Selves & Not-self

The other night, I mentioned how a healthy sense of self is essential for motivating yourself in the practice. We then got a lot of questions on the issue of not-self, so I’d like to talk about that topic this morning.

One of the biggest misunderstandings about Buddhism is the belief that the Buddha taught that there is no self. Actually, the existence or non-existence of the self was an issue he refused to get involved with. He had a policy that there were certain questions he would not answer, and one of the questions he wouldn’t answer was, “Do I have a self? Do I have no self?” He said that if you held to the position either that you had a self or that you had no self, you would get involved in a tangle of views that would get in the way of awakening. So, he would put that question aside.

What he did talk about was the process he called “I-making” or “my-making” by which you create a sense of self. There are also times when we deny that something is us or ours. He saw both of these processes—self-making and not-self-making—as actions. And the question about actions always is, are they skillful or not? In other words, when is creating a sense of self a skillful action, and when is it more skillful to say that something is not your self? What ways of creating a self are skillful, and what ways are not? What ways of saying “not-self” are skillful and what ways are not?

In both cases, the concepts of self and not-self are perceptions, and we use both of these perceptions as strategies to find happiness.

For example, with the perception of self, when you have a desire and you want to bring the desire about, you create two senses of self. The first is the self as the consumer, the you that will enjoy the results of getting that desire fulfilled. Then there’s the self as the producer, the self that will actually be able to bring that thing about. For example, if you have a desire for a vegan pizza, the self as the consumer is your sense of your self as the person who will enjoy eating vegan pizza. The sense of self as the producer is the self who has the skills and means to bring this about, either the self who has the money to buy the pizza or the self who has the ability to get the ingredients to make the pizza.

Now, this applies to all kinds of desires, both skillful and unskillful. Even to practice the path, you also need both senses of self. For example, Ven. Ānanda, who was one of the Buddha’s foremost disciples, said that you need to have a healthy sense of self as a producer. He expressed it in this way: You think of the fact that there are other people who have gained awakening. “They are human beings, I’m a human being. They can do it, why can’t I?” That’s a healthy sense of self as a producer on the path, the self that feels capable of following the path.

As for the self as a consumer, the Buddha recommends that when you’re getting discouraged in the practice, you should remind yourself that you got on the path because you wanted to find a way to the end of suffering. You loved yourself. If you give up on the practice, does that mean you don’t love yourself anymore? This is a healthy sense of self as a consumer on the path.

As we go through life, we create many different selves around our different desires because we see that they’re helpful in bringing about whatever it is we want. It’s in this way that they’re strategies, strategies for happiness.

The same principle applies to not-self. You see that there are certain things that are not worth desiring or certain ideas or certain habits that are getting in the way of your desires, and you decide that you’re not going to identify with them anymore.

Now, as we go through life ordinarily, we tend to adopt these different strategies of self and not-self without thinking too much about them. For example, think back to when you were a child. If some children down the street were beating up on your little sister, you’d think, “This is my sister. I have to go defend her.” But when you got her safely back home and she started playing with your toys, she wasn’t your sister anymore. She was the Other.

We apply these different perceptions pretty unconsciously as we go through life, but when we come to the practice, the Buddha asks us to be more systematic in applying them for the sake of putting an end to suffering. For example, when you’re practicing the precepts, there may be some things that would pull you away from practicing the precepts. Suppose that someone were to offer you some money to lie: You’d have to remind yourself, “That money is not really mine. The things that I could buy with that money would leave me after a while.” So, you apply the perception of self to your precepts, and a perception of not-self to the money and the things you would buy with the money you’d gain from lying. That helps you to stick with your precepts.

Similarly, when you’re practicing concentration, the object of the concentration is yours, and the person meditating is you. As for any distracting thoughts that would come up, that’s when you think about how the perceptions and thought fabrications in that distracting thought are not-self. It’s in this way that you learn how to apply these perceptions of self and not-self more systematically, so that both the strategy of self and the strategy of not-self actually are conducive to a genuine happiness.

