I Don't Exist

FairyFeller

I was reading a book recently and they were talking about the concept of 'I' not existing but they don't go into much detail. They talk about it like it's one of key concepts of Buddhism.

Does anybody know of any clearer explanations of this?

Cloud

The "I" is just a construct. In reality there's nothing that stands apart from everything else. Even consciousness is dependent upon everything else and has arisen due to conditions. There is the "me" that's the body and mind, but in truth it's not even separate from the world around us. We have to realize that this idea of "I" or "me" is just conventional... there's no real separate "you".

I'd recommend http://www.BuddhaNet.net for some excellent information. Their Basic Buddhism Guide and Online Study Guide are worth looking into.

taiyaki

"There is thinking, no thinker
There is hearing, no hearer
There is seeing, no seer

In thinking, just thoughts
In hearing, just sounds
In seeing, just forms, shapes and colors."

http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2009/03/on-anatta-emptiness-and-spontaneous.html

Read those aloud or in your head. Then after each read look in your experience.

vinlyn

Humorously -- if you don't exist, stop posting.

Cloud

If they don't exist there's no one to read your post to stop posting. Maybe there's just "reading" and "thinking" and "posting" instead! That sounds more Buddhist.

vinlyn

Sometimes I think some Buddhists (not you, Cloud...just in general) enjoy clever word puzzles a tad too much.

Tosh

It's not as straight forward as 'we don't exist'. I mean if we don't exist, then no-one else exists, so who are we trying to develop love and compassion for?

tmottes

@vinlyn I know I do and did before I learned much about buddhism. Perhaps those who enjoy clever word puzzles are attracted to buddhism

Tosh

I read a good analogy that we exist in the same mode as rainbows. Rainbows look real, don't they? But if the observer changes position, the rainbow moves. If the sun gets covered with clouds, the rainbow will disappear. And even when we see the rainbow in all it's glory, the rain that creates the rainbow is moving through it, so although the rainbow looks static, it's different raindrops creating it, from moment to moment.

Conventionally, the rainbow exists, but ultimately it's just a bunch of ever changing causes and conditions that we impute 'rainbow' onto. We're like that (I think).

sova

"I don't exist" -- lol that's quite a statement indeed!

But, I think that can easily be misinterpreted to mean "nothing matters" which is actually just the opposite! You are seamlessly tied with the cosmos. It's not The Cosmos + You, it's just.. The Cosmos. You are in the Cosmos and the Cosmos is in you. They are not separate. This is how we can develop an intellectual understanding of this.

So, developing an intellectual understanding is very useful, because then we can rely on the wisdom we glean from these statements, and eventually we can contemplate, and meditate on deeper insights, insights beyond words that put a lens between Us and Direct Experience of reality-as-is-as.

(unsatisfied with reality-as-it-is, and unsatisfied with reality-as I settled for the above xD)


In developing an intellectual understanding for such a thing as "this experience is seamlessly interwoven with the entirety of the cosmos" I think it's helpful to forget everything you know about "me"

and simply investigate what it means to perceive

Cloud

vinlyn said:

Sometimes I think some Buddhists (not you, Cloud...just in general) enjoy clever word puzzles a tad too much.

You mean like Zen students maybe? What's a clever word puzzle or riddle to one is a battering-ram to shatter delusions to another. That's what koans are. Now of course the ones that are just clever for the sake of being clever... we could use less of those.

Tosh

FairyFeller said:

Does anybody know of any clearer explanations of this?

I like this book called No Self No Problems:

http://www.amazon.com/No-Self-Problem-Anam-Thubten/dp/1559393262

It's suitable for a beginner or for someone more advanced.

jumbles

before surrendering to non understanding
empty of abiding characteristics
and non-existent were
difficult to grok

Cloud

grok? wasn't that from a book?

Cloud

oh yes, Stranger in a Strange Land, I knew it was from something I've read before!

poptart

The "I" is a creation of the ego mind. It's the sum total of all those opinions you have about yourself, your past achievements, your likes and dislikes, all those things we use to define ourselves. The ego uses these to make us feel separate and cut off from the rest of the universe, but this is not your true nature. You discover your true nature through separating from your thoughts and instead of identifying with them observe them only. If you were your thoughts you would not be able to do this. The observing consciousness is who you truly are and it is vast and eternal.

Bunks

You do exist @FairyFeller - just not in the way you think you do.

