self and emptiness ?

syrius

I am not sure how to approach this concept but here we go, please bare with me lol.
through reflection about my past and present life and therapy ( well i am in intense therapy 5 days/week, 6 hours /day for the last 15 month in a therapeutic communities as i want to improve myself and my relationship with others)a, I have realized that my sense of self is identify when interacting with others, through meditation my sense of self is mainly mental activity that come and go, nothing is there in a durable way. I see my emotion going and coming .. well i wonder if all is impermanent . This leave me feeling that the well i mean my sense of self well is empty or non existent ? and this where i am confused about buddha teaching of the no self .

Jeffrey

Your sense of self is there, but it is just a sense. When eating eat. When listening listen. When senging it is a sense.

If you feel sad (about the emptiness) that it is just a sense then that is feeling sad.

Saying it is non-existent is adding something to your experience. And that is just thinking.

Just make life simple. You are here. You are feeling and thinking something. You hear the sounds in the room. You feel your breath. Very simple. Isn't it?

syrius

thank you you sum up very well my experience of self
i don't feel sad about the emptiness,lol like you said i seen it as an experience nothing more. it si the concept of non-self and the impermanence of self that i am struggling to get my head around .

federica

Ok, sit back, listen and don't worry.

You have a self. of course you do. You get up in the morning, yawn, stretch, make a coffee, have a shower, choose what to wear, go to work, stub your toe, swear, feel pain, eat, sleep, go to the toilet....it'all part of your existence.

But take a look at a photo of yourself when you were 5. You're not that size any more. You don't wear your hair that way, you've grown hair in parts you didn't have hair on before, and you have more teeth....
You are not that person.
Well, you are - but you aren't.
You're yourself, but you're not-self.

And if you were to lose an arm in an accident, would that arm be a part of who you are?
Yes.
And no.
A component is missing, but you're no different....

You're made up of a gadgillion different components (all in all referred to as 'skandas') but not a single one of them define who you are....

You are there and you are everything you need.
But with every passing day, you change, and you are not the same today as you were yesterday, and you are not the same as you will be tomorrow.

Any help?

Tosh

I think it would be useful for you to take a look at the doctrine of the Two Truths, since many things in Buddhism don't seem to gel.

I mean you hear stuff like 'no self', which sounds like we don't exist, yet we're taught to develop compassion for others; but who are these 'others' if we don't exist? (that's a wrong view by the way; it's just what it sounds like to begin with).

Basically, there's Two Truths; the truth of the conventional, and the truth of the ultimate. An example I like is that at a conventional level, I'm static and not moving; I'm in my office at my computer. But at an ultimate level, I'm whizzing in an orbit around the Sun at 67,000 mph. Both statements are true, one is conventional, and the other is ultimate.

The conventional truth is that the self exists; the ultimate truth is that the self doesn't exist; both truths are entwined. And in Buddhism, we use conventional truths to develop our practise so that we can directly realise the ultimate truth (emptiness).

At an ultimate level, if you go searching for the self, using wisdom, you won't find it. But it feels really real, doesn't it?

Jeffrey

"non-self and the impermanence of self that i am struggling to get my head around ."

Yeah I agree when you really think about it it is surprsing. I mean I don't really realize that I will die someday. I sometimes think of it as interconnectivity. Just as all things die I will too because the body will give out. But while I am here I have this experience.

taiyaki

in thinking just thoughts, no thinker.
that is the realization of no self.

there is only thinking thinking thoughts.
there is only seeing seeing forms.
there is only feeling feeling sensations.
there is only smelling smelling smells.
there is only tasting tasting flavors.
there is only hearing hearing sounds.

the hearing or process and the actual noise is undivided.

the process of hearing is consciousness meeting ear plus sound. these are separate parts coming together based on causes and conditions. if one part was missing then you cannot have the process. thus we call this interdependent. this is emptiness in a nutshell.

so there is a self. an infinitely changing process of interdependent parts. then thinking thinks on top of this. thus we have names, stories, history, etc.

but there is no agent. there is only the 6 streams of consciousness meeting and interweaving to have this "experience" of wholeness and continuity.

compassionate_warrior

The Buddha didn't each no self. He taught a path between self and no-self, which is what you're practicing now, in a way. He taught the self is always changing ("nothing is there in a durable way"). If it's always changing, it means you, yourself, are able to be one of the agents of change. You chose to enter into that therapeutic community in order to evolve the self. Just like people choose the Dharma, in order to evolve their selves. And who is it who made that choice? Your self.

Your self chose to capitalize on its own ability to change by entering into an intensive program to improve itself. ("I want to improve my self.") So you do have a self. Just not a solid, eternal, set-in-stone one. Fortunately. If our selves were set-in-stone, we wouldn't be able to grow and change.

syrius

thank you tosh it is starting to make sense now .. this is where my problem is i am trying to search for the self and what i have found not much that is fixed, touchable or even defined as such . I can feel my body changing, moving, breathing etc.. this is the part of the ultimate truth which i found challenging

taiyaki

there is only feeling feeling the sensation. there is no division between feeler and felt. or feeling and felt. there is only the feeling.

the subject is just a projection after the fact.

don't philosophize. feel it, experience it.

Dakini

Syrius, that's amazing that you came up with that realization about the impermanent characteristics of self, the indefinability of self, on your own, without a teacher.

I don't think I agree that there's an ultimate truth in which the self doesn't exist. The way I see it, there's one truth in which the self isn't a fixed, tangible thing. We need a sense of self in order to be in the world, but we can recognize that the self is always learning, and changing. I don't see a conflict between the two. Not to flog a dead horse, but some scholars say the Buddha didn't teach the two-truths doctrine, and that it was a later influence from Hindu beliefs. This makes a lot of sense to me. This keeps coming up on threads lately, but the Buddha taught that no-self was nihilism.

Tosh

@Syrius, thank you. A good suggestion is to find a long commentary on the Heart Sutra (the short commentaries are for people who already have a good knowledge of Buddhism, and can fill in the gaps with their knowledge of stuff like Dependant Origination 'n' stuff), and work through it very slowly, using a note book and pen, and plenty of contemplation and meditation on the tough bits.

That'll explain the emptiness of self, and once you understand the emptiness of self (albeit at a conceptual level), it is easy to apply it to all phenomena.

And the Two Truths seem logical to me. Conventionally, there is a self. Conventionally there are cars. But ultimately, there is no self and no cars. We are mere imputation upon our aggregates, and a car is mere imputation upon it's parts.

This may sound confusing, but it's extremely logical; and a commentary on the Heart Sutra will explain this better.

syrius

thank for all the comment that was really helpful... I am just wondering if the emptiness of the self just mean that is not fixed so the self is always in a state of flux so my conclusion would be ( if i am not mistaken) the self as a fixed entity is an illusion .

Thanks daki dakini... my own art, meditation practice, reflection and therapy about the self and the ego , this made me realized that I was looking for a "solid" self and after looking for 15 month I have found different part always becoming but never staying which lead me to question the existence of the self as truly distinct entity .

federica

thank for all the comment that was really helpful... I am just wondering if the emptiness of the self just mean that is not fixed so the self is always in a state of flux so my conclusion would be ( if i am not mistaken) the self as a fixed entity is an illusion.

Correct.
But that would be Not-Self.
Your 'Self' is an ongoing process, and as such quite real.