A Simpler Explanation

Here is a simpler explanation of some of the topics I have written about in recent posts...

Most people have a self-image that is like a character in a story. Thoughts, including thoughts about the self, arise into consciousness from unconscious processes that we don't have much control over. Thoughts appear fully formed without us knowing how they were constructed. Often this character, our self-image, has traits that are idealized or that are not our own ideas but the ideas of other people.

Although the self-image is like a story that comes to us from somewhere beyond our control, we assume it is an accurate reflection of our self. But in reality, a person is not a character in a story. A person is a biological organism with flaws and limitations living in an imperfect world. The reality of what, where, and who we are is not the same as the character we think we should be or would like to be.

If you examine what happens when you have unpleasant emotions that arise as a reaction to situations that occur in life, you will see that most of the time the ego is involved. Your ego gets triggered because reality is not consistent with your self-image. You may notice that at first it seems like the situation is the problem, but later you realize that it is actually your reaction to the situation that is the problem. If the situation makes you angry, or anxious, or ashamed, it is those feelings that are the problem. You might try "accepting the situation" but that doesn't work. What works is accepting your emotions.

Part of accepting your emotions is recognizing you don't control them. If we could control them, we might think, "This emotion is not the one I want, I will have a different emotion." But that is not how it works, just like thoughts, emotions come to us from unconscious processes we don't control. When we resist our emotions, it just makes the unpleasantness worse. Accepting your emotions, in part, is recognizing they are not yours; you didn't choose them, you don't control them. Resisting makes things worse, the best option is not to resist them which means you allow yourself to feel them.

Allowing yourself to feel your emotions doesn't mean you wallow in them. When you accept you have feelings such as anger, or anxiety, or shame, when you accept the emotions are not "yours", when you accept that in reality you are not as perfect as you would like your self-image to be. The emotions seem more like a physical sensation than a cloud over reality, and they fade much faster than before. Then the situation causes you much less suffering.

When this happens, you can deal with the situation using compassion and reason instead of through selfish emotions.

If you can see how your self-image is not realistic, and you can see how the ego causes suffering, and you are willing to let go of your self-image and your sense of self-importance and accept reality, it will prevent a great amount of suffering. If you can experience or remember a situation where letting go stopped you from suffering, you can try to cultivate that attitude and develop your ability to let go by keeping mindful in daily life of what that attitude is like. There are also various meditation and mindfulness practices that can help you develop that attitude.

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Letting Go of Egoic Attachments

Giving up belief in identity-view is the key to stream-entry (the first stage of awakening). It is equivalent to realizing anatta.

Giving up belief in identity-view is equivalent to letting go of egoic attachments.

Egoic attachments are identified by observing the mind and body and noticing when unpleasant emotions and cravings arise in response to events or thoughts and noticing if/how the ego is involved. Learning to notice the sensations in the body that accompany emotions help one to notice when unpleasant emotions and cravings arise.

It is possible to learn to let go of egoic attachments by practicing relaxing meditation which helps you to cultivate samatha.

Cultivating vipassana helps you learn to notice egoic attachments, and cultivating samatha helps you learn to let go of egoic attachments. When you let go of egoic attachments you are not affected by identity-view and you suffer much less.

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There isn't an entity separate from the aggregates.

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There isn't any entity separate from the aggregates*. When something upsets us we are thinking of an entity ("me") that needs to be defended from insult or injury. While there is a body that is made up of various tissues, a brain that has different regions with different functions, a mind with different ways or producing thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, sense of self or no-self, there isn't actually an entity ("me") separate from those various different things. Yet we think "I have a body, I have a mind, those thoughts emotions impulses are mine". There isn't any actual unified entity, "I", or "me", that has those things only the separate parts. Our attachments to self are based on an idea of a "me" that does not exist, when the basis for the attachments is understood to be an illusion, the attachments diminish.

When you understand from observing the mind in action that there isn't any entity separate from those different parts, that there is no one that needs to be protected from insult or injury, then attachments and suffering diminish. But reading these words alone may not allow you to understand this. The way to understand it is to quiet the mind with relaxing meditation, then watch the activity of the mind:

• Notice the arising and fading of thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, and the sense of self or no-self.