This is the book that I read in order to fully understand this concept (I had to read it twice!! ) - I can recommend it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_See_Yourself_As_You_Really_Are

zombiegirl

I think of it like this... The brain is an organ, thoughts are the product of the brain. Much of what you think of as "you" is dependent on your memory of past experiences. "I had strawberries two years ago and they were delicious, I like strawberries." "This person lied to me in the past, I do not like this person." "I played soccer in high school, I am a soccer player." You remember by forming new connections (synapses) between neurons. Interests you might have can strengthen connections between neurons. What you think about can strengthen connections between neurons. So the brain is like a reservoir of likes and dislikes, interests, etc... A complex filing system that influences what we do and say in the future with experiences to draw upon. Do we really "think"? Or do we just respond to the past influences?

"Nothing of me is original. I'm the combined effort of everyone I've ever known."
-Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

FairyFeller

Is it something along the lines of the I that I think I am is actually a combination of tiny moments in time and experiences. The I that I thought I was when I started typing this post doesn't actually exist anymore as there have been thoughts and experiences. There is no point worrying about things that have happened in the past because that moment no longer exists and neither does the I that I thought I may have been then?

taiyaki

http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/search/label/Julian Baggini

Sabre

If I were to ask "who or what are you?" - what do you feel that is? Not on an intellectual level, but on a level of intuition or feeling. Do you feel you are the one doing things? The one thinking things out? Or do you feel you are the one watching out onto experience? Or both? Do you think in terms of "I"? As in "I'll go to work, then I'll go home etc". And what does it refer to if you do?

If you have such a feeling, you have a sense of self, of "I". But those things are illusions created by the mind-process itself. In reality there is no such a thing. That's what it means when it says "I" don't exist.

If you see through this, there is no thinking in terms of "I" or "me" or "mine".

With kindness,
Sabre

kowtaaia

The brain registers, records experience, sensation. The accumulation of recorded experience is memory whose response is thought. Thought reviews memory and mistakes the various incidences of experience as the continuity of an entity. You are born. The ego is not a possession. It is the possessor.

driedleaf

You do exist, but temporarily. Everything exists temporarily. Nothing is whole. Just another notion to keep in mind. Our time is limited. May we all find true happiness.

Tosh

Can I go all Zen and say, "What is it the 'I' that exists?"

pegembara

You cannot point to a city. If you're in the middle of a city, you can point to a particular building or street, but you can't point to a definite object called "city." It's a collection of objects we conventionally name "city," and everyone knows what we mean, but it's not a thing you can point to. (like weather, universe, British Empire etc.) Not only that but everything is constantly undergoing change, always in the process of changing into something else.

Does the word "I" or "me" point to something solid and persistent in the real world? Or does the word actually points to something that is always changing, that doesn't really exist?

That is emptiness -

DairyLama

We're all just lost socks in the laundromat of oblivion...

Tosh

PedanticPorpoise said:

We're all just lost socks in the laundromat of oblivion...

And when you go looking for the sock, using wisdom, you can't find it!!!

How do you guys use 'emptiness'; how do you apply it to your day-to-day life?

PrairieGhost

We've already lived our whole lives up to now not existing, so it's ok.

Songhill

FairyFeller:

I was reading a book recently and they were talking about the concept of 'I' not existing but they don't go into much detail. They talk about it like it's one of key concepts of Buddhism.

The conclusion of your logic is correct if sentient beings are lacking Buddha-nature. When our body craps out, we'are annihilated. But the Buddha never taught such a materialistic doctrine. All beings have the Buddha-nature which is the âtman. But they don't recognize it (this is why they are not Buddhas). Instead, they cling to what is not their Buddha-nature which is the psycho-physical body.

RebeccaS

Tosh said:

PedanticPorpoise said:

We're all just lost socks in the laundromat of oblivion...

And when you go looking for the sock, using wisdom, you can't find it!!!

How do you guys use 'emptiness'; how do you apply it to your day-to-day life?

The whole "emptiness" thing comes up a lot on this forum. It doesn't make any sense to me and plays absolutely no role in my life whatsoever

I think its a confusing message. It's incredibly vague, and it doesn't really mean much. Emptiness in comparison to what? Fullness? Full of what? And why would you want to be empty of it? I just don't think it means anything

Songhill

RebeccaS: I always like what the great Hegel had to say about emptiness.

"The scepticism which ends with the abstraction “nothing” or “emptiness” can advance from this not a step farther, but must wait and see whether there is possibly anything new offered, and what that is—in order to cast it into the same abysmal void" (Phenomenology of Spirit).

Vastmind

@Songhill...can you be more specific as to what school/tradition teaches this?
Just for reference points.

I am following what you are saying, however, I need you to connect
some things for me.


........

