How can 'non - self' be relevant to people with no pre -existing sense of self

[jonesboy]

Originally Posted by Gem

Yes I like it, and not one to disagree. The central text on the nature of things is the 'dependent origin' which does away with causal factors in the ultimate sense, saying mind/consciousness is emergent of the conditions of 'contact' in which the sense organs, the sense-perception, and the phenomena sensed arise together. In this way, the origin is 'dependent' and there is no-self, which is to say, no primary substance, i.e. no 'self-nature'. I think your article was saying that as well.

I would disagree that the mind is emergent on the conditions of contact with anything.

What the text is saying is that the world, your body, your ego all arises from the mind, from you. You believe in it all because of obstructions.. aka habit energy as described in the text.

Then said Mahamati to the Blessed One: Why is it that the ignorant are given up to discrimination and the wise are not?

The Blessed One replied: it is because the ignorant cling to names, signs and ideas; as their minds move along these channels they feed on multiplicities of objects and fall into the notion of an ego-soul and what belongs to it; they make discriminations of good and bad among appearances and cling to the agreeable. As they thus cling there is a reversion to ignorance, and karma born of greed, anger and folly, is accumulated. As the accumulation of karma goes on they become imprisoned in a cocoon of discrimination and are thenceforth unable to free themselves from the round of birth and death.

Because of folly they do not understand that all things are like Maya, like the reflection of the moon in water, that there is no self-substance to be imagined as an ego-soul and its belongings, and that all their definite ideas rise from their false discriminations of what exists only as it is seen of the mind itself. They do not realize that things have nothing to do with qualify and qualifying, nor with the course of birth, abiding and destruction, and instead they assert that they are born of a creator, of time, of atoms, of some celestial spirit. It is because the ignorant are given up to discrimination that they move along with the stream of appearances, but it is not so with the wise.

This is very good as well.

Then Mahamati the Bodhisattva-Mahasattva spoke to the Blessed One, saying: You speak of the erroneous views of the philosophers, will you please tell us of them, that we may be on our guard against them?

The Blessed One replied, saying: Mahamati, the error in these erroneous teachings that are generally held by the philosophers lies in this: they do not recognize that the objective world rises from the mind itself; they do not understand that the whole mind-system also arises from the mind itself; but depending upon these manifestations of the mind as being real they go on discriminating them, like the simple-minded ones that they are, cherishing the dualism of this and that, of being and non-being, ignorant to the fact that there is but one common Essence.

On the contrary my teaching is based upon recognition that the objective world, like a vision, is a manifestation of the mind itself; it teaches the cessation of ignorance, desire, deed and causality; it teaches the cessation of suffering that arises from the discriminations of the triple world.

http://buddhasutra.com/files/lankavatara_sutra.htm

[Ariaecheflame]

Originally Posted by God-Like

Hi ..

Where there is awareness and a reflection of what you are there is an association had between that which is aware and that which is perceived .

If there was no association there would never be books and scriptures written about no self, non self etc etc ..

Where is this no self, non self awareness that wrote about it, that had the thought about it, that made sense of it?

Who/m identifies with a path? Who/m identifies with following a buddhist path?

You see it doesn’t even matter if one can identify with self as being an imaginative thought or a dream or just a reflection of an illusion because there in the midst of it all is someone-thing that concludes that, makes sense of that, and someone-thing that should have a comparison for all of that .


x daz x

Lol... That was a bit of a mind bender - a wonderfully warped journey through the mental matrix.

I think I get what you are saying though.

When I was just realising my dissociative disorder a while back there was a 'self which was realising it!!

This is not something I would have been able to grasp in the initial stages of re-connecting though as my sense of self was very weak and disconnected.

(I have actually had quite a significant shift in 'sense of self' since posting this thread so am having to think back to the motions I was experiencing as a point of reference).

[Ariaecheflame]

I will continue to post replies over the coming days as it seems to be all I can manage on this topic at this particular time.

Thanks again.

[God-Like]

Originally Posted by Ariaecheflame

Lol... That was a bit of a mind bender - a wonderfully warped journey through the mental matrix.

I think I get what you are saying though.

When I was just realising my dissociative disorder a while back there was a 'self which was realising it!!

This is not something I would have been able to grasp in the initial stages of re-connecting though as my sense of self was very weak and disconnected.

