This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Aware without Someone Aware; Insight (33) This is not Self. 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.
Hello and welcome to this guided meditation, part of a series on the topic of not-self. This morning, as a preparation for the meditation and the talk later, I would like to suggest an image. Imagine that you are in a beautiful, safe, inspiring natural setting where there’s a vast view of the sky, of open space. Maybe you’re on the beach or on a cliff above the coast, looking out across the vast ocean or a vast lake with a big sky. Maybe you’re high in the mountains, on top of a mountain where you can see in all directions. You can turn around 360 degrees and see vast, open space, up and sideways.
In that very open space, if you try to point to where that space is and insist, “That’s it, it’s right there,” and you point your finger, it’s kind of a ridiculous thing to do. Of course, it’s there; it’s everywhere. But to take the effort to point to a particular spot as being the spot, the essence, the heart of the space, the core of the space, the true center of the space… and maybe even more, you get all excited, and you take your hand and want to grab it and have it for yourself. You want to bring it home and frame it and put it on a wall. It’s just a lot of wasted effort. People would think you’re a little bit crazy, holding on and insisting on something which there’s no need to do.
There’s a way in which mindfulness is sometimes taught, that mindfulness has an object of what we know. We know a breath, we know a feeling, we know a sound. That’s sometimes called an object. But when you have an object, then you have a subject: the one who knows, the one who sees, the one who recognizes what’s happening.
There’s another way of practicing mindfulness, where it’s more of a great, open awareness, where there is no subject, where there is no object. There’s no objectification, no subjectification. In the great open mountain or beach, looking out across the vista, a bird flies across. The mind is so peaceful and calm, and it sees the bird, but the idea that the bird is an object to be studied, grabbed onto, or done something with… maybe that’s not what the peaceful mind does. It just allows the bird to be in the space without any interference. There’s a bird cry; same thing. It just goes through, and maybe there’s no attempt to try to hear it better or figure out what bird it is. It’s just a sound peacefully going through.
When we turn the attention around to observe the subject—ourselves as the doer, the feeler, the knower—we’re very quick to create a subject, create a “me.” “I’m the experiencer. I’m the doer. I’m the one who’s practicing.” There’s no need to do that. You’re welcome to do it, but in a certain kind of way, it’s tiring to do it, especially if you do it a lot. Self-preoccupation, concerned about me, myself, and mine.
There’s a peaceful way where we don’t take knowing subjectively or objectively. We don’t take it as, “This is me being mindful, me knowing, me seeing, me feeling.” It’s just feeling. It’s just sensing. The inner landscape is no different than the outer landscape. The sound of a bird goes through the same way as a thought going through. We don’t latch on to it. As we drop the idea of imposing or overlaying the idea of an experiencer, the subject who’s doing something… it’s an okay idea to have, but it’s still an idea that we’re living in. With no ideas, we turn around and look at what’s here. There’s no subject, no object. It’s just phenomena coming and going in the vast realm of space, the vast realm of awareness. And there we find some peace.
So, assume a meditation posture. Feel your body, without the “your,” without “mine.” Let there be sensing of the body. The body senses and feels just fine without you being the sensor, without you being the one who feels. To sense and feel without being the sensor, the feeler. What sensations appear in the body that you didn’t plan for, that you didn’t make happen, that you don’t have to attribute to “me” or “myself”?
If you haven’t already, close your eyes. Recognize how the body experiences breathing. Maybe it’s in the torso, the chest, the movements of the belly. As you feel the body breathing, does the body feel any tension or holding? Is there a way in which the body sensations move towards relaxing? If they do, allow the relaxing to happen.
Just as the body can experience itself, sense itself, if we allow it to feel, in the same way, the mind can know itself. The mind knows thinking. It knows emotions, impulses, desires. Don’t concern yourself with what the mind knows. Don’t direct the mind. Let the mind do its knowing in whatever way it knows itself. If in the process of knowing itself, the mind knows tension, pressure, contraction, it’s okay. Allow it to be known.
