This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Self and Not Self - Gil Fronsdal. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Good morning. I have a couple of announcements.
First, in about three weeks, we’re going to have a community meeting here at IMC after the Sunday morning program. It’s a wonderful time to have these meetings. We usually make a big circle in the outer hall, and I’ll talk a little bit about some of the things happening at IMC—the development, growth, changes, and opportunities to volunteer. I hope some of you will come to that. That’s on the 24th of August.
Second, a wonderful nonprofit that arose out of IMC called Insight World Aid has a number of initiatives. One of them is a relatively simple but very significant volunteer effort. Once a month, here in Redwood City, they gather at the Catholic Worker House. The Catholic Worker is a wonderful, liberal Catholic movement that started many years ago. We’re being given use of the main room at this house on Thursday mornings to make sandwiches and bag lunches to deliver to homeless people. I think the goal is to make a hundred of them.
If you’d like to volunteer, you can go on the Insight World Aid website, insightworldaid.org. It’s not far from here in Redwood City. They meet on Thursdays at 12:00 noon. Rahm, who is out there, is one of the coordinators, so you can talk to him if you’re interested. I think it should be a wonderful time, both for the activity and for the wonderful historical nature of this house tucked away in downtown Redwood City. The next time they’re doing it is this Thursday.
I’m going to bravely broach the topic of self and not-self. It’s fairly common for people who hear dharma teachers talk on this subject to just be confused and perplexed, thinking, “This is really strange. What are they talking about?” I’m hoping to make it ordinary, simple, and straightforward so that you can make it relevant for yourself.
I’ll begin with an introduction that approaches it from the side, preparing the ground for it. Once I’ve sat down in meditation for a little while and feel fairly settled and present, my meditation changes to some degree. This could be represented by the phrase “trust emergence,” or “allow things to emerge,” or as I like to say, “yield to what’s emerging.”
It helps to understand that we have countless experiences in any given day if you take into account every little sight, smell, taste, touch, thought, and feeling. There’s such a wide kaleidoscope of things happening all the time. Some of them clearly appear, emerge, and then dissipate. They’re there, and then they’re not. Days come and go. The morning appeared, and now it’s pretty much full light. At some point, it’s going to start dissipating and returning to darkness. Meals come and go. An inhale begins and it ends. You yield to the inhale, and it’ll come to a time when it stops and is no longer there.
All of you shared an experience today that arose and then dissipated: walking through one of the two doors to come into this building. You probably weren’t thinking, “Oh, there’s a door, and I’m yielding to the experience of the door,” but in fact, that experience came to you and then it became irrelevant. You’re no longer concerned that IMC has doors. How many times do you think about that during the meditation?
Things come and they go. So, in meditation, when I’m settled, all kinds of things can emerge: emotions, sensations, sounds, even thoughts. There’s something about yielding to them that allows them to more easily just move right through. Part of the reason for that is that yielding is an alternative to being involved with them—to picking them up, reacting to them, participating in them, or making them into a big thing. Some experiences will stay for a long time because we’re so preoccupied and concerned about them.
For example, I’m sitting here peacefully, and my knee starts to ache. I’ve had a lot of knee pain over these many decades of sitting, but it wasn’t hurting today. It could easily have happened. And because of all these years, I thought I was over it, so I get annoyed. “How could this be? This knee of mine is just a nuisance. This is annoying.” Now I’m really locked into it. I’m concerned with it. I’m not just letting that sensation arise and be there as a perception that comes and goes while another sound or thought fills the space. I’m locked into it.
Then I think, “Gil, how could you be annoyed? After all these years of practice, I should be beyond being annoyed. This is an embarrassment to Buddhism and to myself. It’s important that these good people here don’t learn that I’m annoyed because then they’ll judge me. This annoyance is a real problem, and I really need to get rid of it. I probably need to let go of something.” I’m building and feeding and solidifying the annoyance into this big monster.
If I just sat there, minding my own business, and the knee hurt, and annoyance arose, and I yielded to the annoyance, just allowing it to come—welcome—it probably would have just passed through. It wouldn’t have been a big deal. Annoyance is not such a big deal in the scale of things. So this yielding is an alternative to getting caught and making something solid out of it.
