It is impossible to make any claim of attainment or realization without a sense of me and mine

Q & A
29

It often is, but you don’t truly come into contact with anything permanent, and all of the 5 aggregates are impermanent. Your idea, perception, or sensing of any sort of permanent thing such as a law or concept are created and ceased.

Saying “there is some self behind the impermanent processes of the mind” is a self theory. It is subtle in that you may still be calling the impermanent processes self, but either way, The Buddha mentioned many self theories beyond just materialism:

DN1

‘That which is called “the eye”, “the ear”, “the nose”, “the tongue”, and also “the body”: that self is impermanent, not lasting, transient, perishable. That which is called “mind” or “sentience” or “consciousness”: that self is permanent, everlasting, eternal, imperishable, remaining the same for all eternity.’
…
“The self and the cosmos are eternal, barren, steady as a mountain peak, standing firm like a pillar. They remain the same for all eternity, while these sentient beings wander and transmigrate and pass away and rearise.”
…
The Realized One understands this: ‘If you hold on to and attach to these grounds for views it leads to such and such a destiny in the next life.’ He understands this, and what goes beyond this. And since he does not misapprehend that understanding, he has realized extinguishment within himself. Having truly understood the origin, ending, gratification, drawback, and escape from feelings, the Realized One is freed through not grasping.

These are the principles—deep, hard to see, hard to understand, peaceful, sublime, beyond the scope of logic, subtle, comprehensible to the astute—which the Realized One makes known after realizing them with his own insight. And those who genuinely praise the Realized One would rightly speak of these things.

30

I do not really doubt the qualities of the Buddha Bran.

Do you believe that a dear that is afraid of a lion and runs for life is selfish?
Suppose someone abuses me, and i become angry, that is selfish?
If i have a desire to live is that selfish?
if the Buddha does not want ot teach expacting trouble for himself that is not selfish?

31

When i say that there is a stable sense of self i do not say that it is permanently present. I have also said that a sense of self can be totally absent. But IF there is a sense of self it is always the same kind of sense of self. It is not that when you awaken in the morning you have a totally different sense of self. Difficult to admit. Why? Isnt it true?

I believe this phenomena that one does not feel that ones sense of self changes can be explained by the natural radiance of the mind . Like a lamp. It produces the same light although it is not literally the same light. You see. I believe with the radiance of the mind it is the same. And we pick this up immediately when we awaken. We sense that same light, that same clarity, although it is not literally the same light and clarity. But for us, it feels that way because the quality of the light, is the same. Minds clarity remains the same clarity.

I think this is not a bad explanations of the perception of a stable self.

Please notice that i also experience that a sense of self can vanish or be absent while awake.
But if it comes back, it comes back as the same sense of self.

So, now i have figured it all out.

32

So? What is the practical import of this statement to your mind? :pray:

33

Yes, and I love this example because it’s a very good example of not-self. The deer is deluded because it’s attached to itself, and so fear arises. Death is inevitable, and you don’t have to suffer over when it does happen. Delusion is indeed a good way to keep animals surviving and struggling for existence. The deer does not need to stay alive although it desires to. Nature does not care at all if you suffer or if you’re delusional. All the animals that have survived so many years are not the smartest ones, but just the ones who reproduce and stay alive easiest, both of which nature deludes us into doing (sexual lust). Although I also believe that the earliest animals came pre-loaded with selfishness since they came from godly realms, and selfishness wasn’t an evolved belief but was just there since the beginning. Compassion and giving is going beyond that kind of nature, and we’re capable of it. Of course I’m not pro death, it would be skillful for us to stay alive since our lives are pretty valuable, and stupid to kill other animals, but it is still delusional to suffer over this inevitability since “you” doesn’t really die and this body is really not “yours”.

