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On No-self (Anatta) realisation.
I felt compelled to write about this today, seeing many are on the brink of no-self realisation, some feeling confused as I once was. I sincerely hope my scribbles will more or less help other practitioners on their path. To me, anatta insight is the most crucial insight on the path to fully penetrate. Without the insight of no-self, subsequent insights such as emptiness and dependent arising are difficult to penetrate experientially and will inadvertently be distorted. This writing ended up slightly long, but I wanted to write everything I know and everything that is helpful.
No-self insight is not a simple insight and might take one many years of contemplation to realise and after initial period of realisation, many years of practice to refine and stabilise the realisation.
Here I present the 2 important parts of this realisation.
—
The first part of no self realisation is when the notion of ‘SELF’, a central, cohesive, independent, immutable, inherent ‘ME’ is realise to be unfounded after cycles of searching.
This is a realisation after careful analysis that there is no basis for this self that we held dear. There is no basis for that PERSON that we thought was looking through our eyes. There is also no basis for that sense of contraction held in the body, moving the body, walking in a place, walking through time, WHO IS THIS PERSON? WHAT IS THE BASIS OF THIS SENSE OF ME?
Practitioners need to go through sincere and careful searching, this sense of self that feels like a contraction, what is it based upon ? Where is the HQ of this sense of self?
In the head? In the pituitary? In the pineal gland? In the heart? The trunk? In the eyes?
Where?
This exercise need to be done in meditation sincerely and repeatedly. The mind needs to see the repeatedly searching and It has to learn that it has been holding onto a phantom, like a phantom limb. The Self we always taken for granted as a sense of ME, now we cannot find it!
What is next? No-Me, then who is alive being? We cannot deny the aliveness!
If there is no basis for ‘ME’, how do I hear, how do I see, how do I know what I know, experience what I experience, feel what I feel?
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2) Hence the second part of this realisation is ——> Who knows ?
This is the second part of no-self realisation that must be thoroughly penetrated to make sure we do not just hold a dry, intellectualised ‘no-self’ in our mouth, all the time saying “no I, no me, no mine, no self, no problem blah3”, but unable to have any experiential realisation because ‘the face before your parents meet’ or ‘Mu’ is not authenticated, we don’t actually know WHO KNOWS? We don’t know anything about our true nature yet. There is no anatta realisation without this important part.
To penetrate ‘Who see? Who hears? and Who feels? Investigate awareness carefully.
Ask, If there is no basis for ‘ME”, where is this awareness knowing the sound, seeing the sight, knowing the touch? Where is it?
Is it separated from the sound? If it is separated, when the sound is gone, is the awareness of sound still there? Search for it . If sound and awareness are not separated, is it together?
One will realise the awareness of sound only happens when sound is heard, and when the sound is gone, that awareness of sound is gone too. So both sound and the awareness of sound CANNOT be TWO separate things.
Is it one then?
One can use Bahiya sutra to help here, “in the seen only the seen, in the heard only the heard”, Buddha taught Bahiya compassionately.
One can take this phrase into meditation and sense into the sensations, how is it that ‘in the seen only the seen’?
Is the awareness located in the flowers seen?
Is the awareness located in the sound heard?
Can it be that the awareness is embedded already in the sound rather than in our head? (Yes)\
Can it be that the awareness and sound is not TWO, but ONE?
Can it be that the awareness and sound is not even ONE, but the sound knows itself naturally, never a split before?
Can it be that the sound is already self-aware?
Can it be that there was never a ‘self’ needed to hear the sound, as the awareness of the sound arise effortlessly when sound arise as sound has a nature of awareness in it? (Yes)
Can it be that the 6 senses are all self aware? (Yes)
Our world is made up only of 6 senses, does it mean our whole world is self aware? (Yes)
Does it mean when the whole world is self-aware, there is no separate self needed to be aware of all sensations? (Yes)
Once this is penetrated deeply, one’s perception will change drastically and one’s world will have a sense of heightened ‘brightness’ to their perception, like watching the most well defined HD television. It will be exciting, new and shocking at first, but the excitement will die down after awhile. However the brightness and sharpness of perception will stay. One will understand the dullness of perception is due to the filter of self. The more the sense of self melt away, the brighter one’s perception is, as though one lives in a crystal world, so sharp and bright.
* of note, Luminosity in buddhism does not mean ‘bright’ , it usually means ‘self-aware’ or ‘knowingness’.
Just to clarify, the few inquiries above took me a few months to penetrate, and that was my progression of insight gradually. It took me many cycles to refine no-self insight that those were the steps I took.
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3) After the above 2 understandings of
1) There is no such “SELF” contraction in the body or the head and
2) All 6 senses are actually ‘self-aware’ and awareness does not stem from the head outwards….
One’s framework of reality will gradually change from an initial “self seeing and sensing the world” into “there is no separate self, the world seeing and aware of itself 360 degrees”…
The sense of a subject will be gone, the physical body will become an “object” just like the table in the room, then an equality in our perception will arise.
That is the no-self insight.
Nothing mystical, just very sensible and realistic.
After that, it will be plenty of practice to ‘melt’ away the core or sense of self in the body and sense of self will actually slowly diminish with sincere investigation and practice. Both shamatha and vipassana is needed. The most crucial part is the VIEW.
No-self or emptiness of personal self is a crucial insight, but it is only the FIRST step into buddhism insights to eventually reach such-ness.
