no-self

[Cheyenne]

I sent Jundo a message about this subject and he advised me to come to all of you. I have read, and head about no-self. I have a kind of a intellectual understanding of it, but not to my bones. there times where it fells like there is no self but not sure. Can you one help me with this.

[Jishin]

I am.

[Kyousui]

I found http://liberationunleashed.com useful in my study. It's a quite comprehensive site and offers specific /personal opportunities for coaching on realizing Anatta. I never needed to try the coaching as just the reading satisfied my needs.

Sat2day LAH

[Mp]

I sent Jundo a message about this subject and he advised me to come to all of you. I have read, and head about no-self. I have a kind of a intellectual understanding of it, but not to my bones. there times where it fells like there is no self but not sure. Can you one help me with this.

Hello Cheyenne,

There is a self, there is a no-self ... The difference of self and no-self is only in the mind. There is no difference between the self and no-self ... as they are not two, but one.

We are all interconnected ... when we truly see this the struggles we face fall away. =)

Gassho
Shingen

Sat/LAH

[Shinshi]

My favorite analogy for this is the one of the wave in the ocean. When conditions are right/sufficient the wave appears. And the wave exists - it moves along. But the wave is not independent of the ocean. If you remove all of the ocean components from the wave there is no independent existence of wave. So there is no independent wave, and yet the wave exists.

So, in one way there is just an ocean. But in another way there is a wave in the ocean. Both are true at the same time. Just part of how we view the world in the moment.

And at some point the wave disappears, but there is no loss of the wave. Nothing is gone, the ocean just manifests in a different way.

Or at least that is how it seems to me today.

Gassho, Shinshi

SaT-LaH

[Tairin]

My favorite analogy for this is the one of the wave in the ocean. When conditions are right/sufficient the wave appears. And the wave exists - it moves along. But the wave is not independent of the ocean. If you remove all of the ocean components from the wave there is no independent existence of wave. So there is no independent wave, and yet the wave exists.

So, in one way there is just an ocean. But in another way there is a wave in the ocean. Both are true at the same time. Just part of how we view the world in the moment.

Yes! This is the metaphor that I use too.


Tairin
Sat today

[Rich]

Trust in the wholeness of this moment.

SAT today
[emoji120][emoji172][emoji885]️

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

[Getchi]

While things do exist, they are subject to change, decay and are dependant on relation to other things.

At the same time, this world already exists despite our understanding or lack there of.

The uniunive is a process, and not anything else.


Trick y.



Gassho,
Geoff.

SatToday
LaH.

[Jundo]

Hi Cheyenne,

Would you also mind signing a first name to your posts, and adding a human face photo? It helps keep us human around here, and self or no self, we like to look folks in the eye as best we can. Thank you.

I don't think that "so self" is as hard as people make it, and it is something where the more you go looking for it, the more you step right past it (like the eye trying to see the eye).

I also like the "wave and sea" image that Shishi mentions. We spend our days feeling like "me" inside looking out at the rest of the world outside. In Zazen, the hard borders of inside and outside can soften, perhaps sometimes fully drop away. Then, we realize that there is more than just "inside vs. outside."

The sense of a separate self is selfish, with its demands, judgments, dissatisfactions and frictions with the world outside, fears including fear of its own death and the like. These all depend on the separation of the self from the "not the self." When the hard borders of self and other soften or drop away, each and all of these emotions and frictions also softens or drops away. Sometimes it does so radically, sometimes subtly. Sometimes (as when I was in hospital last year awaiting surgery for cancer), one can know fear and no fear at once!

So, Just Sit ... not grabbing on to thoughts, and letting things be. Just Sit ... with the conviction that there is not one other place to be or thing to do in that moment. You may experience that softening or dropping.

I found http://liberationunleashed.com useful in my study. It's a quite comprehensive site and offers specific /personal opportunities for coaching on realizing Anatta.

I do not know the group so cannot recommend them. I am a bit hesitant about any group that seeks states of bliss and oneness. I often say that one can take drugs for that, and we are about something much more subtle and easy to miss. (As a picky picky note: I also wonder why they put a Shinto Shrine on their book cover, a bit like putting a picture of St. Peters on the cover of a book about the Islam. Probably they were just looking for some vague Asian image. Anyway, picky picky)

I am.

Yes you are, except no.

In any case, we realize "Emptiness," which I sometimes describe as the sense of the Flowing Wholeness of all reality that, for a time, flows in, through and as us in a particular time and place. We realize that it is flowing as this whole life and world too that is sometimes beautiful and sometime not, sometimes pleasing and sometimes not.

Something like that. I am a bit tired now, so heading to bed. Whether there is a self or not, this self is dog tired.

Gassho, J

SatTodayLAH

[Kyonin]

Hi Cheyenne,

We have a very basic self, the one that makes you get up every morning, the one that takes care of your health, the one that makes you learn and work and stay safe from the dangers of the echo system. This is a monkey like self, the living being self, and we need it in order to survive.

And then there is the other self, the one that tells stories all the time, the one that creates opinions and dissects the world into pieces in order to understand and be part of society. This self feeds upon narrative, judgments and thinks is so very important. This self is just an illusion!

So that's why we say there is a self and there is no self at all.

Hope this helps.

Gassho,

Kyonin
Sat/LAH

[Getchi]

Gassho
Geoff

SatToday
LaH

[arnold]

Cheyenne, there are a lot of good points on this thread. I am going to offer some thoughts but it would be good to get Jundo to clarify any unintended errors I may commit here, so take it all with a grain of salt.

I think that the Buddhist concepts of “absolute and relative” (you will find this in the Sandokai among many other places) can be helpful when thinking about the concept of Anatman (no self).

What we usually think of as “self”, a self-aware self-directing entity, is a relative experience; more of a process than an object. It is also important to note that atman (self) is a technical term meaning an ”eternal unchanging self” which was a popular notion at the time of the Buddha. The self as we know it exists but in a relative or transient way. It is always changing because the causes and conditions that effect its arising are always changing. Therefore there is no eternal unchanging self (atman) which means we are left with anatman (no self) . What the self is, however, is wonderful apparatus or tool to navigate the dualistic world in which we must make choices. When seen this way, the fact that it is transient is not bad. It’s ever changing quality is what makes it a good tool for the changing circumstances of living. However getting attached to it causes suffering.

Getting attached to the idea of self causes suffering because, if you notice in your own experience, it is impossible to nail the self down because it is always changing. This is why we often say “I really need to define myself”. We have virtually limitless experiences, we can be angry, we can be loving, we can be naive, we can be wise. So what self are you then? The angry self? The loving self? The wise self....? Self is always changing and you can’t catch it. When we need to define it, when we need to catch it, as if it is the most coveted object in the world, we suffer.

However, the act of “Being” is larger than this apparatus,we call self. Things are interdependent and therefore connected. As cliche as it sounds your life is bigger than you can imagine, the life of the world is your life and your life is the life of the world. Suzuki Roshi used the terms “small self” (relative) and “big self” (absolute) to describe this. Katagiri Roshi used the beautiful phrase “ all beings are the contents of our life”. In a Christian paradigm, the Trappist monk Thomas Merton used the terms “true self” “false self” although I wouldn’t say it’s helpful to grab on to the pejorative term “false” here. In short, You can take all these: “big self” “all beings...”;and “true self” as other ways of expressing the concept of no self (anatman).

I think what is important though is to think of this in terms of experience and it’s relevance to how we practice and live our life. No self (anatman) should not be held onto as a rigid dogma. We need both sides of self in our life, both modes of being; the absolute and the relative. No self is not some Buddhist mandate saying “You must live your life as no self”. It is a description of the dynamics of living.

Dogen zenji talks about this in Genjo Koan when he says “ when one side is illimunated the other side is dark”. In day to day life we need the relative self but we can have these moments when identity drops away and there is just life (absolute self or what’s Dogen calls “shinjin datsuraku” body-mind falling away). This also is helpful. We can grasp less and identify more with the world around us. Compassion should arise and, perhaps ironically, that is the return to the relative. So neither side is the whole picture. One side isn’t good and the other bad, they are part of a dynamic, profound and,—I would say—sacred, totality. There is something we can call the relative self which we need to, for example, uphold the precepts or comfort a crying child or as Kyonin so nicely pointed out, keep ourselves alive. There is the absolute self (no self) that is our connection to the many beings, to reality. We can encounter it (I don’t think “experience it” would be a good term here) and be grateful but not attached. We return to the relative and are free to respond (compassion arising from wisdom). “When one side is illuminated the other is dark” but really we are talking about a dynamic interaction here more than something analogous to two sides of a coin.