Absolutely. I wouldn’t exactly tell an abuse victim “you’re just being selfish”, but this is true. Why would you need to become angry over this? There are a few reasons they may: they selfishly want their body to be perfect, not expecting that it would eventually change. Or, they don’t care about the pain and hate the perpetrator. The abuser is conditioned by all their past actions to act with anger towards me, how could I ever hate them for that? Even if someone is sawing off your limbs and says the most hateful things you could imagine to you, why would you need to suffer over that? You really really don’t need to nor have to, it’s an option, and it would be rooted in selfishness regarding the 5 aggregates, which is something I think you agreed is delusional as “self is something separate from those”.

Why would he teach it to people who couldn’t understand it. Or why would he want to try to teach it to them if it’s just going to generate anger in the world. Until he decided that maybe some will understand.

34

You could start a religion.

I know what you are trying to say with your whole explanation. You are basically proposing paramatman. I don’t think you have proved there is a self by saying there is always a sense of self even if it is an impermanent sense and it will just come back, a non-sequitur. However, that isn’t something that is proved just philosophically since it’s also something people end up believing from meditation, but I think this is a topic for another thread?

35

It is rather harmful self-deception which not necessarily has to be connected with dishonesty.

36

Oh yeah out of context that looks pretty wrong. I’ll change it still.

I said that to mean I agreed with the moral behind this, but not really with its relevance.

37

It is not that when thoughts cease, you cease. It is not that when a nice feeling is replaced by a painful feeling, you perceive that the pain is felt by a totally different you. In jhana, whatever you experience, you never experience the cessation of a me who abides in jhana and tastes all these changes. In our life there is this constant factor, this one who knows. I do not say that it is always present, but if present it always has the same tone, sphere, quality.

For me the practical import is that i do not really have to fear cessation of formations because that does not mean i will cease. When i first started meditating, 20 years ago, and i noticed no thoughts at all, fear arose.

The mind sees formations as a proof one exist. It looks like this…I exist because there are formations coming and going, and formations are coming and going, so I exist…
It is like we all the time confirm this way that we exist. This does really happen in the mind.
That is, i feel, the key of all ignorance. That is why all beings live in fear and become restless seekers.

38

Sorry Bran, the way you see things is, for me, a bit disturbing. I do not even know what to say.

39

I think that the one who knows is in all our lifes felt or perceived as the same but what he/she knows not.

This one who knows , i do not yet know what it is. Maha Boowa says that connected to a body it is experienced as personal and local, a me. And also as arising and ceasing. But one can also know and see some day that the one who knows is in fact a mere knowing that does not really arise and ceases
But this cannot be seen from a personal perspective.

40

Maybe because I didn’t to mention that chasing an animal to eat it is indeed a bad action, and abusing someone is also a bad action. Again, you don’t have to suffer, nothing in the world says that.

41

You should check the other thread I linked, but I will make a tiny summary:

Nancy Reigle:

the Buddha when teaching his basic doctrine of anātman, no-self, only denied the abiding reality of the personal or empirical ātman, but not the universal or authentic ātman.

Bhante Sujato (criticizing the above):

When the suttas are saying the aggregates are not self, they are not saying, “These things, which we all know are empirical realities, are not-self”. They are saying: “These things, which you take in a metaphysical way as a self, are in fact conditioned empirical realities”. It becomes obvious that “consciousness is not self” is specifically referring to the Upanishadic doctrine (i.e. that of Yajnavalkya).

Thanissaro Bhikkhu:

when all experience of the six senses ceases, there is no thought, “I am” (DN 15). So, concepts of self and not-self don’t apply.

42

I see it like this that the Buddha saw, knew, that all phenomane are in essence without sign. He knew that the nature of mind is not making signs but he knew this sign-making is the mental factor of sanna.

The signs or meaning mind instinctively, by the force of habit, projects upon phenomena,- signs as nice, attractive, ugly, repulsive, me, mine, my self, not me, not mine, not my self,- whatever signs, that is not really seeing things as they really are, but this is perception, this is the meaningful world of vinnana, the magician. But there is also the signless, empty nature of mind which is different.