Emptiness of inherent existence, dependent arising and interrelatedness can soon be penetrated and will not be too hard once no-self is realise properly, IMO.
Then non dual and insubstantial nature of mind eventually can be penetrated soon after.
But I won’t go into that today, it is too long already.
I wrote from my own practice and experience so it might not be standard textbooks statements.
May this helps sincere practitioners more or less.
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Sarah Luna
Nice artwork. I don’t think I’m on the brink but I am looking forward to reading…
Carter Spinks
Top contributor
This
is very helpful. I really appreciate the clarification. I have been
naively thinking that No-self is realized after searching and not
finding, your first part. I needed this break down. Seriously thank you.
William Albert
All
very good and clear, thank you. I have one observation though... It
seems that true Anatta is permanent and irreversible, and also a very
large "quantum" shift from what came before. What you're describing as
anatta seems to be more like 3rd path. Frank Yang, Ingram, and Roger
all describe this feeling and then were blown away when the actual shift
happened (Theravada 4th path). If you haven't watched it, I highly
recommend Roger's stage theory, especially the last video, because it
describes this territory of feeling like you're "maybe there" and then
the permanent shift into true Anatta:
Not that this doesn't deepen, but it seems that most people say this shift is pretty huge and irreversible even if they try.
YOUTUBE.COM
True No Self and No Centre - A Stage Theory of Enlightenment (5/5)
Soh Wei Yu
Admin
Top contributor
Yin Ling should do a reply from her experience.
But
I just like to mention that MCTB 3rd path is not Yin Ling's anatta. It
is Yin Ling's nondual phase. See Yin Ling's three stages: https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/.../yin-lings-three...
Because
anatta is not yet realised in MCTB 3rd path, only nondual, you have all
those 'chains of anagamis' that Daniel Ingram wrote in https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/.../rigpa-and... which would be impossible at the anatta phase.
MCTB 4th path is Yin Ling's anatta or AtR's anatta. It is indeed irreversible.
And
for us, in AtR, we see anatta as just sutta stream entry. MCTB 4th
path, Frank Yang's "full enlightenment", Kevin Shanilec's ten fetter
arahat, etc, are all just sutta stream entry for us as explained in https://www.reddit.com/r/streamentry/comments/igored/insight_buddhism_a_reconsideration_of_the_meaning/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf%20 which John Tan found to be really good and told me to pin it up to the top of AtR blog. Yin Ling agrees with us. Also: https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/.../insight-buddhism...
Carter Spinks
Top contributor
After reading this again, I had more thoughts on the matter.
I
think this is where the confusion comes in for me, because the feeling I
have when I pay attention feels very much like I am not identifying
with what I commonly thought of as “me.” It does not feel like
intellect, it feels very visceral.
The
feeling of looking for the self, not finding it, and resting in that
space of not identifying with a “me” does feel like I would have
imagined the experience of no-self be like. But i guess if I stay in
accordance with what you wrote, this is not a full realization.
Soh Wei Yu 
Admin
Top contributor
Yes, what you wrote is more of impersonality than nondual or anatta.
“Unless there is expression of non dual, otherwise yes more like impersonality and non-doership [than anatta].” – John Tan, 2019
“Nothing
much, his no-self is more towards no doership rather then pellucid
luminosity.” – John Tan mentioned about someone’s experience, 2020
Also see:
Dec
03
What is experiential insight
Yin Ling:
When we say experiential insight in Buddhism,
It means..
A literal transformation of energetic orientation of the whole being, down to the marrow.
The sound MUST literally hears themselves.
No hearer.
Clean. Clear.
A bondage from the head here to there cut off overnight.
Then gradually the rest of the 5 senses.
Then one can talk about Anatta.
So if for you,
Does sound hear themselves?
If no, not yet. You have to keep going! Inquire and meditate.
You haven’t reach the basic insight requirement for the deeper insights like anatta and emptiness yet!
Yin Ling:
Yin Ling: “Realisation is when
This insight goes down to the marrow and you don’t need even a minute amount of effort for sound to hear themselves.
It is like how you live with dualistic perception now, very normal, no effort.
Ppl with Anatta realisation live in Anatta effortlessly, without using thinking to orient. It’s their life.
They cannot even go back to dualistic perception because that is an imputation, it js uprooted
At first you might need to purposely orient with some effort.
Then at one point there is no need.. further along, dreams will become Anatta too.
That’s experiential realisation.
There’s no realisation unless this benchmark is achieved!”
AWAKENINGTOREALITY.COM
What is experiential insight
Soh Wei Yu
Admin
Top contributor
......
"Soh:
what is important is that there is experiential realisation that leads
to an energetic expansion outwards into all the forms, sounds, radiant
universe... such that it is not that you are in here, in the body,
looking outwards at the tree, listening the birds chirping from here
it is just the trees are vividly swaying in and of itself, luminously
without an observer
the trees sees themselves
the sounds hear itself
there is no location from which they are experienced, no vantage point
the energetic expansion outward into vivid manifestation, boundless, yet
it is not an expansion from a center, there is just no center
without such energetic shift it is not really the real experience of no
selfxabir Snoovatar" - https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/.../the-difference...
Labels: Anatta, Yin Ling |
AWAKENINGTOREALITY.COM
The difference between the experience of non-doership and impersonality vs the experiential realization of non-dual anatman
