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Not self - am I a puppet?
Earthninja
WandererWest Australia Veteran
in Philosophy
If all thoughts are not self. Arising and disappearing like the clouds.
Then this means I have no control over anything? Volition of will or a choice is still thought, not self.
What do you guys think? Are we just puppets of the universe?
I'm actually happy about this 
nothing is under control not even what I "choose" to do!
Have a great day!
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n o o o o o . . . [lobster screaming]
. . . actually you could be right :clap: . . .
Jon Kabot-Zinn's view works for me.
" ** "I," "me," and "mine" are products of our thinking. My friend Larry Rosenberg, of the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center, calls it "selfing," that inevitable and incorrigible tendency to construct out of almost everything and every situation an "I," a "me," and a "mine," and then to operate in the world from that limited perspective which is mostly fantasy and defense. Hardly a moment passes that this doesn't happen, but it is so much a part of the fabric of our world that it goes completely unnoticed, much as the
proverbial fish has no knowledge of water, so thoroughly is it immersed in it. You can see this for yourself easily enough whether you are meditating in silence or just living a five-minute segment of your life. Out of virtually any and every moment and experience, our thinking mind constructs "my" moment, "my" experience, "my" child, "my" hunger, "my" desire, "my" opinion, "my" way, "my" authority, "my" future, "my" knowledge, "my" body, "my" mind, "my" house, "my" land, "my" idea,"my" reelings, "my" car, "my" problem.
If you observe this process of Selfing with sustained attention and inquiry, you will see that what we call "the self is really a construct of our own mind, and hardly a permanent one, either. If you look deeply for a stable, indivisible self, for the core "you" that underlies "your" experience, you are not likely to find it other than in more thinking. You might say you are your name, but that is not quite accurate. Your name
is just a label. The same is true of your age, your gender, your opinions, and so on. None are fundamental to who you are."
"So, when we speak about not trying so hard to be "somebody" and instead just experience being, directly, what it means is that you start from where you find yourself and work here. Meditation is not about trying to become a nobody, or a contemplative zombie, incapable of living in the real world and facing real problems. It's about seeing things as they are, without the distortions of our own thought processes. Part of that is perceiving that everything is interconnected and that while our conventional sense of "having" a self is helpful in many ways, it is not absolutely real or solid or permanent. So, if you stop trying to make yourself into more than you are out of fear that you are less than you are, whoever you really are will be a lot lighter and happier, and easier to live with, too."
Edit- As for free will -I just try to do the next "right" thing...
Whether any of us have any sort of will or volition is a debatable topic. I don't however feel that the notion of no self really has much relevancy to the issue, ie volition is one of the 51 mental factors according to Buddhist thinkers but there is still no inherent "I".
My own thinking on free will says that, in a strictly deterministic universe, our awareness in the present moment (we can notice ourselves becoming angry) would act as a cause in our chain of being, freeing us from the past.
Or maybe there is indeterminacy in our minds?
Kia Ora,
Not self - am I a puppet?
In a sense yes (excuse the pun)
- we're puppets of the "sense doors" ...and meditation cuts the strings...
Metta Shoshin
Are you a puppet? Well, who would be the puppet master? If everything that you are colludes to make decisions and to act, then it's still you. It's just that the locus of control isn't as small as you think it is -- it includes everything that you are (and sense) instead of just the "inner you" you've identified with!
The "self" in "not-self" is a permanent independent essence... that doesn't exist. That's why it's not. This doesn't mean that you don't make choices, and it doesn't matter if those choices are the result of all sorts of conditions. We're still trying to create societies that allow for the fullest pursuit of happiness while discouraging causing harm to others (and our environment, and even animals). To that extent we have laws and a justice system. Some people would add judgment on top of that, but I think we as Buddhists should know that judging people shouldn't be part of correcting behavior.
The absence of an independent permanent essence does not result in hard determinism; at worst, Buddhism would espouse a "compatibilist" view on free will. Conditions and causes do lead to our choices, but we are still responsible for those choices (and we should be corrected in any case).
So the short answer, after all that explanation, is no, you're not a puppet.
The "self" is a just a dream of independence within existence,
while "no self" has never been subject to that dream.
The only puppet I've found is the "self" attached to
the strings of it's own dream construction.
Freed of those strings, self disappears and only existence remains.
So you can be a puppet...or you can be awake with everything else.
@AldrisTorvalds @how
Thanks for the replies! I will give you an example to help clarify my point. I'm not just talking about the "self" but everything!
If you "choose" to move your foot (go on do it!
)
What chooses? Well the mind does. Nothing else! Your thought arises and then your foot moves. Just like any other thought. Your awareness is simply being aware. It does not choose. It's a thought that causes you to act.