Vinnana in the sutta’s is only refering to a moment of awareness. The conscious experience of a sound is the arising of ear-vinnana (many of them), a smell is the arising of smell vinnana , the awareness of an arising emotion, idea etc is a moment of arising mental vinnana.
Like waves on the ocean of the mind.

If you study the brain you will see that vinnana relies on the brain. If you damage part of the visual parts of the brain, no eye vinnana’s arise, you are blind, etc. That vinnana can survive without brain is hard to belief but it is taught like that. I believe it would be absolute impossible if there is no intelligent ground.

Also neurologic science support the idea that things we perceive have no fixed meaning but the brain makes a best guess. This meaning is attributed and can change drastically. The meaning ‘my woman’ can change drastically when certain parts of the brain are damaged. One might suddenly even see that woman that was always yourbeloved spouse, as a fraud who only says she is your woman.

The brain is always constructing meaning. Seen from introspection, we live in a meaningful world. There are signs. The most important meanings that the brain or mind attributes are me, mine, myself.

I believe Buddha discovered the domain of the signless, the domain in which perceptions can arise and cease but have no meaning as me, mine, myself or attractive and ugly, not me, not mine etc.
I believe the Buddha teaches this as the escape.

43

Thanks for this, but one can also not say that suffering is caused by oneself…that is i feel very important.

One must not burden oneself nor other people with this idea. Because suffering is arising with avijja as conditions, PS. Suffering is not something to blame or some fault or conscious decision. It is only a consequence or result of a wrong Path the mind takes.

This does not happen as choice of a self. There is no self as instigator. That is what anatta really means, i believe. We tend to project an instigator in ourselves and others that starts all.
This is the idea of atta Buddha rejected, i believe. There are only processes and no instigator.
That is why he taught Paticca Samuppada, i believe. To adress this wrong idea of an instigator at the beginning of thinking, speaking and acting.

But this idea of an instigator is very hard to abandon, while it is extremly easy in a rational way to understand that there is no instigator, only instigation. Emotionally this lies very different.
We tend to think, analyse, judge, feel, project that behind all that happens is an instigator. A personal self or a God etc.

44

@Green The idea of oneself can change, and the mind & body in themselves are always changing or flowing though there are consistent themes. I cannot make the comparison to the examples you are making because I do not think in that way. I cannot compare the mind-body to a room.

The idea of aliveness here is another term that points to consciousness. The idealogical sense of self i.e. ‘I’, a mental formation, is not the entirety of the mind-body in the same way the word hand isn’t :raised_hand: - the idea of oneself arises in dependence of the mind-body and aggregate factors. I have clearly defined this earlier on. Emptiness is only a beginning.

Dispassion is not aversion. It is possible to develop the means to rest in that peacefulness and that is the noble path. Ignorance is not-knowing, to put it plainly. It is not knowing how something actually is. Awakening is connected with insight, but the reality is, that one develops knowledge and insight. You are not born with the insight into the four foundations of mindfulness and such. This knowledge is developed.

Nibanna is when one undoes an entanglement and experiences relief. That is a minute slither of nibanna.
Ones sense of self has only ever come to arise in relationship to feelings, form, perception, mental formations and consciousness (aliveness). There is no this without that.

45

I am quit sure: All that can change is not you, such as habits, tendencies, inclinations, drifts, mentallity, feelings, desires, sensations etc. Not you.

I believe, it is not true that if, suppose, the tendency to become angry, dosa anusaya is uprooted, that you have changed into someone else. You might feel less burdened but you still have that same sense of self. The one who knows, minds essential knowing nature, cannot change. It will not happen.

Ego notion, asmi mana, is also not the same as the knowing essence of the mind which is a bare awareness, according Maha Boowa and also mahayana and vajrayana teachers, and i believe this is consistent with what EBT teaches.

I totally agree with later buddhist. Ignorance means that the nature of mind is not known as a bare awareness that is beyond all bhava, cannot be called human, cannot be affected, has no objectifying characteristics. The bacis problem is that we do not clearly see the nature of mind.
Our ideas and perceptions of mind are distorted due to the influence of lobha, dosa and moha.