First, regarding this teaching on self and not-self, I’m using the word “not-self” very purposely because I believe this is what the Buddha was saying. In popular Buddhism, it’s often the idea that the Buddha taught “no-self,” that there is no self. In fact, he did not teach that. He taught that if you have the opinion, the view, that a self does not exist, that opinion is just suffering. He goes on to say that opinion is a quagmire, a quicksand; it’s being lost in the wilderness. It’s not a useful, valuable thing.
But he also said the same about the view that “the self exists.” To have the opinion that the self exists is also suffering. It’s a quagmire to be caught in philosophically. It works a little bit like the knee pain and the annoyance. Once you start forming an opinion about whether there is a self or there is no self, you’re starting to participate, to contract, to make something solid out of the constantly emerging and disappearing world of experience. You’re caught up in an opinion, a mental thought. I’ve known people who were “no-self” fundamentalists, and you can feel the intensity of this belief they have and how important it is. They’ve locked into an opinion.
The alternative is to stay in the world of emergence. Things emerge and things cease. In one teaching, the Buddha said that the opinions “the self exists” and “the self does not exist” are both a form of suffering, or in a way that makes more sense to us in modern English, both of those are stress. It’s stressful to have that opinion, maybe because it goes against the direct experience of how things are constantly moving and shifting.
The alternative the Buddha gave was not to get into the philosophy of whether there is or is not a self, but rather to notice the stress, and to see that the stress itself is emerging and disappearing. It arises and passes. This ability to be settled and quiet enough so that we’re not caught in the thinking mind allows stress to emerge. An opinion appears, like, “I shouldn’t be annoyed.” Instead of getting on that bandwagon, I just yield to it, get out of the way of it, allow it to come. And it passes through pretty easily because I’m not making anything of it.
Yes, we form these ideas: “This is who I am. This is myself.” Feel the stress of that, the tension of that, and allow that to be there, to move through you. You’ll see that it passes. And when the stress of this opinion passes, the opinion has also passed. What’s the reasonable thing to do then? Call on that opinion again and again? Or, as the Buddha suggested, stay with yielding to things emerging and appearing so they can both appear and disappear, so we don’t lock onto them and make them into something more than the simplicity of what they are.
The Buddha did have teachings about not-self, and I’ll get back to that. But what he taught much more than the teachings on not-self was a teaching where he said, “This…” The word is always “this,” which refers to something particular. It’s not a generalization or an abstract idea about life or who we are. He’s always pointing you to a particular experience.
The teaching he gave, related to not-self, always begins with “this.” It’s like “X this,” so you have to fill in the blank with something particular. The teaching is:
“This is not mine. This I am not. This is not myself.”
It’s always particular. What’s the problem with people saying “there is no self” or “there is a self”? Those are very general, broad philosophical categories that may have no basis in direct experience. But once we can get settled enough in meditation, quiet enough below the level of these generalizations, and be present for the particularity of the present moment, we see that “this is not self. This is not mine. This I am not.”
Here’s a simple example of how easy it is to create the idea of “mine” and then suffer from it. Most people in their meditation career will have this happen: they have to leave the meditation hall for a couple of minutes, leaving their cushion or chair. They come back two minutes later, and someone is sitting in my seat. “That’s my seat.” We didn’t even know we had created that ownership. “I was sitting there. I claimed it. I have a right to it. How could they take my seat? This is an act of violence, of radical disrespect, thoughtless, careless, probably conceited.”
If no one had taken the seat, you would have just sat down, and the thought “this is my seat” wouldn’t have arisen so strongly. You wouldn’t have carried an opinion of that person for the next 10 years. A week later, you wouldn’t even remember which spot was “yours.” It’s not that important, but we are so capable of glomming on to “mine.”
But is it really yours? One of my favorite stories is of Suzuki Roshi,1 the Zen master in San Francisco. There’s a photograph of him holding up his glasses, leaning forward with a sparkle in his eyes, and he says, “These are not my glasses, but you know about my tired old eyes, so you let me use them.”
“My glasses.” That’s stressful. It’s so easy to add stress on top of that simple word, “mine.” It doesn’t have to be. Sometimes, you do people a favor by using the word. If a neighbor needs to get to the doctor and their car isn’t working, it’s easier to say, “You can use my car,” than to give a long explanation about the legal rights granted to you by the state of California. By the time you finish, your neighbor might have died.
I’ve heard idealistic Buddhists go to great lengths to not use the word “I.” When asked, “How are you today?” they might say, “Well, there’s a feeling of energy in my chest that’s kind of hot and moving around…” It doesn’t really tell me much, and I don’t feel a connection to the person. We do our friends a favor when they ask how we are to just say, “I’m fine.”