If there is in the mind, in the heart, some sensation, some orientation, some energy or coalescing of things that feels like “this is yourself, this is who you really are, your essence,” let that be known without taking it or believing it or holding on to it as your subject, as who you are. You don’t have to believe it is who you are. Let it just be the bird flying through the sky.
There is knowing, there is awareness that is aware of what comes into awareness. There’s an open, panoramic awareness that’s like space, that allows things to appear and disappear, where there’s no need to assume or assert a subject, a self. And if that happens, let it just be like a bird flying through space. Nothing more, nothing less. Open awareness with no subject, no object. Awareness of what is, in the simplest possible way.
If there’s anything added on top of the simplest knowing of experience, if you feel into that extra, that added knowing, feel it well. You’ll feel how it wants to dissolve. Feel it dissolving. It’s not needed. Adding the subject, the sense of a subjective self in addition to the simplicity of experience, is also something that, if left alone, wants to dissolve.
As we come to the end of the sitting, just as it’s possible to be aware, to know, to feel with a radical simplicity that doesn’t add anything on top of it—doesn’t add preferences, liking and disliking, right and wrong—but simply allows each thing to float up and disappear in its simplicity, so it’s possible to love in the same way. Love knows itself, knows what’s loved, but doesn’t have to add anything on top. It doesn’t have to add desire, preferences, fears, opinions, stories, futures, and pasts. The radical simplicity of awareness allows a radical simplicity of love, of kindness, of heartfelt warmth and care. There needs to be no subject who’s the one who has the love, the one who does the love. It’s just love, care, kindness that is simple and clean, uncomplicated.
So in the simplicity of this meditation, can you gaze upon the world with this simple love? A love that needs nothing, wants nothing. Just kindness, care, goodwill. A simplicity that can be expressed in this heartfelt wish:
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.
And may each of us go into the world with kindness and love that is free of a lot of added baggage. The simplicity of kindness, wherever we go.
Thank you.
Hello and welcome to this continuity of a series on insight meditation. The particular form of insight for the last two days and today is a common Buddhist teaching of the Buddha for us to use our awareness to realize, to see clearly, in a way that’s represented by these sentences: “This is not mine. This I am not. This is not self.”
Each of these can be innocent enough. To see that there’s “mine” and “I am” and “this is myself” can be done lightly and appropriately as a kind of general category. For example, in modern Western psychotherapy, it’s relatively common for a therapist to assess that someone needs to develop a stronger sense of self. I don’t feel any need to argue against that if it’s just a general category for certain tasks, certain things that need to be developed and cultivated.
In Buddhism, we would say that certain inner strengths need to be developed. We might say the ten perfections, the Pāramīs1, need to be developed: generosity, ethical integrity, the ability to let go, wisdom, the ability to have initiative, patience, the ability to be honest and monitor oneself, the ability to be determined and have a resolve to follow through on what we say we’re going to do, the ability to have kindness and love, and the ability to have equanimity and resilience. There are a lot of other inner states that can be developed. So, it’s possible to say that these things need to be developed without necessarily saying we need to have a stronger self.
If “stronger self” is just a shorthand for saying all these other things, then it’s fine. But if “stronger self” means making a stronger, tight identity like, “This is who I am, this is what the strong self looks like, I have to be like this, I have to be seen this way,” then there’s a lot of conceit and attachment that can go into that.
The idea that we add extra, which brings us to the third one for today, “this is not self,” can have all these extra layers we add on that form suffering. One of the ways there’s stress and suffering is people hear this idea, and they assume it’s said this way (it’s not what the Buddha said, but plenty of Buddhists will say it): “There is no self.” People are ready to protest and say that’s ridiculous, and they’ve gotten all tight and worked up because they don’t like or believe that view. So there’s a stress that’s an added layer.