Mind is not restricted in any way, it is free of limits like AN10.81 says be that is not what we perceive.
If you and I experience the mind as local, because we see, experience the world from a local point in space and time, this is not the nature of mind. This is only the result of processing sense info via senses, brain. That creates a perspective. It gives the impression that mind is something local.

Maha Boowa, like mahayana and vajrayana teachers, tell from practice, experience, that real self will be seen when the whirlpool effect of the khandha’s ceases, and it reveals we have never been isolated whirlpools in water but the water. Then one knows for sure, there is no cessation. Cessation of existence, the whirlpool-existence, is indeed happiness, but not a mere cessation. It is Home.
Nibbana is home. The Buddha sought a home for himself according Sutta Nipata. That is what he found in Nibbana, Home. That is the light of the world a Buddha brings. He has no hopeless message of a mere cessation. In stead he has the positive message that there is a Home.

46

Whether it is ‘you’ or ‘not you’ is beside the point. These terms are mental formations, i.e. ‘you and not you’. What they point to and arise from are not just mental formations. Feelings, form, perception, consciousness and mental abstraction all come together to enable you to say ‘I’. When the causes and conditions are correct, one is able to say ‘I’.

The path is less about whether or not someone becomes a different person but the sense of self is just the feeling of being alive. Then there is the idea of oneself which is subject to change. The sense of self is just the sense of self, when wakefulness is present, it is, when lucidity is present in dream, it is, but in itself this sense of beingness in deep sleep seemingly disappears (as one is no longer conscious of themselves). Therefore, it is subject to change.

The capacity of the mind to ‘know’ is beyond framing it into ‘it changes or it does not’. Knowing is knowing and it is a faculty of mind. This is a focus that I would personally discard.

Avijja, ignorance, means not-knowing. Vipasanna is insight. And samatha is calm. The definitions in english point towards the heart of these terms.

The objective of the Path is a life rooted in wellbeing and practicality.

The ideas of ‘limited and limitless’ arise in dependence with mind and language. The mind for sure is limitless in it’s capacity to name. Both space and mind are simply ‘what they are’ i.e. simply thus. There are consistent themes of both.

This is all still far too intellectual. Real self, false self - binary dichotomous language is very limiting and doesn’t speak from the middle. When A is, B is, when A and B are, C happens. This is the middle. The point isn’t believing because Maha Bowa said it but to experientially work to realise things for yourselves. The aggregate factors are just aggregate factors and nibanna is experienced in waking life whilst still endowed with the senses as well as with the operant aggregate factors as ones operating system. They are unhelpful when clung to, but when understood, are the base and means by which insight and wisdom of the way is developed.

Nibanna is release from the causes of suffering born of wisdom, concentration and ethical noble conduct leading to unalloyed freedom and recognition of perfection. Birth, old age, sickness and death aren’t the problem. Even the fact of one’s becoming isn’t a problem. It is one’s relationship to these factors that initially happened outside of your control, and transforming your response to life: one garners control and regulation over mind-body, and takes life in their stride: once the existential dilemmas have been put to sleep.

47

Only conventional ideas. In reality one cannot change. All but oneself can change.

Some can stay present all the time i have heard

For you, not for them. We talk here about the deepest things of Dhamma that cannot be understood by logic of reasoning.

I believe, in general, Dhamma is much deeper than many understand it. But that comes with resistance.
Not for me. People always only talk about khandha’s, formations seen arising and ceasing and there is no knowledge of that what is not seen arising and ceasing. It is like Dhamma is reduced to a mere focus and awareness of arising formations and one does never ever look into the nature of mind itself.
That feels for me as limited.

I very well understand what you say, because i experience this my self. That growing sense of control and regulation over body and mind gives joy, give self-esteem, gives faith in the Buddha and Path, but i believe it is very good to realise how extremely vulnerable this all is. One small blood clot and it is gone.

48

So you’ve found an atta that is permanent, stable and not subject to change. :pray: