♦ " The SELF " -- -a Buddhist Understanding

A Delusive "Self"-Ideation

___________________________

Why Am I So Unhappy ? --------------------------------
Because 99.9 per cent

of everything you think,

and of everything you do,

is for yourSelf –

and there isn't one.

~ Wei Wu Wei ~
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"Self-Ideation"
How to Navigate a
Buddhist Understanding of
"The Self" as an 'Idea of a Self'
-- is to first 'understand' the Self
as a major subjective 'experience'
that you are individually, consistently
 having as an awake, always present,
  thought-reflecting, complex "Self-IDEA"
-- not unlike any other 'Idea' in your head
'cept THIS Idea was probably 
the earliest Idea on the scene.
So along with an "Identity-idea", 
this 'Idea of a Self' became You...
----------------------------------------------- 
The Buddhist psychology of this topic
will need to enter lively discussion.

 

" The SELF "

Is there

an Atman
Self or Soul ?

and also

the No-self,

and the Not-self,

and the Non-self,

----------------------

called in Pali An'atta:

and Sanskrit An'atma

Without Atman --
Without Self. 

Our ongoing practice is 
How to Lose YourSelf !

"But I've been trying so hard

to find mySelf !"

... and yes,
 

" You need to be Somebody

before you can be Nobody "

 ~ Jack Engler ~

– and so what about the

Hindu-based Big-Self / Little-Self ?

What's Atman ~ is that the Soul ?

The Infinite 'Oneness'

they call The Supreme-Self

Here in the West
we relate in terms of
 The Higher-Self,The Divine-Self,

The Inner-Self or The Soul-Self –

or the beneficial Actualized-Self,

the True-Self or Self-Realization

What are the ingredients of
a healthy ego-self as well as
an unhealthy ego-self ? 

Who is 'it' / What is 'it' / What 'self'

is having all these 'experiences' ?

---------------------------------------

"Skillful-means" based in 

'Upaya' -- is the practice of
'Learning-in' Dharma-skills
to also responsibly recognize  
emotional mental health issues 
or to be able to non-judgmentally
explore a healthy Identity-based,
Self-worth issue as the Self

to reduce and stop the tedious,

endless work of re-searching
our self-styled attempts

at 'self-definition' --
the obsessive, fruitless

nagging at ourselves,
seeking clarity of 
comprehensive
compassionate
understanding
of the
unanswerable 

"Who Am I ?"

 

Who or What I am Not.


and paradoxically...
" Buddhist practice literally

has 'Nothing' to offer you –

other than 'What Is'

in THIS very moment.

That’s all.

God(s), Goddesses, religion,

spirits, entities and the ego-self

can certainly attract you

with so, so, so much more! "

 

~ Henri Van Zeyst ~

The "SELF-Idea" maybe

is just that ~ only an ‘Idea’

"Getting / Developing / Cultivating a 'Beginner's Mind', a new familiarity to you, of the 'idea' of even questioning the existence of a 'Self' - allowing this new to you 'Dharma-language' to speak to you -- and then begin to seriously apply healthy doubt about 'yourself' as a 'Self' ~ and the troubles that causes the sincere theologian. Atheist - 'A' without theist 'Theos/God' -- Henri Van Zeyst is so much easier to navigate with a God he mildly distains and finds irrelevant, in it. Something for people to lean on, look towards, and of course a name to blame. I certainly hope no therapists hear me say this, it's all still so 'spiritually incorrect'  -- Doubt yourself ? Well, yes. With confidence, courage and trust - and a tone of kindness -- that's where we're going. We've all have had a 'self' ( and been 'had' by a self ) for such a long time -- it's really about time we bravely Inquire and Question deeper into it !  This thing in Buddhist literature called 'The Self-Idea'."  ~ Bily Bo Sat
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"Self" is just the 'Story' of 'Me' -- ongoing, endless, tedious --- with lots of distortions and dysfunctions -- either way, it's still just a 'Story' -- the self-published version, the vanity press version, the movie version, the made for TV version, the Fox news version, the straight to video version, the tabloid version, the Sunday N.Y. Times bestseller version, the cable pay per view or the  version, the in-development version, the ready to pitch script in the trunk of my car version, my profile version, my blog version, my Mother's book club version...

