The jhana does that - when the ‘doer’ vanishes - read the basic method. The path continues but no traveller on it can be seen. The notion of a traveller gets eroded until it vanishes for the last time - bingo - game over. There are no footprints on the other shore.
You’re not disagreeing with me. You are saying that in various levels of jhana the sense of self is not fully eradicated. It is attenuated and gradually diminished, and only at the achievement of final attainment is it completely gone. Yes.
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It’s attenuated, eroded, seen-through, glimpse after glimpse. The attenuation is a consequence of the eightfold path as a whole.
In jhanas - samma-samadhi - the 8th factor in the path, there’s not attenuation, there is an abeyance, an absence, a vanishing of the ‘doer’ - the sense of self then, when the senses turn back on, the ‘notion’ arises: I am.
In the wake of jhana there is an opportunity for deep insight and then, a return to daily life.
When bare awareness continues in the wake of natural stillness - immersion - the attenuation, the unraveling, the seeing stays on until everything becomes clear.
The attenuation happens as a consequence of the ongoing progress of insight. This is something different from the vanishing trick that comes and goes.
The vanishing is enormously helpful when it is ‘seen’ for what it is - not before.
Everybody has a right to their own experience and perspective. There are many paths. Some are right at the right time for some, and others at the right time for others.
This forum is for sharing, not for wining a battle of views or ‘correcting’ the views or experiences of other participants please.
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Of course, but I’m not sure what you mean by a hot mess. The Sila must be natural, unforced, there is a very healthy orientation to daily life. There’s warmth, beauty, love, good will and clear seeing, there is great joy.
Couldn’t agree more 
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I don’t think there is much basis for thinking that the sense of self is completely suspended and absent in even the lowest jhanas. That is inconsistent with the general descriptions of how the mediator advances through the jhanas. At each stage, the mediator has abandoned attachment to phenomena that were present in the previous stage, but residual attachments remain. Attachments always entail a sense of mine. For example, if one is clinging to bodily sensation, or a mental image, or a feeling, or even a perception of infinite space that is because one is not seeing that entity as it is - a free-floating constructed phenomenon in the chain of becoming that has nothing inherent in it that pertains to oneself - but because one still somehow experiences it as my bodily sensation, my mental image, my feeling or my perception of infinite space. If all of that clinging were absent even at the level of the first jhana, then there would be no need to progress through the remaining jhanas and continue to let go of things.
It’s true that in absorption, one does lack what we could call occurrenct, articulated I-thoughts: that sort of manifest inner speech where one is “thinking to oneself” things like “I am meditating”, “I am sitting on the floor”, “I am observing his thought” etc. But I don’t think lacking such I thoughts is sufficient for lacking a sense of self.
For example, suppose you are looking out your window watching a squirrel scamper around in a tree. Then it suddenly occurs to you “I am watching a squirrel”. So you then have an occurrent articulated I-thought where there was not one before. But that doesn’t mean you had no sense of self before the I-thought arose. If that were the case than non-dual awareness would be an ordinary phenomenon - not a difficult spiritual attainment.
There are various neurological syndromes in which people (unwillingly) lose their ordinary sense of “ownership” of something that is generally experienced as part of their self: they might report that thoughts are occurring in consciousness that they themselves are not thinking, or that the hand they see at the end of their arm is not part of their own bodies. Similarly, there are other cases in which people can be induced to experience a foreign object as part of their own bodies. When these experiences occur, they are apparently quite jarring - in part because hey were not sought and expected. I think the best interpretation of the jhanas is that one learns to gradually detach more and more of the contents of one’s experience from one’s sense of self, as well as overcome the ever-present fear that the tight mental grip one has on these contents will be lost, along with the accompanying sense of security based on being something or being someone or being somewhere. If that happens, the person to whom it happens could experience the result (or attempt to describe it later) as no longer existing. One could say one experiences oneself as completely detached from everything. But conceptualizing it that way suggest a conception of some nameless and ungraspable something that has become detached. But I think this experience of total liberation, a total absence of fettered connection to the things that are coming into being and passing away in experience is what is involved in the deconstruction of bhava. During whatever period of time this state lasts, one lack any sense of oneself as existing or becoming.
