How did you understand non-self?

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rowyourboat
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Re: How did you understand non-self?

Post by rowyourboat »

Hi Freewaru

The Buddha said that ignorance exists because of a lack of samadhi! Your ability to slow things down really helps. So observing the observer observing has helped! Maybe the fact that there is no one observer chips away at the self view. I suppose being able to dissolve the boundaries of those 'selves' and know that they are processes completes the dissolution of the self view.

I have come to feel that a lot of people understand non-self or whatever the definition is but are reluctant to admit it. But I don't think there is any great danger in doing it. We can just learn so much from each other as long as it is done in the right spirit.

with metta

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

Post by Freawaru »

Hi RYB
rowyourboat wrote:Hi Freewaru

I have come to feel that a lot of people understand non-self or whatever the definition is but are reluctant to admit it. But I don't think there is any great danger in doing it. We can just learn so much from each other as long as it is done in the right spirit.

with metta

RYB
It seems to me that one reason why many are reluctant is that there seems to be a wide-spread belief (at least on the internet) that an-atta means the destruction of the personality. When I started to discuss with Buddhists on an internet forum years ago the majority on that board was into hating their personality (and those of all others) and the patterns and processes associated with it. Many were depressed, if you ask me. When describing the sense of detachment one can experience some Buddhists (even those who claimed to be monks) assumed I talked about depersonalisation disorder. Their idea was that by not talking in terms of "I did..." or "I felt..." they were understanding an-atta.

So the danger is that one can get responses of misunderstanding and even insults. That is why I like this forum, by previous responses I know I can trust people to stay polite and there are practitioners who really know what they talk about, basing their opinions on own experiences and not on depression coloured interpretation of suttas.
meindzai
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Re: How did you understand non-self?

Post by meindzai »

As I mentioned in an earlier thread, I'm realizing more and more how little (for me) the technique of meditation matters, vs. how much or how consistently I am actually doing it. It's not so much that I've stopped completely trying to do any technique. However, I'm learning to balance how much that is useful vs. how much my mind has a "mind of it's own" and that sometimes it's better just not to interfere.

-M
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retrofuturist
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Re: How did you understand non-self?

Post by retrofuturist »

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. :)
"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."
Reductor
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Re: How did you understand non-self?

Post by Reductor »

Oh, all right. I'll bite. :thinking:

Since I was sixteen I've had an intellectual appreciation of notself, and accepted it as my position. Over the years I seldom meditated, and poorly when I did. However, I would habitually reflect on feelings, emotions, thoughts, experiences to see if they were something I could call self. During that time I think I got a pretty good feel for what wasn't really part of my identity, and didn't see anything that was solid or permanent, lasting, etc. Figured I had this down pat.

Well, after I started to meditate properly and get some skill at it, I took up the cemetery contemplations. The second one, I think it is, is where the corpse is being consumed by wildlife... so I had a pretty good mental image going on, and then I wondered, out of the blue: "why would they eat that" It wasn't that I doubted a dog or bird would eat decaying flesh. Rather, I wondered why they need to eat at all. Then I contemplated what they were ingesting and what happened to it once it was consumed. Then I had a rather complete insight: they accumulate to their forms, all the while shedding from their forms... food goes in, bodies grow, heat is produced, waste is expelled, they go on, eventually dieing and also being consumed. The implication was clearly that all that I had, bodily, was accumulated in the same way, and when life left it, it would be very quick for all that I was calling 'my body' to be stripped and redistributed. If I died in the jungle, all that was 'mine' would be scattered across a hundred square miles by day break. So much for all my tender care of the body. Almost immediately I had another image arise in my mind, and it was that of an embryo, and I realized I had accumulated and shed since my conception ... at no point was I not accumulating or shedding, and was doing both all the time... my body was in flux at every moment, as are all bodies. At death the accumulation stops, but the shedding continues until there is nothing left to call 'me' or 'mine', although other beings would certainly call it 'theirs' and 'themselves'.

While all this is intellectually unsurprising, there was a shock when I realized it. That was the day I really appreciated how ignorant I was: totally overlooking the obvious.
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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
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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

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

e: [email protected]..
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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Ben
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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

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

e: [email protected]..
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retrofuturist
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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

e: [email protected]..
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