Imagine a time, in the not too distant future, not in a galaxy far far away - but right Here and Now -- Imagine when you tell your 'Story' somewhere for the very last time ! ( even you don't want to hear it anymore )  You'll see thru it with self-compassion --you'll fully understand it as un-real and empty, you'll let it finally go, you'll be almost free of the limiting "Story of Self" at last!  What a relief ! ...Whew !   ( you can do this ! )

"Experience a truly liberated

present moment of an infinite Now !" 
     

"The Desire For Awakening

is The Only Allowable Desire" 

 ~ Buddha (500 BC)

 

"Full 'Awakening' itself is the only

ultimate purpose of human life ~

then all other 'purposes' will be

obvious, clear, potentially possible,

artfully filled with appreciative 'grace'.

It'll just be. Be with it. Natural, skillful

compassion will effortlessly radiate. 

Even lesser in-between 'Awakenings'
come more often -- and are still # 1.

Everything you do thru karma-impact  

is lovingly, patiently a 'temp' job,
 

~ Bhante Akasa-Maitreya

 

"Instead of 'trying' to become

something other than we are,

we realize fully what
is already here.

 Pure 'Is-ness'."

 

"Don't seek 'Answers' --

Live the 'Questions' 
themselves instead.."  ~ Rilke
 

_______________________

SIT meditation at home regularly .

SIT at home regularly, get a feel for it .

SIT at home regularly . see the nuances

SIT at home regularly . let the world go....

__________________________________

 

Hanson's View

No-Self / Not-Self /AnAtman

 Anatman should be further clarified, by Buddha, as a continuing state that when the body dies, the incorporeal mental processes continues and is reborn in a new body. Because the mental processes are constantly changing, the new being is neither exactly the same as, nor completely different from, the being that died. The concept of no-self should be understood that clinging to the concept of self-importance gives rise to unhappiness.

I perceive that “Anatman” should really be “An atman”, two words, correct? The rest of your post provides great insight into deep thoughts, especially for evangelical Christians who have probably never encountered Buddhist beliefs before. Could I persuade you to provide us with some idea where these beliefs came from and how a Buddhist asserts they are true?

It's actually more like "not-self": what the Buddha taught was that, no matter where one looks among the khandhas (constituent mental and physical parts of a person, as the Buddha divided them up), no "Self" can be found.

 

Saying "there is a Self" is a speculative view the Buddha did not hold. Saying "there is *no* self is another speculative view, and the Buddha did not hold this (or any other) speculative view. Speaking from the Middle, the Buddha said, "wherever you look within yourself, nothing can be found about which one can say "This is Me, This is my Self, this is Mine".

"Anatman" is one word. This is Sanskrit, not English. The "an" is not an article, but a prefix indicating a negative. In Hinduism, "atman" is the "soul" or "self." "Anatman" refers to the Buddhist teaching of "no self," that there is no intrinsic "self" within an individual existence. "Anatman" is also called "anatta," which the same word in the Pali language. This is a fundamental difference between Hinduism and Buddhism.

I continue to be offended by the way you expect people to spoon feed you these explanations, when the information you are looking for is readily available on the Web. Many of these doctrines are extremely difficult and require long and careful explanation.

 

"Stuka, my question is, do you experience a sense of reverence, awe and gratitude as you face life and its mysteries?"

 

Awe, yes, sometimes of course. The words "reverence" and "gratitude" imply a someone to be reverent toward, or in gratitude to. There is an underlying assumpion of a "creator" that doesn't really apply.

"These feelings seem to me to be relevant to the teachings of the Buddha because our behavior is greatly influenced by feelings and emotions that arise in us.