• Notice thoughts, emotions, impulses etc. pop into awareness fully formed from who-knows-where. You don't see how they are formed, created, or chosen. When you try to concentrate you get distracted by stray thoughts. You have unwanted emotions - you don't choose your emotions. You have impulses that are often unhelpful. Sensory perceptions and sensations appear in consciousness and you can't stop them. People have conflicting desires that work at cross purposes such as craving food when trying to lose weight. You don't control your thoughts, emotions, impulses etc., so you don't control your mind. If you don't control you mind, you don't control your body either.

• Notice that stream of consciousness is a sequence of cause and effect where one thought or emotion or impulse triggers the next due to a memory, an association, an experience, or logic, without any actual entity controlling it.

  Notice automaticity. Notice that when you do something, to a large extent it happens automatically. When you walk, you don't think about balance or having to move your feet a certain way, you just do it. Sometimes when you drive you find yourself on a section of road, but you don't remember getting there.

• Notice the feeling of agency (free will) comes from having impulses before you actually do something, but the impulse and the decision to follow it or reject it arises from unconscious processes that you don't have control over, they just pop into awareness like all other thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, and senses of self or no-self.

• Notice the idea or feeling of being an observer of thoughts, emotions, impulses etc. is dependent on something to observe, and it comes and goes depending on intensity of attention, and it is no different from any other thought or feeling that arises from unconscious processes.

• Notice that when you are upset, the ego is usually involved and that you have an idea of a being, an entity "I" or "me" that needs to be protected from insult or injury, and that entity doesn't physically exist - what really exists are just the various separate parts, the body and tissues, the brain and its various regions, and the mind made up of different sources for thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, and senses of self and no-self.

Most people have already noticed much of this without doing any formal meditation or mindfulness practices. What they haven't done is recognized the implications.

Another helpful practice is mindfulness. When you are mindful, in meditation or daily life, you are aware of what is happening or what you are doing in the present moment. You are not thinking about the past or the future or trying to solve a problem. You are just observing in the present moment. When you are mindful, when you mind is not wandering, when you are observing in the present moment, you are not thinking of a "me" that is separate from the aggregates.

The belief that there is an entity separate from the aggregates is called identity-view (sakkaya-ditthi), it is one of the ten fetters that are lost when one is fully awakened. Losing identity-view is the main component of the first stage of awakening, stream-entry.

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* The Stream Entry of Ajahn Chah - By Ajahn Nyanamoli Thero

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You can describe to yourself your experience as a whole, which can be called ‘the five aggregates’. If something is external to it – you realise ‘how could I even think of that? How could I think of something external to my thinking?’ That is a complete contradiction in terms.

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Copyright © 2025 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Look for Nirvana in the Present Moment

Many people think of enlightenment as something they might attain in the future.

But it is a mistake to look for it in the future.

One should look for nirvana in the present moment, not in the future.

Consider all the things you want or fear in the future, or regret about the past, or things that you want, or like, or don't like now - let go of all that, let go of whatever is separating you from nirvana now, and look for nirvana right now in the present moment. (Letting go doesn't necessarily mean you don't have emotions, it can mean you let go of your attachments or aversions to emotions.)

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, whatever is happening, that's where you should look for nirvana. Look for it with a calm mind.

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Equanimity

Having equanimity doesn't mean that you don't have emotions or that you don't feel emotions.

Having equanimity means that when you experience unpleasant emotions and cravings, you let yourself feel them without trying to stop them and without judging them: without thinking they are bad, and not thinking you shouldn't feel them. You don't create secondary emotions such as: "I don't like this feeling." "I shouldn't feel like this." "It's bad to feel like this." "This feeling means I failed." etc. Judging and secondary emotions can be very subtle so you may have to make an effort to notice if they are present.