You can't decide to choose? It's like a flame burning itself.
I hope I clarified my point
@Earthninja Yeah that's why I said it's everything you are colluding to make decisions and act, and not a self. Even "the mind" is bigger than what most people take themselves, the "I", to be. Thoughts can arise that you don't like or that make you sick. Did you have control over that thought arising? Not directly. You can have a practice that can "change your mind" over a long time and deprecate the probability of such thoughts (and desires) arising, and of certain bad decisions being made, but it's bigger than you think.
Releasing concepts about what you are, including being a puppet, is reality. The believing that your this or that, is a mental construct, an illusion. Not-self is simply being and allowing the world to unfold as it is.
A puppet of the universe?
I have no idea what that means. A puppet implies a puppeteer.
No, you are not a conditioned machine, destined to perform every action depending on your programming or the whim of whatever is pulling the puppet strings. You will notice that machines do not make "choices". They are slave to their programming. You are not.
But neither are you an independent organism free from the constraints of your conditioning and learning and biases. Pavlov and Skinner might have treated the human mind as acting on a series of involuntary conditioned reflexes, but the human will to do the unexpected is not so easily dismissed. That does not mean they were totally wrong. Much of what we do depends on a known set of influences.
True!
I agree with everything you wrote in that last comment! I do grasp that thoughts arise and through mindfulness we lead ourselves down a different path!
But specifically my only confusion with this is what we choose to do with any of these thoughts. Say for instance I get a "bad" thought and I don't act on it. That so called decision I just made was another thought! There is no free will. It feels like it but there can't be?
What made me just type this? It began with a thought that I didn't choose.
If this is true then like @Theswingisyellow said, it's the world unfolding as it does. The whole universe is doing me
game on
@Earthninja It all depends on what you mean by free will. That very phrase is confusing. Who or what is it that we're assigning free will to, and what does "free" mean? Everything is interdependent. There's no doubt that decisions and choices are made, and even less doubt that we're going to hold each other accountable, so it becomes semantics. So long as we, as Buddhists, understand that the totality of what we are is greater than the false self the mind has created... and that there's a way to break out of this delusion... that's where we need to focus.
@AldrisTorvalds very wise! Back to the cushion for me.
Trying to find or explain where your thoughts arise is a pointless exercise.
Better to be mindful of your thoughts as they arise and skillful in your decisions
@Theswingisyellow it's only pointless if you are looking for an answer.
I have realised a lot through self examination
eg where does form end and sight begin? Who is asking the question?
Haha these pointless questions help me, especially when you realise they are pointless
Perhaps.
I would suggest finding the source of thoughts is much of formal initial meditation exercising . . .
Your senses get in contact with the world, a thought arises, the thought produces a feeling that propels you to a certain action.
Here is where choice enters the picture, your input in the situation. Your mind's natural function is to produce thoughts, all the time, relentlessly. Should you buy into that endless chatter? No, you can choose.
If you mindfully observe that thought and don't get carried away by the negative, positive or neutral coloration of the feeling, then you are choosing to refrain from an unskillful action or just acting in a skillful way. The choice is yours.
I don't believe in a predetermined universe, but I do think we are part of a macrocosmic reality, a piece in the bigger machinery of the interconnection of all things.
Circumstances happen that don't depend on you, but you can always choose how you're going to react to them.
Where do your thoughts come from? Who's the thinker behind the thoughts? I don't know. What I do know is that we are not powerless puppets to our circumstances.
I rather think free will is a fact and go from there. I am responsible...in the past I couldn't make that claim. That is a wonder full change . Anyhow other minds debate this endlessly and interestingly too. Don't mind indulging in the debate from the sidelines... lol!
http://www.sciencechannel.com/tv-shows/through-the-wormhole/videos/do-we-have-free-will.htm
No, because if you had no control over anything, trying to attain enlightenment would be pointless. Anatta does not negate karma.
Its my understanding that trying to attain enlightenment is pointless.
@MeisterBob great clip, thanks for sharing.
I like to look at myself in a worldly sense. If I have free will then so do all birds, insects, mammals and fish. And this is fantastic
Your most welcome! Science is very "spiritual" to me...gazing into the ultimately unknowable, but gazing , probing nevertheless! I watch little TV but new episodes of "Through the Wormhole" start June 4th I believe.
Bob
We are puppets to our own defiled minds.
I found a full length version of the through the wormhole about free will. Like most of the shows other episodes I thought it was really well done.
http://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/k2ethiDAiIY49q4TbgY
It's always good to reevaluate one's understanding IMO.
A self is not impermanent because it never arises, stays, and goes. It is outside of time. It also is not permanent. It is like thoughts. They are never quite here and then next they are memories and memories are also shifty and cannot pin down reality. Memories are just other thoughts.