"The conclusion of your logic is correct if sentient beings are lacking Buddha-nature. When our body craps out, we'are annihilated. But the Buddha never taught such a materialistic doctrine. All beings have the Buddha-nature which is the âtman. But they don't recognize it (this is why they are not Buddhas). Instead, they cling to what is not their Buddha-nature which is the psycho-physical body."




Do some schools/traditions believe that Buddha DID teach such a doctrine?
If 'people' dont recognize it...is it there? For them, I mean.?
Am I hearing you correct that the emptiness/I teaching is what
'they' call their 'Buddha-nature'?
The clinging is the same as the craving, would'nt you say?

RebeccaS

Well if the void (another way of saying emptiness) is so abysmal then what's the crack?

See where the confusion stems from? Maybe emptiness just isn't a good word for whatever it is.

PrairieGhost

The psycho-physical body is everything, but it is not a psycho-physical body.

Nor did anyone ever believe in a psycho-physical body.

PrairieGhost

Maybe emptiness just isn't a good word for whatever it is.

Very good point, RebeccaS. We use translations of old languages, and translations are usually compromises.

tmottes

RebeccaS said:

Well if the void (another way of saying emptiness) is so abysmal then what's the crack?

See where the confusion stems from? Maybe emptiness just isn't a good word for whatever it is.

There is no word which can convey the understanding/realization of it. This is a non-conceptual "thing" and words are conceptual. You must experience it to understand. It is like describing red to a blind person.

You can describe the taste and texture of an apple, but it doesn't give you an understanding of the experience of eating an apple, especially if you haven't ever eaten an apple.

Songhill

Vastminds:

Do some schools/traditions believe that Buddha DID teach such a doctrine?
If 'people' dont recognize it...is it there? For them, I mean.?
Am I hearing you correct that the emptiness/I teaching is what
'they' call their 'Buddha-nature'?
The clinging is the same as the craving, would'nt you say?

For now, suffice it to say that the Buddha did not teach that the Buddha-nature is empty.

"The Buddha-nature is not empty. You should understand that in the past I taught all phenomena as empty in the Prajnaparamita teachings and that it was meant merely to teach the emptiness of phenomena as regards a true nature [svabhâva]. But by meditating on emptiness as no thing, the bodies and wisdom of the Buddha will not be developed, since results follow causes" (Mahaprainirvana Sutra).

Important, too, the Buddha never taught that sentient beings are only the five aggregates or that they are empty or devoid of Buddha-nature or the Tathagata-garbha.

In Nikaya Buddhism, which relies on the Pali canon, emptiness of being (satta-suññatâ) refers to the five aggregates as being empty, that is, lacking reality or sabhâva. The second emptiness refers to nirvana that it is devoid of determinate being or the same, empty of formations (sankhâra-suññatâ). Nirvana is a-sankhâra, i.e, not a formation.

Emptiness is kind of an ontological doctrine, rather than the negation of all knowledge claims. It is meant to tell us something about how things really are. For example, illusory things like our psycho-physical body are devoid of reality (sabhâva) or nirvana is empty of conditions/formations. As a matter of fact, the Buddha never taught such a doctrine as universal emptiness.

RebeccaS

tmottes said:

RebeccaS said:

Well if the void (another way of saying emptiness) is so abysmal then what's the crack?

See where the confusion stems from? Maybe emptiness just isn't a good word for whatever it is.

There is no word which can convey the understanding/realization of it. This is a non-conceptual "thing" and words are conceptual. You must experience it to understand. It is like describing red to a blind person.

You can describe the taste and texture of an apple, but it doesn't give you an understanding of the experience of eating an apple, especially if you haven't ever eaten an apple.

That's what I think, too, but I'm wondering if "emptiness" is really the closest way to describe the indescribable.

It's like trying to describe the taste of an apple and rather than saying tangy but also sweet you say it tastes like an apple both are correct (or as close to correct as they can be) but one conveys the truth to the person who hasn't eaten an apple in an easier to comprehend way.

Vastmind

@Songhill...I really appreciate you taking the time to answer me.

Your vocabulary is way larger than mine, so I'm going to have to
go grab a cup of tea and a biscuit and sit/read for awhile on that one!

May I continue to gain understanding and wisdom.

tmottes

RebeccaS said:

tmottes said:

RebeccaS said:

Well if the void (another way of saying emptiness) is so abysmal then what's the crack?

See where the confusion stems from? Maybe emptiness just isn't a good word for whatever it is.

There is no word which can convey the understanding/realization of it. This is a non-conceptual "thing" and words are conceptual. You must experience it to understand. It is like describing red to a blind person.

