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Originally Posted by ketzer
This is a concept I often think I understand. However, when I do I can't help but wonder who or what is doing the understanding.
How do you understand (or not understand) the buddhist concept of "anatta" (no-self)?
How do you buddhists see it misconstrued by non buddhists?
And finally, for those who do believe they understand this concept, who is doing the understanding?
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There is no Ketzer that continues on with the identification of what you think of as you.
I am sure you are familiar with mindfulness, the ability to observe your thoughts. All that is you, is like a thought that you are attached too.
You are not a soul, that is located someplace, or made up of things.
Beyond the local mind (you) there is the universal mind. A Buddha is a being that has realized the emptiness of that universal mind.
The best way to describe it is using the Tao Te Ching :)
From the Dao (emptiness) came the One (universal mind) from the One, begot Two (Siva/Shakti, male/female energy/polarities) and from the Two created the Ten Thousand Things.
In the Buddha's time there was Brahmaism which believed there is only One. That the One is all there is and we are just aspects of the One playing a game to realize itself again.
What Buddhism is saying is that if you realize the emptiness of the One, you realize that you are a separate One, that there are limitless One's.
Each Buddha is a unique bubble you could say, that has no true location because it is everywhere, is not made up of anything because the true nature of everything is emptiness.
Who is doing the understanding?
If it is an understanding it is local mind, intellectual. Buddhism is about Wisdom, about realizing it.. that is what the path is about.