The Buddha teaches something different, the teaching of not-self, and that also might be triggering. “Wait a minute, this is too much, this doesn’t make any sense, this is different than how I grew up, and of course there’s a self.” The reaction to it is extra. But even having the idea “this is self” can be a source of suffering. It’s not uncommon for some people to assume the true self, the essential self, is some kind of pristine, pure consciousness. I’ve seen people who hold on to that, believe in that, or orient themselves around that, and they limit themselves. They feel there’s a certain freedom to be found in open, radiant consciousness, but to hold on to it as a philosophy and try to get other people to believe in it too—”This is the real truth, this is the real self”—there are layers and layers of attachment that go on top of that. To take anything as the self prioritizes that over all other things that are happening, the arising and passing of phenomena. It narrows the scope of attention; it’s a kind of holding on, a selectivity, a pushing other things away.
What we’re talking about here, “this is not self,” is closer to the Western idea of a soul. It’s a little bit complicated because both in ancient India and in modern English, we can use the word “self” in different ways. It can be a very innocent pronoun. You can tell someone, “You can serve yourself food if you’re hungry,” and you’re not saying, “Your soul can serve food if the soul wants to.” It’s not a self with a capital S. But the Self with a capital S, the true self, the essential self—in ancient India, the word for self, attā2 or ātman, had both a simple, ordinary pronoun meaning and a meaning much more like a soul: “This is the true essence of who I am. This is what persists between lives. When I die, the soul continues.”
It’s fine to speculate about that, but to hold that as an opinion, to grasp onto it, to insist, to only feel like you’re right if you’re close to that—that is suffering. The opinion that there is a true, essential soul is stressful. The fascinating thing about Buddhist practice is that it reveals more and more where the stress is in ourselves, where the stress is in the mind. And one of the stresses is around this idea, this holding on to the opinion that there is this true, essential self.
For some people, the need for that is quite strong because it’s an alternative to chaos, to a life that has no meaning or purpose. It’s a sense that there is a refuge deep inside that will continue after I die. It gives some stability, which is needed for people. But Buddhist practice provides all that stability, safety, and refuge without recourse to holding on to a sense of the self.
Is there a self? Is there not a self? What the Buddha said about both those positions is that if it’s an opinion, if it’s an orientation, it is stressful. It’s phenomenal how subtle the little opinions, the views, the interpretations of our experience can be. The interpretation of this subjective sense of self can be seen as just another movement of the mind. The Buddha said any opinion, any view, any doctrine that “there is a self” or “there is no self” is stressful, is suffering. It’s a quagmire to go into, a wilderness of philosophy and ideas that just causes more suffering.
The alternative the Buddha gave is to see things arise and pass, to see the changing nature of things without overlaying on top of it the notion, the idea, the orientation, the coalescing around “this is the self.” Rather than believing there is a self or is not a self, the orientation here is in the word “this.” This is not self. The particulars of life are not self. Maybe there’s a generalized, conceptual overlay that can kind of see a self, but that’s a conceptual overlay. In the immediacy of our life, where freedom is found, we can’t put our finger on anything and say, “Oh, this is the self.”
So, what is your notion of who you essentially are? Do you have some reference point, that you have a soul, that consciousness is the true essence, that there is some kind of feeling of “I-am-ness” deep inside? Even that “am-ness” is an assertion. Maybe that assumption, that overlay, is extra. See how you operate. What’s your sense and opinion and view you have of yourself as a self? What does that mean? What is the subject that goes through your life? And is it really the self?
Maybe it’s a little bit philosophical, a little bit abstract, so don’t get too preoccupied by this. We’ll continue this topic again tomorrow. Thank you.
Pāramīs: A Pali word for the ten “perfections” or wholesome qualities of mind to be cultivated on the path to awakening, including generosity, virtue, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, determination, loving-kindness, and equanimity. ↩
Attā: The Pali word for “self,” “soul,” or “ego.” In Sanskrit, the equivalent term is ātman. The Buddha’s teaching of anattā (not-self) is a core doctrine pointing out that no permanent, unchanging, independent self can be found in any of the components of experience. ↩