From a friend.

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.

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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?

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.

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.