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All I mean is that I don’t think it is plausible to think that there are a lot of people around who are living a chaotic, stressful, conflict-torn and lust-driven life and then escaping into the jhanas. If your everyday life isn’t fairly well tamed, peaceful and wholesome, it is unlikely that you can attain jhanas while sitting- although no doubt you can at least calm down and relax a bit. The idea that the jhanas are some scary escapist addiction that isn’t getting you anywhere doesn’t seem right to me, because the jhanas are a fruit of right living on the path, and then support better living.
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After meditation I raise my hand to open the gate. Sometimes I look at the hand blankly wondering what it is doing. Then something clicks and goes, “oh that hand”. It’s like the reverse of the mirror-neuron effect.
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How does the following quote sit with you?
“The’ doer’ is silent before entering Jhana but
it is still there. Inside Jhana, the ‘doer’ is completely gone. The ‘knower’ is still functioning, you
are fully aware, but all the controls are now beyond reach. You cannot even form a single thought,
let alone make a decision… Never
before in your whole life have you ever experienced being so stripped of all control yet so fully
awake.” - Ajahn Brahm
If there’s know possibility of forming a single thought or making a decision, how is anyone going to direct their attention or, enter into or, enter anything at ‘will’?
Then, we may ask a question about this so-called ‘knower’. The knowing is just knowing, there is no sense of: I am knowing and there is an object that I am attending to. That dualistic state is before jhanas. When the absence of a ‘sense of self’ is referred to - above - it’s an attempt to describe a knowing without any dualism.
“There is just a clear
singleness of perception, an experience of non-dualistic bliss which continues unchanging for a
very long time. This is not a trance, but a state of heightened awareness. This is said so that you
may know for yourself whether what you take to be a Jhana is real or imaginary.” - Ajahn Brahm
" Trust the Dhamma and let the Jhana warmly embrace you for an effortless, body-less
and ego-less, blissful experience that will be the most profound of your life. Have the courage to
fully relinquish control…" - Ajahn Brahm
All control relinquished, no control over the process, no ‘will’, and “egoless” - Ajahn Brahm
Then it ends!
There’s no will and no doer and nondualistic bliss and, it’s egoless.
Is there still something you find problematic in all this?
(Laurence, who are you addressing? The post looks like you have quoted yourself)
It was a reply to Dan’s last reply directed to ‘merely labelled’ Laurence. I did quote something I said earlier, in order to clarify what I meant by the ‘temporary’ absence of a ‘sense of self’.
For the life of me, I can’t understand why this is so difficult to contemplate.
The possibility, that there is a complete - but temporary - vanishing of subjectivity.
If this didn’t happen a jhana would not be as bizarre as it ‘actually’ is. It would just mean somebody was exceedingly calm and clear or, had gone to sleep, fainted or, they had been knocked unconscious, anaesthetised perhaps.
If we are prepared to consider the possibility of something other than the above happenings, an abeyance that has enormous potential for great
benefit, we are in the right ball-park. 
I think (?) the confusion might be one of language. We all seem to agree that the sense of self diminishes through meditation. Please say yes! 
There seem to be some slight differences in the understanding of exactly how much the self disappears. It’s not exactly like a switch turning out a light. The sense of self doesn’t just “switch off”. So there is a gradual cessation, an immersion into non-self.
Per Ajahn Brahmali, the Buddha himself in fourth jhana had some residual self.
Even after the Buddha was completely Enlightened, in MN121 he says to Ananda:
There is only this that is not emptiness, namely that associated with the six sense fields dependent on this body and conditioned by life.’
That there body was the Buddha’s “self”, if you will.
In terms of the right ball-park, I think the ball-park is the end of suffering and less self is less suffering!
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Your right - it’s hilarious!
By ‘diminishment’ I assume you mean something like: attenuation? A gradual erosion of the sense of self? It doesn’t happen all at once - is that correct? As we practice we become more familiar with this?
It has ‘already’ been explained above - did you read it? Consider rereading it, maybe then, you will clearly understand what is actually being said.