The Buddha taught that emotions tend to run away with us, and their influence on our behavior is often detrimental to skillful and thougthful action. Much of Buddhist practice is aimed at taking emotinoalism out of the equation, so that one can think and act objectively. It's very much a mental and emotional discipline.

"Many prominent people profess and proclaim with arrogant condemnation of others, their lofty standards of conduct, only to be found to grossly violate those standards. (Sanford, Ensign, Craig, Swaggart)"

Buddhism has not been without such scandals of its own. We are all human.

"Humility, too, seems a part of the set of feelings I am asking about, as in, "We are all as little children." Writing those names puts me in danger of elevating myself as morally superior, and making myself vulnerable to error. Isn't there a potential danger in declaring oneself to be either a devout Christian or a follower of the Buddha?"

The Buddha spoke of "attachment to perceived states of being and becoming", which means how we see ourselves as "this-or-that", as Christians or Buddhists or "Good Christains/Busshists" or "Better Christians/Buddhists than that son-of-a-bitch over there", things like that. He pointed out that such notions aer really just illusions, and that, really, all of our self-concepts are illusions. We can't really see ourselves as other truly see us, others can't see us as we truly are, and none of us can really see any of us, including ourselves, as we really are. There are just too many short-cuts taken, and we are just way too complex beings to try to pigeon-hole ourselves and others and get it all right. So, yes, there is a danger in declaring ourselves -- or others -- as anything.

 

People wonder why there are mass murderers and such (as a very simplistic, extreme-case example), and what it is that drives them to such things. The whole idea of "good" versus "evil" in the Western sense attempts to account for that, but tends to write off everything in the middle asone or the other. The Buddha would tell us that people do such things because they suffer. This takes away the need to label or demonize people, and directs attention to the root of the problem. The same applies for other, far lesser inappropriate behaviors and behavior patterns that we engage in, seemingly without being able to control. When we see that we all tend to act unskillfully out of misery and suffering, we can start to work on finding the roots of that suffering and sutting them out.

Not to cast lightly on mass murderers, but at the same time, how we as a society should deal with them should rightly be done objectively.

"And I do not mean to imply that you are vulnerable to that sort of self-elevation. I simply ask, "Do you feel a sense of reverence, awe and gratitude in your Buddhist practice?"

There is much joy, but there is also hard work as well. Any sort of self-discipline is this way. And being a buddhist doesn't make one perfect, it's a path, not a destination. It's certainly made me a calmer, more objective, more rational person. Emotions used to rule me at one time, many times leaving reason in the dust. There is much more emotinal stability now, in my experience, mostly due to mindfulness practice and meditation. The point isn't to become an automaton, not feeling anything, but to gain emotional and mental equipoise so that emotion does not get in the way and cloud good judgement.

 I ask you the same question. What do you think of these feelings as applied to Evangelicals? My favorite Old Testament quote comes from Micah. (Correct me as necessary) "What more does the Lord require of thee, but to do Justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God." My own humility defies me to assert an understanding of what is meant by the word, "God", but I ask how these feelings fit in with your understanding, and whether the absence of such feelings, and the elevation of self contributes to the downfall of Christians, Buddhists, Islamics and atheists?

My question is, do you experience a sense of reverence, awe and gratitude as you face life and its mysteries? These feelings seem to me to be relevant to the teachings of the Buddha because our behavior is greatly influenced by feelings and emotions that arise in us. Many prominent people profess and proclaim with arrogant condemnation of others, their lofty standards of conduct, only to be found to grossly violate those standards. (Sanford, Ensign, Craig, Swaggart)

Humility, too, seems a part of the set of feelings I am asking about, as in, "We are all as little children." Writing those names puts me in danger of elevating myself as morally superior, and making myself vulnerable to error. Isn't there a potential danger in declaring oneself to be either a devout Christian or a follower of the Buddha? And I do not mean to imply that you are vulnerable to that sort of self-elevation. I simply ask, "Do you feel a sense of reverence, awe and gratitude in your Buddhist practice?"