However, these words—mine, I, me—are powerful magnets for attachments, for other concepts and ideas we put on top of them. They are magnets for us to internalize societal ideas about what “me, myself, and mine” is all about, and we suffer because of it.
In Buddhist teaching, the problem that can occur with “mine” is craving and clinging. From that craving can come hatred. “I hate that person who sat in my meditation seat.” The idea of craving can come along really quickly as soon as we say “it’s mine.” Your shoes don’t care who wears them. The caring is the contraction, the “this is mine.” It’s reasonable to have some concern, but it can be a magnet for intense clinging, craving, and upset.
This idea of me, myself, and mine also extends to others: they, them, theirs. We do a tremendous disservice to other people. “The person who took my Birkenstocks, I know who that person is. That person is evil.” But maybe they just made a mistake. We build this universe of strong opinions about people.
Is there an alternative? Do we have to always glom on craving and what follows? In this practice, we’re learning to relax the extra that we add on top of me, myself, and mine.
With “mine,” the problem is craving. With “this I am,” the problem is conceit. In Buddhism, conceit is not just “I’m better than everyone else”; it’s also “I’m worse than everyone else.” It’s a way of locking on to the idea “this is how I am.” “I’m an inadequate person,” “I’m a valuable person,” “I’m this kind of person.” Some of that is okay to say. If someone asks what I do, and I say, “I’m a Buddhist meditation teacher,” it gives them some sense of who I am. It can be innocent.
But so many times, the use of “mine” or “I am” is not so innocent. The third one, which is much more philosophical and existential, is “this is myself.” When the Buddha used the Pāli word attā2 (the same as the Sanskrit word ātman), it’s usually translated as “self.” But in the ancient world, it’s probably better translated with a capital ‘S’, as it refers to an existential reality, or as some prefer, “soul.” The great Burmese teacher U Sīlānanda3 preferred to translate anattā (not-self) as “not-soul.”
The Buddha is not saying there is no soul, nor is he saying there is a soul. He’s always saying that this—my thoughts, my consciousness, my intentions, my generalized sense of being alive—this is not the soul. This is not the self. This is not who I am. This is not mine.
That’s why mindfulness is so useful. It gets us to drop below abstract concepts to be in the flow of direct experience. The more quiet you become, the more this insight of not-self is understood. It’s not meant to be a belief; it’s meant to be something you experience directly for yourself when the mind is peaceful and calm enough that you can be with the present moment details of experience.
Things emerge and they disappear. In deeper meditation, there is nothing in your direct experience that’s not coming and going, that’s not part of this flow of change. Then it becomes obvious that anything that emerges and passes, free of the overlay of concepts and abstractions, doesn’t qualify as being the self. It doesn’t qualify as being mine. It doesn’t qualify as being who I am.
In that direct experience, the overlay of interpreting experience that way is felt as extra, as stressful. People will say, “Everywhere I look in meditation, nothing qualifies as the self.”
So when the Buddha taught not-self, it was always particular: this is not self. He wasn’t making a general philosophical statement. He was a phenomenologist, concerned with the phenomena of direct experience as it appears. And in that direct experience, you can’t find anything that qualifies to be the self, or even to be mine. When a gentle wind brushes against your cheek, is that mine? No, it’s just a coolness against your cheek. It’s wonderful to have a thought arise and not take it as mine. The thought arises. It’s so much simpler. As soon as it’s my thought, it becomes a magnet for a lot of ideas of me and mine that go along with it.
The purpose of this is that in this state, we’ve let go of so much clinging. The body itself knows how to heal in a profound way. The heart can heal, but we have to get out of the way. Trusting emergence and allowing things to unfold is one of the great arts we can learn. By getting to this deeper place of things just arising and passing, without adding concepts of me, myself, and mine, we have a better chance to release some of the deepest holdings we have.
Life is much more fun this way. In things that are really fun and engaging, like playing basketball, if you suddenly start thinking, “Am I the best player on the court? I need to post my stats so everyone knows I’m the best,” you probably stop being a good basketball player. You’re too busy fantasizing to see the ball when it’s thrown to you.