You can describe the taste and texture of an apple, but it doesn't give you an understanding of the experience of eating an apple, especially if you haven't ever eaten an apple.

That's what I think, too, but I'm wondering if "emptiness" is really the closest way to describe the indescribable.

It's like trying to describe the taste of an apple and rather than saying tangy but also sweet you say it tastes like an apple both are correct (or as close to correct as they can be) but one conveys the truth to the person who hasn't eaten an apple in an easier to comprehend way.

To me truth can't be conveyed, it can only ever be experienced on a personal level. I tend to think words convey an accurate assessment or description of a truth. Subtle but big difference.

music

I came across a good explanation on another site, and I will just explain it in my own words. Instead of dualistic thinking - existence vs non-existence or birth vs death - it is better to see everything as neither existence nor non-existence, neither born nor dead. It could be the self, body, or the world.

PrairieGhost

music

it is better to see everything as neither existence nor non-existence, neither born nor dead

Yes. But, if what you're looking for can't be described, are you really looking for it?

music

I am just looking at, not looking for ...

sova

RebeccaS said:

The whole "emptiness" thing comes up a lot on this forum. It doesn't make any sense to me and plays absolutely no role in my life whatsoever

I think its a confusing message. It's incredibly vague, and it doesn't really mean much. Emptiness in comparison to what? Fullness?

Just to give you another monkey wrench some teachers say Fullness instead of (or as a synonym for) Emptiness.

I think the term emptiness is really good in English, but it's not the same as shunyata. When we think empty we think of a negative connotation usually "oh no I ran out of gas and I'm on Empty."

but that's not the case.

Here's an idea:
the Sun is empty of the universe that surrounds the sun.
The Universe [that surrounds the sun] is empty of the sun.


With that mental image, perhaps it is easier to consider that these (and all) phenomena are co-dependent.


Now, the big leap is "the sun is empty of the sun" and "the universe that surrounds the sun is empty of the universe that surrounds the sun"

These are ideas that take quite a bit of [meditative] familiarization I think. Middle Way (Madhyamaka) philosophy.

PrairieGhost

Hi, music

I am just looking at, not looking for ...

But why? There's nothing to see.

You already know everything you've ever known or will ever know.

music

PrairieGhost said:

Hi, music

I am just looking at, not looking for ...

But why? There's nothing to see.

You already know everything you've ever known or will ever know.

Not sure I get it. Could you explain?

PrairieGhost

And the point still stands

If what you're looking at can't be described, are you really looking at anything ?

PrairieGhost

Hi music

Not sure I get it. Could you explain?

Buddhists question many things about the consensus reality, but what happens when we question whether we are actually on a path at all? You wish to understand anatta - do you? How do you know that's what you want?

How do you know that there's the facility to understand, or anything to understand, or anyone to know?

What is knowing? Do we already know what's happening here? Isn't it obvious?

All I can tell you is that it is obvious. You already understand.

What do you know when all the theories are put aside?

PrairieGhost

Isn't this your world? And yet you tell yourself you are a stranger here, trying to understand?

RebeccaS

tmottes said:

RebeccaS said:

tmottes said:

RebeccaS said:

Well if the void (another way of saying emptiness) is so abysmal then what's the crack?

See where the confusion stems from? Maybe emptiness just isn't a good word for whatever it is.

There is no word which can convey the understanding/realization of it. This is a non-conceptual "thing" and words are conceptual. You must experience it to understand. It is like describing red to a blind person.

You can describe the taste and texture of an apple, but it doesn't give you an understanding of the experience of eating an apple, especially if you haven't ever eaten an apple.

That's what I think, too, but I'm wondering if "emptiness" is really the closest way to describe the indescribable.

It's like trying to describe the taste of an apple and rather than saying tangy but also sweet you say it tastes like an apple both are correct (or as close to correct as they can be) but one conveys the truth to the person who hasn't eaten an apple in an easier to comprehend way.

To me truth can't be conveyed, it can only ever be experienced on a personal level. I tend to think words convey an accurate assessment or description of a truth. Subtle but big difference.

Yeah, I'm totally with you, but my question is how accurate a discretion is emptiness? It's especially confusing with @sova's information - that emptiness can also be described as fullness.

They're not the same thing

So given the difference in their definitions, one has to be more correct and closer to the subjective truth than the other.

ThailandTom

This is one of the teachings that can help me so so much, I understand it but yet I do not realise it. I cannot get away from the notion of the self, me, I. I do understand there is an ever changing non permanent illusion of a person, but beyond this I cannot escape this. It would help so much if I had a direct realisation of the non self, but I think that comes from deep meditation and insight into emptiness which I have yet to obtain.