(I have actually had quite a significant shift in 'sense of self' since posting this thread so am having to think back to the motions I was experiencing as a point of reference).

It can seem to be a bit of a mind bender for sure, intentionally presented in a way where peeps need to look at what is suggested about no self, non self ..

There was a woman called Suzanne Segal and she thought she had lost herself quite literally after an experience she had . She at one point pretended that everything was normal but inside she felt fearful because she had lost this sense of herself ..

What happens however is there is one sense that replaces another sense and this isn't losing self at all .

It's experiencing another self reflection perhaps inline with what you implied regarding the self that was realizing your dissociative order .

Where there is a thought attained there is self .. there for sure can be many reflections of self and one can express a healthy ego while beating their chests while another floats around almost as if they are invisible to others .

What I feel is presented at times is peeps put out a line of questioning self in such a way where you will never find such an entity that exists in it's own right ..

So therefore self is illusory or doesn't exist .. but one doesn't have to put self into a box that entertains an entity unto itself .

One can simply see that mind-consciousness-matter-awareness is so entwined together that you can't prise self from anything in order to point self out from amongst the union of mind-consciousness-matter-awareness .

You can't ask the question that pertains to self without the thought of it and that self cannot entertain the thought of that question without being consciously aware ..

Peeps are looking for self in the same way one looks for a needle in a haystack ..

you will never find it because it isn't something to be found in that same way .

self is self evident, no need to look anywhere, self is self evident like said through what you are being self aware, being self conscious .


x daz x

[Gem]

Originally Posted by jonesboy

I would disagree that the mind is emergent on the conditions of contact with anything.

What the text is saying is that the world, your body, your ego all arises from the mind, from you. You believe in it all because of obstructions.. aka habit energy as described in the text.



This is very good as well.



http://buddhasutra.com/files/lankavatara_sutra.htm

I just wonder if the mind is a permanent substance from which the temporal arises, or is mind intertwined with dependent origins?

[jonesboy]

Originally Posted by Gem

I just wonder if the mind is a permanent substance from which the temporal arises, or is mind intertwined with dependent origins?

Dependent origins is an intellectual understanding of emptiness. When one goes on to realize the non duality of all things you begin to realize true emptiness. What makes up all things? What is even that's true nature?

A permanent substance that makes up the mind is exactly what the Buddha taught against. There is no soul, Atman, some permanent substance that makes up a person. If that was so then emptiness is a finite thing, which is not what the Buddha taught.

[jonesboy]

I thought this was really good.

As Shantideva says, if we can understand a basic principle on a simple level, then with this understanding as an analogy, we can go deeper and deeper. Let me give an example. The first school of Indian Buddhist tenet systems that we study is called Vaibhashika. This school points out that there are two types of true phenomena. There are things that seem to be solid and there are the atoms that they are made of. Both solid objects and their constituent atoms are correct descriptions of what appears to us. But because they are what appear from two different viewpoints, they are called the two truths.

If we think about it deeply, the level at which everything appears to be solid is the superficial level, also called the appearance level; while the deepest true phenomena are the atoms that constitute matter. Both phenomena – solid objects and atoms – are equally true, but one is a deeper truth. Think about it. This chair and my body are both collections of atoms. This means they are energy fields and mostly empty space. Nevertheless, I don’t fall through the chair to the floor. The implications of those two facts are extraordinary.

We can now understand the simile of everything being like an illusion. It’s like an illusion that the chair and my body are solid; they appear to be solid, but actually they’re both collections of atoms. Therefore, their solidity is like an illusion. But now we need to add the most important phrase after that, which is “Nevertheless, they still function: I don’t fall through the chair.” If we can really take in, think about and digest that things are like an illusion, because they appear to be solid yet they are not, and nevertheless they function – if we can accept that and deal with life in the light of As Shantideva says, if we can understand a basic principle on a simple level, then with this understanding as an analogy, we can go deeper and deeper. Let me give an example. The first school of Indian Buddhist tenet systems that we study is called Vaibhashika. This school points out that there are two types of true phenomena. There are things that seem to be solid and there are the atoms that they are made of. Both solid objects and their constituent atoms are correct descriptions of what appears to us. But because they are what appear from two different viewpoints, they are called the two truths.