It’s only when you’ve fully developed all the factors of the path that you let go of everything, because you’ve found a happiness that doesn’t require any strategies anymore, and the only way to fully experience that happiness is to let go of everything. You don’t identify with perceptions of self, and at that point, even the perception of not-self is something you don’t identify with, either. You have to let that go as well. That’s the way you can find the ultimate happiness.

So, to understand the teaching on not-self, we have to view it within the context of the teaching on kamma. This is the opposite of what many people usually do. They make the teaching on not-self the context, interpreting it as saying there is no self, and then they say, “Well, how does the teaching on kamma fit into that?” And it doesn’t fit very well, because it seems like the Buddha is saying there is no agent deciding how to act, and there’s no one being affected by the action, so why should kamma matter?

The Buddha, however, took the issue the other way around. He started with the principle that there are skillful and unskillful actions, and some skillful actions can be so skillful that they can take you all the way to nibbāna. The question of self as an activity and not-self as an activity fits into that context very well. You use perceptions of self and perceptions of not-self when they’re helpful for the path. In that way, they enable you to follow this path, which the Buddha called the kamma that leads to the end of kamma. Then, when you reach the end of kamma, you also reach the end of the perceptions of self and not-self. All that’s left is the ultimate happiness. And as Ajaan Suwat used to say, once you’ve found that ultimate happiness, you’re not interested in asking whether there is or is not a self experiencing it. The experience is there, with no need for strategies to attain or maintain it, and it’s totally satisfying.

Questions

Q: Could you explain the differences between: 1) identity-view, sakkāya-diṭṭhi, 2) self, attā, and 3) conceit, māna? A person who has right view has abandoned personality view, self, and conceit.

A: This issue could be an entire talk, but to be brief: Sakkāya-diṭṭhi, or identity-view, is basically when you tell yourself, “I am this.” And “this” may be the body, feelings, perceptions, mental fabrications, or consciousness—or what it is that has these things, something that lies inside these things, or something that contains these things within itself. Any of these views would count as identity-view. The crucial element is that there is the thought in the mind, “I am the same thing as this.” The same goes for self. However, māna, which is translated in English as “conceit,” is the thought, “I am,” or “I exist,” with no “this.”

The texts say that, as you attain the different levels of awakening, at the very first level you abandon identity-view, in other words, any thoughts of: “I am this.” However, conceit or māna is abandoned only on the last level of awakening, and that’s because in the meantime you still have to train yourself in concentration and discernment. The work of developing those trainings will require a sense of “I”—just a sense that there’s an “I.” After all, to develop concentration and to develop discernment, you need to have a sense of “I am responsible for doing this. I am doing this.” There’s a sutta, Saṁyutta Nikāya 22:89, where a non-returner explains that he still has a sense of “I am,” but it’s not identified with any of the aggregates. He compares it to the scent of soap lingering in a piece of cloth after the soap has been used to wash the cloth.

So, when you develop right view at the first level of awakening, you abandon identity-view—the “I am this”—but there will still be a sense of “I am.” Only after full awakening will there be no need for any sense of “I.” But even after awakening, arahants still know who they are as opposed to who somebody else is. For example, when they’re eating, they know which mouth to put their food in. But their attitude toward that sense of “I” is very different from ours.

Q: It’s said that we should not identify with events or phenomena, so when I spread thoughts of goodwill, to individuals or to myself, or to an event in the past, etc., if I say, “May my loving-kindness be beneficial to all beings,” wouldn’t it be better to just say, “May loving-kindness be beneficial to all beings”? When I speak of this energy of loving-kindness, I’m talking about the internal energy that can be called goodwill.

A: This is one area where you actually have to take responsibility for your goodwill. Anything connected with kamma is an area where you have to remember that you need to be responsible. So, here you do want to identify with the wish, because you have to remember to keep giving rise to this wish. It’s not a universal force or innate nature that will come through you on its own. Ajaan Suwat used to comment several times that there were many, many things that the Buddha said are not-self, but still the area of kamma is one area where he said, “This is yours, and you will be the inheritor of the actions.” So basically, the actions are yours. This is one of the areas where you have to take responsibility and develop a healthy sense of self. On this topic, you might want to read the book, Selves & Not-self. It discusses the role of a skillful sense of self in furthering your practice.