So the self is not birth and death. It is not becoming because nothing ever quite arises that becomes or 'is' or ceases.
Definitely there is no impermanent self as contrast to a permanent self. Buddha said the five skhandas and six consciousness were not a self. A self never quite comes into being nor goes anywhere. Nonetheless when we take a shower we clean with soap and shampoo. And there is an experience there. But it is shifty. Not in the sense that it is vague and nebulous but in the sense that you have to actually have amazing clarity to understand the experience. If it were easy to have such clarity the path would not be so long.
Maybe my point with trying to determine where thoughts arise being pointless may stem from my understanding that we have very little control to determine what enters our head. An event is put in front of us and a thought arises, why that particular thought and not another. We can then go from there as another thought arises then another and another..........
I come from the understanding we don't think rationally but emotionally. In the end we have very little say in what arises.
Being mindful of what arises is very good.
Making reasoned decisions upon what arises (also good), arises from being mindful.
Perhaps
@dharmamom "we are not powerless puppets to our circumstances"
I agree.
All things rise and fall, come and go.....It is up to us how we choose to relate to it.
Indeed. Not relating to arisings is a natural consequence of 'just sitting', 'Jhana bwana', 'spaciousness for stars' and similar practices. Such practices are a natural way of having choice experiences to relate to . . . We are in essence widening our interior pathways.
This choice that @Theswingisyellow mentions is dualistic if in samsara or not if not.
Dualistic choice? I offered no choice. Simply life occurring-rising and falling.
Whether you like it or not, not relating is also a choice.
Life can unfold and I may get disappointed sad happy joyous or bored, but I know there is no I or mine to be found in any of these.
There is no puppet.
Nice quote @pegembara
yes, until we get the Noble Right View
once 'we' get the NRV (see the Four Noble Truth) then 'we' have the control of 'our' thought
then 'we' are no longer puppets
when 'we' are mindful 'we' do not react to 'our' thoughts instead 'we' act
'thoughts' are the past volitional activities which had arisen and fallen then and there
because of our ignorance we hold to them as permanent and that is why they come at a later stage as thoughts
how far 'we' practise the 'mindfulness' after getting the NRV decides how quick 'we' will be able to get liberated
"Once we..." does not exist. It is not a stage we attain forever. Mindfulness of our thoughts, choice of our reactions, is a commitment we renew with ourselves every second of our life. Every second of our life are we choosing if we will be puppets or not.
@dharmamom, there is nothing to argue here
those who knows know
Those who know, know... that they don't know.
Never cared to argue.
Those thems or them those?
Is it them that knows nose?
Or those that nose knows?
Some great posts guys! Thanks for all the replies.
Hmm puppets maybe not, but flow yes! I still maintain that what ever beats the heart is the same that makes decisions and choices.
If heart beating is involuntary then so is picking up a rock.
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
" Everything is out of control..just as it should be ".
The 'we' is no more substantial than our thoughts..There is no 'us' that stands free of the skandhas.
The self that we create is created by those same thoughts.
There is Dukkha, Anicca, and Anatta...there is no possibility of control. And no need for it.
But at the same time, a Buddha has complete control over Mara. Complete control over ignorance, greed, hate, etc.. That is why he is called a Buddha.
A stream winner has control over right/wrong speech, right/wrong action, right/wrong livelihood, etc.
No free will suggests a predetermined plan as being a puppet suggests a puppet master.
A fated universe is a planned universe but I think we learn as we go.
There is no predestination. And until we Realise Dukkha, Anicca and Anatta there is no free will either.
@ourself I wouldn't say it's predetermined, does a tree growing have a destiny? Does a moth? A monkey?
It's one big dance of energy. You don't watch a dance to see the end. It's the dance that's the whole point.
I don't think the universe is dumb, humans are no fluke. We are grown out of the earth as everything else.
@seeker242 > @Citta said:
Dang I cant hang out here. I have realized these things but I had to look up the words first. The terminology is getting in my way. Plain english would be nice but ,of course, this is a Buddha board. lol..Im tired too...
The thing is Bob if you become familiar with the terms it actually saves time.
Each of those terms take about a paragraph to translate in English, unless we settle for a very partial translation like ' suffering' for Dukkha.
Honestly its worth the effort.
You are probably right. Knowledge is good. Been long weekend and Im snarky. lol
Language is a barrier in a lot of cases! We even think in symbols/words. Sanskrit to English doesn't always work. @Citta, I've read these paragraphs and yes I agree haha!
Languages evolve to express different world views.
English is excellent for expressing technology for example.
To describe a gear stick in Pali takes dozens of words...I have seen it done. The writer was making the same point that I am making.
Conversely, Pali and Sanskrit evolved to express the results of spiritual practice.