It is also important to point out that encountering no self does not make a person special or turn them into some other order of being. It makes them human. We are all human, so there’s no need to grasp at some lofty attainment here. This is all a description of what we already are. We just have a hard time recognizing it. it is just a wonderful opportunity open to each of us. I have seen first hand the idea that transmitted Roshis were somehow special because of some twisted notion of egolessness. I saw how that harmed both the Roshi and the Sangha. So don’t make this whole no self thing something lofty. After all, it’s nothing really (little joke here).

Maybe it is best to understand no self as being able to say this in all sincerity: “I will never really “know” who I am, but that’s okay; I am a part of a community of all beings and and that LIFE is my life”. So we practice with a whole heart which may be the place (no place) where both sides, absolute and relative, self and no self, meet “like two arrow points that touch high in the air” as Sekito Kisen describes in his beautiful poem Sandokai.

I hope that this is helpful and not too misleading.

In Gassho,
Arnold
Sat today/LAH

[Jishin]

IMG_0204.JPG

🤡

Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_ , LAH

[Jundo]

Cheyenne, there are a lot of good points on this thread. I am going to offer some thoughts but it would be good to get Jundo to clarify any unintended errors I may commit here, so take it all with a grain of salt.

Hi Arnold,

It is hard to find fault with anything you said.

Of course, the trick is how to really feel this as the bones, and then bring it to life in life. This is Cheyenne's question. For that, we recommend Shikantaza Zazen ... putting down for a time all such words and analysis, not grabbing or stirring all the thoughts, judgments and divisions of the little self, the good and bad, past and future, me and you, this and that, things to do and places to go ...

... then getting up from the cushion, bring it to life back in this world of good and bad, past and future, me and you, this and that, things to do and places to go. This is our Practice, and the point of all we do in this Sangha.

Hi Cheyenne,

We have a very basic self, the one that makes you get up every morning, the one that takes care of your health, the one that makes you learn and work and stay safe from the dangers of the echo system. This is a monkey like self, the living being self, and we need it in order to survive.

And then there is the other self, the one that tells stories all the time, the one that creates opinions and dissects the world into pieces in order to understand and be part of society. This self feeds upon narrative, judgments and thinks is so very important. This self is just an illusion!

So that's why we say there is a self and there is no self at all.

I would simply add that there is the True Self which is all the universe and then some, all reality, flowing in and out and as you right now. Both when we have or when we drop the said self(s), this True Self is still flowing in and out of our senses, the Person of No Rank. This Person is the monkey mind and the story telling self and no self at all. This is the Ocean, both waving and waveless. As Master Ma wrote in the Preface to the Rinzai Roku ...

The true man without rank went in and out the face.
The monks of the two halls gave equal shouts, but guest (the relative) and host (the absolute) were obvious.
Illumination and action are simultaneous, fundamentally without front or back.
A mirror confronting a form, an empty valley echoing a sound.
Marvelously responding in any direction, he left not a trace behind.

Gassho, J

SATTODAYLah

[arnold]

...course, the trick is how to really feel this as the bones, and then bring it to life in life. This is Cheyenne's question. For that, we recommend Shikantaza Zazen ... putting down for a time all such words and analysis, not grabbing or stirring all the thoughts, judgments and divisions of the little self...

... then getting up from the cushion, bring it to life back in this world of good and bad, past and future, me and you, this and that, things to do and places to go. This is our Practice, and the point of all we do in this Sangha.

I would simply add that there is the True Self which is all the universe and then some, all reality, flowing in and out and as you right now. Both when we have or when we drop the said self(s), this True Self is still flowing in and out of our senses, the Person of No Rank. This Person is the monkey mind and the story telling self and no self at all. This is the Ocean, both waving and waveless.

As Master Ma wrote in the Preface to the Rinzai Roku ...


Illumination and action are simultaneous, fundamentally without front or back.
A mirror confronting a form, an empty valley echoing a sound.


Gassho, J

SATTODAYLah

Thank you Jundo.

Gassho,
Arnold
sat today/LAH