There is certainly a ‘diminishing’ of the ‘sense of self’ that is experienced in Buddhist meditation practice. There has never been the denial of this. It’s not a case of either/or - is that clear?
Quite distinct from the experience of diminishing - letting go - that takes place in the stages before immersion, there are two ‘other’ forms of phenomena that take place with the deepening of natural stillness and, the progress of insight.
These are different, not the same as, the commonplace experience of ‘diminishment’ that takes place in the earlier stages of meditation - the basic method.
These distinctions are important for gaining greater clarity about what actually happens - is that clear?
In addition, to the fairly commonplace diminishment of settling into the moment, there is also the ending of attachment to the ‘notion’ of personality-belief. This happens in the context of the path as a whole, with the progress of insight.
There’s a complete unraveling as the letting go deepens - if it’s not interrupted. It gets interrupted, it’s difficult to see how it could be otherwise in a gradual process of learning?
The permanent ending of personality-belief does not happen as a consequence of jhana. However, without jhanic-attainment it’s difficult to see how it would come to pass?
In jhanas there are egoless and temporary happenings. They are good, extremely beneficial in many ways but, they don’t amount to an Aryan attainment like stream-entry - is that clear? This is a sincere attempt at clarifying important differences.
There can be the slow progress of insight but, there’s also a decisive shift at stream-entry. Do you understand the difference so far - we read and/or heard about this - correct?
2 down and, 1 to go! The temporary vanishing of the sense of self in jhanas, something ‘Ajahn Brahm’ refers to as: egolessness - see the quote above - is the 3rd kind of phenomena - pointed to.
Please say you at least understand what has just been clarified. It’s not important that you agree, that’s up to you. Do you understand what has been said and, why? 
Interesting.
I have nothing in my experience that matches exactly what you have said nor have I read anything in the suttas that matches what you said. My own experience is simply fading awaaaaaaaay into simplicity. There is a phase change into not thinking, but that is probably not what you are talking about. My aware but not-thinking phase change roughly matches Bhante Sujato’s “without placing the mind…” of entering second jhana. It’s the same when I climb, there really isn’t a distinction between subject/object–the climb and I move together.
I’m not sure how to proceed here. Are you describing your own experience or are you describing your understanding of Ajahn Brahm?
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Often the words used in Suttas and discussions are too strong in my taste. “Ego”, “conceit”, “myself”, “attachment”, “sense of self” etc. seem to imply a strong delusion. Who knows, probably from a liberated standpoint the delusion, ego are indeed unbelievably strong, even in samadhi - and it’s good to keep that in mind.
But in order to describe more meaningfully the structure of reality of the subject it might be helpful to get more formal… As long as there is experience at all, there is a subject and subjectivity at work. It doesn’t matter if I’m blissed out or aware of an object, or of myself. The subject is aware of me. This must be necessarily so. The experience of the subject is cooked out by a machine, and that the subject is not experiencing (e.g. in sleepless dream, non-dual walking, or jhana) doesn’t mean that the machine has stopped working.
I feel that we usually put too much emphasis on experience, joy, bliss, if a sense of self was felt or not. Not to say that this is worthless, but it can go only so far. Someone deep asleep is not liberated but takes a break, and takes less beating than in contact with the world - with the machine’s ability to produce subjectivity fully intact.
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Oddly, even in a dream one can often grab or let be.
The dream-state is very irrelevant. My reference was to dreamless sleep - or any state for that matter where one thinks to be outside of self-experience.
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It’s not appropriate in this forum to answer that question directly, it is a breach of the guidelines.
The question can be answered indirectly: my understanding of what ‘Ajahn Brahm’ is saying is enabled as a consequence of happenings in my own journey of discovery.
Regardless of whether it corresponds to your own experience, a close-reading of: ‘The Basic Method’ will reveal that I have not said anything that is not found in that booklet.
In other words, you will ‘find’ that what I am saying is consistent with everything I have heard from ‘Ajahn Brahm’ since 1988.
I had the opportunity to share what had happened in my own journey with him and this was a great blessing. The opportunity to explore these themes with such a beautiful Dhamma teacher is good kamma IMO.