(The goal for the system of meditation and mindfulness I recommend is to ease suffering. It is not to find one's true self, or to have a non-dual experience, or to have an experience of oneness. I am not discussing those phenomena in this post. And readers should also understand the subjects of identity-view, stream-entry, and awakening have many different definitions and are outside the scope of this post.)
The feeling of being/having a self is normal and you live with it all your life so most people don't notice it most of the time, and if they do notice it, it is usually somewhat vague.
Shinzen Young explains that all people also have no-self experiences many times a day where the feeling of self is absent but they don't realize it.
The only difference between an enlightened person and a non-enlightened person is that when the feel-image-talk self doesn’t arise during the day, the enlightened person notices that and knows that to be a clear experience of no-self. The non-enlightened person actually has that experience hundreds of times a day, when they’re briefly pulled to a physical-type touch or an external sight or sound. For just a moment there is just the world of touch-sight-sound. For just a moment there is no self inside that person but they don’t notice it! But just because they don’t notice it doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened.
People can learn to notice when the feeling of self is absent. Some people call it a no-self experience. I call it "the feeling of no-self" because the self doesn't really go away. (The feeling occurs when the ego is disengaged as I will explain below.) The self, is in a sense, the aggregates of clinging:
That’s another thing people say: ‘There Is No Self’. That which was taken as ‘self’ is there; it’s simply these five aggregates, (which should be seen as not-self). That is what the Buddha said, but people never arrive at it because their whole practice is based on a denial: ‘There is No Self’.
I think of the aggregates as the unconscious processes that produce thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences and senses of self and senses of no-self. That self doesn't go away. The feeling of self is, just like everything we experience, produced by the aggregates. A no-self experience occurs when the aggregates are not producing a feeling of self. (This is not a question of materialism vs spirituality.)
Disengaging the ego is similar to what Shodo Harada Roshi calls seeing without the ego filter.
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.
I have had a number of different types of no-self experiences and they never made a big impression on me, I never understood why anyone would consider them awakening. I started meditating when I was 11 or 12 years old so I never really developed a mature sense of what is normal, and throughout my life I have had many different types of unusual spiritual and paranormal experiences - my amazement threshold is very high. So while I would expect most people to react to this method (below) of producing a feeling of no-self the same way I do (it's pleasant, mildly amusing, and helps keep the ego disengaged), I can't guarantee it won't turn your world view upside down and shake you up. You should proceed at our own risk.
The easiest way I know to produce a feeling of no-self (of disengaging the ego) is as follows:
- Prepare by quieting the mind with meditation.
- Try to bring your mind into the present moment by observing your environment, look and listen to what is going on around you.
- As you do that, watch your mind for mental chatter. Usually, when you give your mind a task to do, it requires attention and other conscious mental activity stops. So watching your mind for mental chatter will actually stop the mental chatter. As you watch the mind, notice the absence of mental chatter. If your mind won't be quiet, try meditating on the breath, and digging through layers of any emotions that might be distracting you to reveal their root cause.
- Awareness of the absence of mental chatter may produce a feeling that something is missing. That chatter normally creates the sense of a person, yourself, that you talk to in your mind. The absence of that aspect of mental activity may create the feeling that something is missing, an emptiness, a feeling of not having a self. It may seem like if someone said something nasty, there would be no one to get offended.
It might take some practice to experience a feeling of no-self, initially awareness of it might be faint, but when it is happening, it is quite distinct. In order to have a strong clear experience, what Shinzen Young describes as a complete experience, you need, he says, to have sufficient concentration, clarity, and equanimity. Step 1 should provide equanimity (the absence of distracting emotions). Step 2 should provide concentration (the absence of distracting thoughts). Steps 3 and 4 should provide clarity. If you lack any of those three ingredients, spend more time on the step or steps that will provide what is lacking. The three qualities support each other, equanimity helps with concentration, concentration helps with clarity, and clarity helps with equanimity.
Be aware that there are other different phenomenon that can also give you a feeling like you don't have a self, and some interpretations of realizing anatta / losing identity-view don't involve a feeling of no-self at all. So I am not making any implications about the meaning of this experience.
Why is this particular type of experience useful?
At first it may seem to be just something interesting to do with the mind, somewhat fun, better than recreational drugs because it's legal and doesn't cause vomiting the way some entheogens do. But it also keeps your mind quiet in the present moment, and a quiet mind does not produce suffering.
Most suffering is caused by the ego. When the mind is quiet and in the present moment, and you are feeling like you don't have a self, you are not thinking in ways that will produce suffering. You are not thinking a normal stream of consciousness in which most thoughts are about how things relate to you or how things affect you. Your ego is not involved, it is disengaged.
- The feeling of no-self is useful because it is a biofeedback signal telling you that you are not engaging your ego.
When you are more accomplished at noticing the feeling of no-self, you may recognize that mindfulness itself is a no-self experience. Being in the present moment, interrupts dependent origination and prevents suffering from arising by keeping the ego disengaged. You can pay attention to either aspect, the aspect of ending suffering, or the feeling of no-self, or both. But the effect is the same.
- If you can produce the feeling of no-self, then you will probably feel pretty good since your ego won't be making you suffer during that time.
- And because it is somewhat amusing and fun, it provides positive reinforcement that will encourage you to practice mindfulness during daily life.
- And during daily life if you find something upsets you, you can use this skill to disengage your ego and that should cause the upset to fade. It feels like you are dissolving your self, but you are only disengaging your ego.
Just keeping the mind quiet, focused on a feeling of no-self, is not a complete solution to suffering. There will likely be some emotional attachments that will be so strong you can't easily disengage your ego. You will get additional relief from suffering if you learn to observe how emotions arise, and to work through layers of emotions, and to let go of them by relaxing. But feeling like you don't have a self can be part of the solution.
Other things you can do to help reinforce or produce a feeling of no-self:
- Notice "automaticity" as you go about tasks in daily life. Notice that you do things automatically without being consciously in control. For example, when you walk you don't think about how to move, you just walk. Sometimes if your mind is distracted you walk without paying any attention to it at all.
- Notice that the stream of consciousness is a sequence of cause and effect without anyone controlling it.
- Observe the observer, the experiencer, the sufferer. Try to see how your sense of self is just another projection into consciousness from the aggregates. Notice how the sense of self is constantly changing.
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Practice disengaging your ego.
Look at your cell phone. First think, "my cell phone", then think, "the cell phone". Notice the difference? Do this a few times. Find various ways to practice this in daily life. For example, think:
- My phone / The phone
- My car / The car
- My house / The house
- My hand / The hand
- My body / The body
- My seeing / The seeing
- My hearing / The hearing
- My feeling / The feeling
- My emotion / The Emotion
- My fear / The fear (anger, guilt, regret, etc. etc.)
- My thought / The thought
- My opinion / The opinion
- My (favorite sports) team / The team
- My (favorite) music group / The music group
- My Country / The Country (or name the country ie "The US")
After practicing this for a while you will get a sense of the feeling of when your ego is disengaged and you can skip the "My" part and just do the "The" part. But try out the "My" part once in a while to refresh your experience of the contrast.
This is especially good to do when something is upsetting you. You can use this to disengage your ego to lessen the suffering you experience. For example, if you hear a sound you don't like, think "My hearing / The hearing", or just "The sound". If you are sensitive to the feeling of no-self, it can feel like your self is dissolving, but it is only your ego disengaging. Your self, the aggregates, is still there.
More Info
More here.
And here: https://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/meditation.html
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