent origination does refer to a law of cause and effect but it is not a linear one.

So if I reflect on my experience from the perspective of dependent origination, I cannot strictly say that my understanding of dukkha 'led to' my understanding of anatta. Well, in a conventional sense, it does. To begin on the path, I have to accept that there is suffering and be willing to investigate it before I can really appreciate anicca and anatta. But in investigating the nature of dukkha I am also at the same time observing anicca and anatta.

This is especially so during intense meditation. When observing nama and rupa, I may experience all sorts of pleasant and unpleasant thoughts and sensations. But observing these thoughts and sensations--even if they are extremely unpleasant--doesn't mean that I've understood what dukhha 'really is'. I will not understand what dukkha 'really is' until I see clearly that thoughts and sensations are impermanent and accept with equanimity that they do not belong to 'me'.

So to this extent, I wouldn't say that the understanding of dukkha 'led to' the understanding of anatta (or anicca). I would prefer to say that the understanding of dukkha, anicca, and anatta mutually condition one another or are mutually constitutive. If there is causality here it is not a linear one.

:anjali:
Last edited by zavk on Wed Feb 24, 2010 4:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
With metta,
zavk
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Ben
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Re: How did you understand non-self?

Post by Ben »

Hi Zavk
I'm so glad that you posted the above. I have had much the same thoughts.
metta

Ben
“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725

Compassionate Hands Foundation (Buddhist aid in Myanmar) • Buddhist Global ReliefUNHCR

e: [email protected]..
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effort
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Re: How did you understand non-self?

Post by effort »

i'm not experienced like some known practitioners here but as much as i feel relax with annata still i cant connect with annica.
Freawaru
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Re: How did you understand non-self?

Post by Freawaru »

rowyourboat wrote: did your understanding of dukkha lead to (proximate cause!) your understanding of anatta, or was it something else?

with metta
Hi RYB,

for me it is kinda other way round. When I watched the character as a whole and on high speed with that knowing "this is not me, I am not it" there was no pain. Pain is that what I observed, namely the personality could be in physical, emotional, mental or spiritual pain. But there is another kind of pain, yet, and I experience it again and again when I merge with the character, when I loose the observing perspective. It is also there when the character is in jhana, I suspect it must be related to the merging (absorption) process itself, whatever the object. But I loose the awareness of this kind of pain real fast, it only takes a second or less and I have fully grown used to it by the time I can access the memories of the character as "my memories".
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Re: How did you understand non-self?

Post by rowyourboat »

Hi Zavk, Ben, Retro

Today I was listening to a sermon in Sinhalese by a skilled monk- he spoke of how the eye brings us nothing but dukkha and yet we consider some of it to be dukkha and the other bits sukkha (pleasant/satisfactory). He went on to portray the whole body and all mental states as nothing but a mass of suffering. I had a glimpse of anatta- because something so vile and fit to be discarded as this could ever be considered as me. There was this incompatibility- like oil and water. At our depths we wouldn't identify with something so foul, as myself -'egodystonic'. This leads me to the understanding that the depth of unsatisfactoriness/uselessness of it all, which the Buddha was talking about was quite deep, in order to get a glimpse of anatta in the manner mentioned in the suttas (which is often anicca-->dukkha-->anatta). In that sense the world 'revulsion' (nibbida) fits in very well.

I have heard a few people say that they did not know at what point they understood anatta. Similarly others are quite clear of the point that they understood it- because it was a bit of a surprise/shock- or a serendipitous finding. I guess this is why the Buddha never said 'folks this is the method and technique you must do to understand anatta' but laid out the whole satipatthana to explore.

Retro- love the Phena sutta. Talk about emptiness!

with metta

Matheesha
Last edited by rowyourboat on Wed Feb 24, 2010 2:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
With Metta

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