And having equanimity also means just observing emotions and not getting drawn in by emotions: not getting lost in thought or carried away by emotions (trying to solve the problem or planning a reaction or thinking about how it is unfair etc. etc.).

When you just observe without rejecting, judging, or getting drawn in, the emotions seem like they are not yours, your ego is disengaged, you suffer much less.

Having equanimity doesn't mean you don't react to situations; it means you respond with compassion and reason rather than selfish emotions.

In summary, having equanimity means you feel the emotion, you don't try to stop it, you don't judge it, you don't get caught up in it, you just observe it.

• Judging and secondary emotions can be subtle so you might need to make an effort to notice if they are present.
• If you feel tense you can try to relax.
• If your mind wanders you can bring it back to feeling the emotion.
• Remember, the situation is not causing you to suffer, your reaction to the situation is causing you to suffer.

It is easier to have equanimity if you are relaxed and your mind is calm.

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Disengaging the Ego

Unpleasant emotions can be hard to let go of. If you examine unpleasant emotions, you may notice that there is usually some involvement of the ego. You might feel that if you could somehow disengage your ego then you could let go of the emotion and you would suffer a lot less.

There is a way to disengage the ego. It is easier to learn to do it while meditating, but the disengagement persists for a time after a meditation session, so it can be helpful in daily life. And with practice, disengaging the ego becomes easier to do.

This is one way to disengage the ego:

1. Relax and meditate to quiet the mind.

2. Then notice an unpleasant emotion, let yourself feel it.

3. Try to see clearly how the ego is involved - so that you understand disengaging the ego, letting go, would eliminate the emotion. But at this point you probably feel stuck, you can't let go.

4. Then try to relax. That probably that won't change much, you still feel stuck, until the next step:

5. Add an extra ingredient.

   I don't know exactly what to call this extra ingredient, probably the best way to describe it that will get someone close enough to figure it out for themselves is to call it metta. But it is not exactly metta, it is metta/humility/forgiveness/tranquil-happiness/freedom/compassion. It is the feeling of letting go, the feeling of letting go of your ego, the feeling of having your ego disengaged.

   When you do this correctly, the ego disengages, you let go of the emotion.

   I think many people who meditate will recognize this feeling, but you might not think of it as ego disengagement. I know this feeling very well, it's what I mean when I say, "When I am fully relaxed, nothing bothers me". But I had to experience it in the right context to see that is ego disengagement. If you follow the link and master that practice, you will understand what this "extra ingredient" is. When you do that practice, first your body starts to feel numb or tingling, then that feeling becomes more intense, then you feel like you are floating, and that becomes more intense, then you experience a transition (your ego becomes disengaged) and nothing is bothering you. If you experience that transition while focusing your attention on an unpleasant emotion, you will see that your ego has been disengaged.

I don't know how easy or hard this will be for any particular person to figure this out, but once you see how to do it, you can practice it and get better at it. The disengagement persists so you have to wait until it fades before you can try to produce it again.

In Buddhism, the first stage of awakening is called stream-entry. The main ingredient in stream-entry is the loss of identity view. Identity view is the belief that the self is a thing. When you are able to disengage the ego, you implicitly recognize that the ego is something that can be turned on and off or engaged and disengaged. The ego is not a thing, it is not a permanent entity, it is some type of process - it is one of the various unconscious processes that produce mental activity ie. thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, and also the sense of self (the ego). When you can disengage the ego, it is loss of identity view.

Loss of identity view doesn't mean you don't have emotions, it means you don't identify with them. When the ego is disengaged, you can let go of emotions more easily, and you can stay mindful more easily. When you are mindful of emotions, you don't react to emotions by pushing them away or judging them or suppressing them and you also don't get lost in thought or carried away by emotions in response to them.

The other factors in stream entry are loss of doubt about the teachings and loss of attachment to rites and rituals. Loss of attachment to rites and rituals is interperted to mean that you stop looking at meditation as some type of magic process because you see how it really works. So, learning to disengage the ego also involves loss of these other two factors, you understand how meditation helps you end suffering, and you have no doubt that it really works. Therefore, learning to disengage the ego is one way to attain stream-entry.