Thus, the sort of reverence and gratitude you feel (assuming for the deity you believe in) over the wonders of nature is pretty much irrelevant to the Buddha's teachings, though the sense of awe and wonder is certainly a valid and enjoyable part of life.

BTW the "contact through the six sense bases" that is referred to in the Sutta quote below means what we experience each moment through our senses. in the East and in Buddhism, mental faculties are seen as being a "sense", one that processes incoming data form other senses, as well as ideas, thoughts, "self-talk", etc that originate within the mental faculties themselves. The Buddha's formula goes like this: The eye sees (contacts) a visual form, and "eye-consciousness" (awareness of that visual form). One can become infatuated with this form, which might ultimately cause suffering, or one can not become attached to it. Same with other senses and sense objects, including ideas and su

When one uses the word "God" in conversation with those of other religions, one tends to assume that others believe in such a deity. The Buddha pointed out that the notion of a "creator god" is one of 62 types of speculative views, and he pointed out that such views cause suffering: "those...who speculate on the past, or the future, or both, and adhere to beliefs relating to them, assert in sixty-two ways their many and varied wrong views relating to the past and the future. They experience feeling as a result of repeated contact through the six sense bases. In them feeling gives rise to craving; craving gives rise to clinging; clinging gives rise to becoming; becoming gives rise to birth (of self-view, the arising of selfishness); and birth gives rise to aging and death (of closely-held ideas), grief, lamentation, pain, distress and despair. The historical Buddha's teachings (which I follow) are concerned with the phenomenon of suffering, and how to quench it.

I don't disagree with you, Stuka. The Buddha's reply to those who wanted answers to metaphysical and theological questions was, "I teach one thing... suffering and the end of suffering." When we use the word, "God" we invite argument from anyone who has ideas related to the word. Buddha's teachings neither affirm nor deny God, and are thus available without restriction or conflict to those who have chosen a theological belief. I use the phrase, 'God and the universe' as a widely understood reference to all of the cosmos that we can experience plus the great mysterious 'whatever' which I cannot perceive and cannot define, and which may give rise in me a sense of reverence, awe and gratitude. In your variety of Buddhism, is there that reverence, awe and gratitude?

The Buddha did not teach Anatta in the way Miller suggests. This was a later invention that seems designed to inject their reincarnation-based worldview into the Buddha's transcendent teachings, which originally rejective speculative worldviews.

The Buddha, in his transcendent teachings, taught that the various self-views that we constantly contrive are all illusions, essentially mental devices and placeholders that protect our self-interests and perpetuate selfishness, greed, anger, and ignorance within us.

The idea that nothing is Self is aimed at cutting off the roots of ignorance, greed, and hatred. We can't really point to anything and say, this is Me, this is Mine, because everything changes, decays, dies. In this way, "Me", and "Mine" are illusions not worth fighting for or stressing over.

Sorry, the idea of a creator God is irrelevant to Buddhism and the idea of Anatta. Nor are cosmological or metaphysical views relevant to the Buddha's own, transcendent teaching

A Buddhist is one trying to follow "the way", not one who has arrived at full understanding to assert truths.

The Buddha arrived at a profound state of understanding, and yet he counseled that we should not accept his teachings or any others' teachings on the basis of the reputation of the teacher the level of acceptance that the teaching enjoys or the apparent authority with which it is asserted. Rather, he advocated that we look deeply within ourselves to see if this teaching might be true and beneficial.

Regarding anatta or anatman, here are two things to meditate on: First "Not one; not two." (You are not God and the universe; you are not separate from God and the universe.)

The second is more difficult "Boundarylessness" (As Jesus' Good Samaritan manifests, our hearts can expand infinitely to "Love thy neighbor as thy self.") Buddhism invites us to follow further, embracing our enemy and all of "creation" as one. Such an embrace leads to the 'Greater Love' which dissolves self.