If we think about it deeply, the level at which everything appears to be solid is the superficial level, also called the appearance level; while the deepest true phenomena are the atoms that constitute matter. Both phenomena – solid objects and atoms – are equally true, but one is a deeper truth. Think about it. This chair and my body are both collections of atoms. This means they are energy fields and mostly empty space. Nevertheless, I don’t fall through the chair to the floor. The implications of those two facts are extraordinary.

We can now understand the simile of everything being like an illusion. It’s like an illusion that the chair and my body are solid; they appear to be solid, but actually they’re both collections of atoms. Therefore, their solidity is like an illusion. But now we need to add the most important phrase after that, which is “Nevertheless, they still function: I don’t fall through the chair.” If we can really take in, think about and digest that things are like an illusion, because they appear to be solid yet they are not, and nevertheless they function – if we can accept that and deal with life in the light of
this understanding without freaking out, then we are ready to go to the next level of a more subtle illusion.

The next level of illusion is that my mood, for example, appears to be solid, but is in fact a collection of tiny little moments, all of which are different. So the solidity of my mood is also like an illusion; yet nevertheless, this bad mood has functioned to make my day miserable.

Language is even more miraculous in how it functions, because all that ever happens at one moment, all we ever hear at one moment, is one tiny part of a sound of a letter of a word. In the next moment, that tiny sound doesn’t exist anymore; nevertheless, doesn’t it appear that the words and sentences that we and others say are solid and real? Their solidity is like an illusion; nevertheless we can communicate with each other.

https://studybuddhism.com/en/advance...ying-emptiness

Originally Posted by Ariaecheflame

Hello,

I hope that you are well

I would like to start off by quickly introducing myself.

I am a (biological) woman who does not strongly identify with the concept of gender beyond mere energy.

I am probably an agnostic - I am curious but adhere to no particular beliefs.

My childhood upbringing was influenced by NEW testament biblical influences and my teenage life was influenced by a mixture of Buddhism, New Ageism, Catholicism, and a generic mash up of Paganism.

My childhood years, church influenced were fairly un-diverse but my teenage years were multi cultural, multi- religious and diverse in perspectives.

I had a number of friends who were actively following Buddhist principals and thought but I note that they were well IDENTIFIED individuals with fairly anchored perceptions of self to begin with where as I was raised to view the collective before the individual - God before person-hood, charity and the needs of the collective before individualism and women in servitude to other...so...
I have really struggled with the idea of "ANATA" - Non self... it seems like such a terrifying idea to me as someone who has been encouraged to put 'other' before self -
It seems like a sacrifice I just cannot afford to take...


So I wonder - what is it that I am possibly misunderstanding and how can this concept be relevant to someone like me who has actively had to develop a path towards knowing, cultivating and embodying a sense of self? As opposed to someone who is raised with a strong sense of identification to self.

Well now, let me start by saying that I once started a thread about "ANATTA" but it took off in some strange direction, left the earths orbit and was last seen going past Pluto and heading out of the solar system.

Perhaps that is appropriate as it is a very hard concept to grasp, and I am told that the Buddha warned against trying to grasp it with the mind. Anyway, for what it is worth I have noticed, that when one looks closely at the self, no matter how strong a sense of it we may have, we start to see it is not a thing, but rather a collection of things. A collection of beliefs, many of which are more illusion than real, none of which are the self, yet somehow the self seems to emerge from them.

Perhaps the value in this is being able to see the self from somewhat of a third person perspective, bringing as much objectivity as is possible when looking at the self, and in doing so being able to question what in there is being taken for granted as truth, that maybe should be questioned. Then of course there is the awareness that though the self appears to be an illusion that is not really there, there must be something in which the beliefs creating the illusion are contained. Whatever that is, and whatever it's nature may be, one cannot sense it so well when ones attention and awareness are focused on the self.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by jonesboy

Dependent origins is an intellectual understanding of emptiness. When one goes on to realize the non duality of all things you begin to realize true emptiness. What makes up all things? What is even that's true nature?

A permanent substance that makes up the mind is exactly what the Buddha taught against. There is no soul, Atman, some permanent substance that makes up a person. If that was so then emptiness is a finite thing, which is not what the Buddha taught.

This is what questions the notion that all things arise from the mind when there is no 'prior mind' to the arising of things, and leads to the core philosophy of dependent arising, which is more like a circular conception of cause than a linear one.

[Jaraja]

Maybe the not self is what mystics call liberation, total absorption, the removal of the veil causing a sense of separation, being 'nothing ' as such, it is beyond description and understanding