The process of learning to disengage the ego more easily over time so that you can keep the ego disengaged for longer and longer periods of time in daily life is part of attaining higher stages of awakening. In order to keep the ego disengaged in daily life, it is necessary to be mindful in daily life so that you can stay relaxed and notice when the ego becomes engaged and then disengage it.

Another part of attaining higher stages of awakening is letting go of attachments and aversions. Disengaging the ego allows you to let go but it doesn't automatically rid you of attachments and aversions. It doesn't eliminate your habitual reactions that have been reinforced over a lifetime. You still have to observe the activity of your mind to recognize attachments and aversions, and you have to decide to let go. Letting go means learning to relax and accept your emotions rather than reacting to them with in unmindful ways - you don't push emotions away or get carried away by them. Letting go may feel like letting down your barriers and expanding your borders. It may feel like your self is dissolving.

It can be hard to figure out how to accept emotions. It becomes easier if you understand that an unpleasant emotion is resistance to a fact of reality that we don't like. It's a lot easier to accept a fact we don't like than an emotion because if we understand a fact is the truth, then there is really no alternative but to believe it, ie. to accept it as truth. If we understand an unpleasant emotion is simply our resistance to an unpleasant fact, then if we can accept the fact as a truth, then when we accept the fact, there is no more resistance to it. It can be helpful, when you experience an unpleasant emotion, to identify the fact of reality that you are resisting, and remind yourself that what is really the problem is your resistance to the fact that, "reality is not the way I want it to be".

In Buddhism, those at the highest stage of awakening are said to experience nirvana with remainder. Nirvana is the absence of suffering. That there is remainder means it is not complete absence of suffering. This is because a complete elimination of suffering is not possible due to the limitations imposed by being a biological organism.

Related Reading

Despite the common perception that awakening is a sudden and mystical experience, for many people, maybe the majority of people, awakening is not sudden and not mystical.

Man on Cloud Mountain - Shodo Harada Roshi-Segment

Often enlightenment or kensho or satori is considered to be some kind of unusual experience or something external or some kind of special phenomenon. But it’s not like that. There may be some kind of sudden revelation or some kind of sudden perception, but its not something that is that unusual or that strange or foreign that we come upon or that comes upon us. What it is, is the ability to see without any interruption of the ego, without any filtering of the ego. And since we are all walking around seeing things through our ego filter almost all the time, to suddenly be able to see without that filter is a surprise. But it is nothing that we have ever not had.

On Enlightenment – An Interview with Shinzen Young

When it happens suddenly and dramatically you’re in seventh heaven. It’s like after the first experience of love, you’ll never be the same. However, for most people who’ve studied with me it doesn’t happen that way. What does happen is that the person gradually works through the things that get in the way of enlightenment, but so gradually that they might not notice. What typically happens is that over a period of years, and indeed decades, within that person the craving, aversion, and unconsciousness—the mula kleshas (the fundamental “impurities”), get worked through. But because all this is happening gradually they’re acclimatizing as it’s occurring and they may not realize how far they’ve come. That’s why I like telling the story about the samurai...

Enlightenments By Jack Kornfield

There is also what is called the “gateless gate.” One teacher describes it this way: “I would go for months of retreat training, and nothing spectacular would happen, no great experiences. Yet somehow everything changed. What most transformed me were the endless hours of mindfulness and compassion, giving a caring attention to what I was doing. I discovered how I automatically tighten and grasp, and with that realization I started to let go, to open to an appreciation of whatever was present. I found an ease. I gave up striving. I became less serious, less concerned with myself. My kindness deepened. I experienced a profound freedom, simply the fruit of being present over and over.” This was her gateless gate.

Uposatha Sutta - The Dharmafarers, themindingcenter.org

Even so, bhikshus, just as the great ocean slopes gradually, slides gradually, inclines gradually, not abruptly like a precipice — so, too, in this Dharma-Vinaya, penetration into final knowledge occurs by gradual training, not abruptly.1

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Give Yourself Permission to Have Emotions

When something happens and you feel an unpleasant emotion or craving, you may react to that emotion with more unpleasant emotions. This creates a type of feedback loop. (For those who are interested in dependent origination, step 12 feeds back into step 6.)