So much of what we do—playing music, making art, having wonderful conversations—goes so much nicer if we don’t get caught in these ideas of me, myself, and mine. To be inhibited is to be caught in this world. This is not just relevant in deep meditation, but deep meditation is a wonderful place to learn about it, so that it transfers more often into our regular life.
In summary, the Buddha did not teach there is no self. He did not teach there is a self. Both of those he saw as just opinions, and to have those opinions is a form of stress. The alternative is to be very careful not to make a self out of the particular details of your experience. Just allow things to be in the emergence of experience. Things come and they go. This doesn’t mean you act on every impulse, but you can be wiser about how you act. You allow the impulse to emerge, and the art of mindfulness is to allow things to emerge without getting caught or entangled by them.
The not-self teaching of the Buddha is always particular. It’s about some particular experience, not a general philosophical view. The specialty of this tradition is to always come back to the direct experience here and now. And if you remember nothing else, maybe you’ll remember these two words: trust emergence.
Questioner 1: Thank you. I had a question regarding generalizations. I think it’s clear that Buddhist practice is all about the here and now. So I was wondering about your perspective on if these generalizations are ever useful. Where is their place?
Gil Fronsdal: Oh, we use them all the time, of course. We have to use them wisely. Some of them are conventions that we want to live by because everyone else agrees that’s how we get along. A red traffic light—we generalize that it means stop. It’s just a concept; there’s nothing inherent about red that means stop. But you can try telling that to the police officer.
What this practice can show us is that it is a convention, it is a generalization, and we can hold it lightly and wisely. We can understand when it’s useful to hold it and when it’s not. If someone leaves their seat in the hall, the convention is that it’s “their seat” for the time being. It would probably irritate them if I took it. So I’ll go along with the idea of “mine” in that case, rather than taking the seat and telling them, “Mine is just a concept that’s not real.”
Questioner 2: Hi Gil. You started your talk with a relationship you could have with pain in your knee. I’m struggling with my relationship and attachment to the statement, “I am an insomniac.” So, thoughts about how you lessen your suffering when you wake up in the middle of the night with that statement?
Gil Fronsdal: Yes, this is a common thing for many people, especially as they get older. It’s good to follow all the good advice that’s out there. But there are some things you can’t fix, and so the only option left is to change your relationship to it. Part of mindfulness practice is to turn your attention to that relationship. What’s the attitude I have towards it? What are the beliefs I have associated with it?
I saw with times I couldn’t sleep that I was operating under a powerful belief: “If I don’t get enough sleep, then tomorrow is going to be a disaster.” I had stories and images of what tomorrow would be like. Eventually, I learned that my prediction of what was going to happen the next day was usually wrong. I couldn’t predict it. So I found it was a waste of time to lie there in bed thinking about how terrible tomorrow was going to be. In fact, those thoughts were contributing to keeping me awake.
So, the idea is not getting so caught up in the not-sleeping. Be simpler about it: I’m not sleeping, but I’m safe, I’m warm, I’ve had enough food. Let’s just appreciate that. Another thing I learned is that any conscious attempt to make myself go to sleep just keeps me awake. I can’t be thinking about going to sleep. So I stopped trying. I just lie there.
Understanding your relationship to it is key. In the end, you might have to deal with some of the negative ramifications of not getting enough sleep, and they can be serious. But within reason, life is a lot easier if our relationship to things is light. We hold everything lightly. We don’t react. We’re not too attached or too resistant.
I’ll end with a bad joke. There was a story of a wonderful CEO of a big company. He was doing a fantastic job, but he had one issue that was a concern for the board. When he had to give important presentations, he usually peed in his pants. So they sent him to a therapist. He came back happily. They asked, “Are you cured?” He said, “Oh no. But I don’t care what people think anymore.” [Laughter]
Thank you for being here.
Shunryu Suzuki (Suzuki Roshi): (1904-1971) A Sōtō Zen monk and teacher who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the United States. He founded the San Francisco Zen Center. ↩
Attā: A Pāli word (Sanskrit: ātman) that translates to “self,” “soul,” or “essence.” In the context of the Buddha’s teachings, it refers to the concept of a permanent, unchanging, independent self, which the Buddha taught was a mistaken view. ↩
U Sīlānanda: (1927-2005) A highly respected Burmese Theravāda Buddhist monk and meditation master. He was known for his deep knowledge of the Pāli scriptures and his ability to teach them in English. Original transcript said “Yuslanandanda,” corrected based on context. ↩