For every time a situation triggers us, we trigger ourselves again and again, because we don't like having unpleasant emotions, (especially if we practice meditation because we want to become serene and we feel anything that is not serenity is a kind of failure). This is one reason it is so hard to let go. And it focuses our mind on the situation so we get more triggers from the situation. 

But you can interrupt the feedback loop when you give yourself permission to feel bad (allow yourself to accept/welcome your feelings without rejecting them or pushing them away) and while also maintaining mindfulness (not judging, not getting drawn in: your thinking mind doesn't start wandering, and you are not carried away by emotions).

The suffering caused by negative reactions to emotions is usually what is causing the vast majority of our suffering. The resistance is really the problem not the actual emotion. When you accept your emotions with equanimity, you experience a great sense of relief. Unpleasant situations are much easier to endure when you stop making things worse by beating yourself up over how you react to them.

And it isn't just unpleasant emotions and cravings. There are often emotions that in themselves aren't unpleasant, but we might not like to have them for various reasons so we react to them in an unpleasant way. This often happens if we feel an emotion that doesn't reflect our values, for example if you think of yourself as a spiritual person but you feel excessive pride, or someone else's misfortune makes you happy, etc. These types of emotions can set up the same type of feedback loop, where one emotions results in other unpleasant emotions.

By giving yourself permission to feel all your emotions, by making it okay to let yourself feel what you feel, you can experience your emotions to their full depth, explore layers of emotions and associated reactions. You can get things out of your system (let go of them) by letting them express themselves.

Doing this, in a sense, is losing identity-view because we stop protecting the "self" from insult and injury. We stop reacting like the self-image is a physical thing when it is only an image projected by the unconscious processes that produce all of our thoughts, emotions, and impulses. When you give yourself permission to feel all your emotions, it is like removing the ego filter.

Developing the habit of observing the mind and learning to notice the sensations in your body that accompany emotions can help you learn to notice emotions more easily.

When you notice an emotion you don't like, it can help to say to yourself in a relaxed way:
"It's okay to feel _____".
Try not to push away or judge the emotion, also try to observe how it feels in your mind and body while staying mindful, ie. without getting lost in thought or carried away by emotions.

Saying "it's okay" is a way of saying, "I experience relief from struggling against a fact, by accepting a fact as a fact. Resisting the facts of reality just makes things worse than they have to be. It is much nicer to have equanimity than to be upset - being upset doesn't help."

Saying "it's okay" is not to be understood as giving yourself permission to do anything in response to a situation or emotion, and it is not to be understood as encouraging yourself to repeat anything in the future, it is to be understood only as a reminder to experience your emotions with equanimity and mindfulness. (Equanimity is not pushing away, not rejecting, not judging and mindfulness is not getting lost in thought, not getting carried away by emotions). When you react to situations with equanimity and mindfulness, you are just taking your ego out of the equation. This will allow you to formulate a response to a situation with compassion and reason rather than selfish emotions.

In addition to emotions, you can fill in the blank with physical sensations and situations as well as emotions. You can also include things that are pleasant but that you might react negatively to. Accept with equanimity anything that produces a negative reaction (disliking or craving). Accept the situation and your reactions with equanimity. Try to notice different aspects of the situation that might be upsetting you and accept all of them.

When you notice unpleasant emotions arising, if you look closely you can usually see that the ego is involved. There is almost always something that offends the ego or threatens the self-image that is responsible for the unpleasant emotions. By accepting situations and emotions, giving yourself permission to have unpleasant emotions, you are disengaging the ego. You are teaching yourself to turn off the ego filter, to look at things free from identity-view.

When you accept everything with equanimity, you experience a great sense of relief. Unpleasant situations are much easier to endure when you stop making things ten times worse by beating yourself up over how you react to them.

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Copyright © 2024 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.