Anattā – Not Self
April 2021, Bangkok
One of the more controversial points in Buddhism is anattā or the quality of not-self, non-self, non-identification, or however one wants to translate it. Like most problems of ancient religions, doctrines, practices, or various other writings getting through to the modern age beyond all our axioms, the meaning of the original intention might be muddled, so much more so when the idea trying to be expressed was hard to understand in the time and in the language it was originally composed or spoken in. Pali especially has a vague quality to its vocabulary that it typically requires at least three english words at minimum to even come close to capturing the breadth of a single word. In ancient India, after the manifestation and partial gestation of the Upanishads and Puranas when ideas like atman became popularized with adherents, concepts which espoused the opposition to it, which is what anattā seemed to be, probably came across as regressive. I can’t be sure of the reception of the concept at the time, but in the Suttas Buddha seemed to come into confrontation with the various Brahmins that he debated over this issue a few times, leading me to believe that even then there was some controversy over the claim. But understanding it as a claim of there not being a ‘self’ also misses the mark. What the buddha is describing is not the lacking of an entity of self, but rather a meditative skill of non-identification with anything.
I wrote an earlier piece about the five aggregates, but because there is a lot to cover on just that one focus in practice, I didn’t go much into the noticing of qualities of non-self, impermanence, and stress (suffering) within those aggregates. This, however, is the most fundamental approach to tackling the five aggregates and understanding them better. There are differences in how to approach this practice. For instance, in the Goenka method he has people focus solely on the aggregate of feeling and noticing the quality of anicca (impermanence) within those feelings. Anyone who has ever done a Goenka retreat will certainly hear his voice saying this word in their heads right now, as the instructor will usually play an audio clip of Goenka thundering this word to startle you out of any state you may be in. It was actually in one of these retreats that I had an early glimpse into a more profound conscious state. I knew we weren’t meant to necessarily focus on the quality of non-self, but during one of the group sessions on about the 7th or 8th day, I had a lot of anxiety going into the room, and I went through the routine of body scanning I’d been doing for the previous days very quickly. When I finished and the hour long sitting session wasn’t up, I continued to sit there and watch my breath for a few seconds. The anxiety was still there, but I refused to move at all, and soon these issues of what non-self meant came to the forefront of my mind and wouldn’t leave. I couldn’t stop considering it and its implications. This, which was more than likely bubbling under the surface of my consciousness, was what was causing all the anxiety during that session, and now I had to deal with it consciously. I tried to confront it directly, taking the Buddha’s word that this ‘self’ isn’t all we might believe it to be. At some point the abstract understanding of non-self started to line up with the experience of its actual truth. The more I tried to find anywhere within me that I could pinpoint as ‘self,’ I inevitably came up short. Once the truth of it started to become clear I got this intense rush of a feeling, like I was getting shot up out of my body, and this freaked me out. I finally moved my arms to ground myself on the floor very quickly, ultimately breaking any change of conscious state that was taking place.
I stuck with Goenka’s method for a very long time, and if the retreats that I had signed up for wouldn’t have gotten cancelled due to covid lockdowns last year, I’d probably still be practicing this way of doing things (and more than likely be a monk at this point). But that’s not what wound up happening, so I started to experiment more on my own within the parameters of these five aggregates and three qualities to see if I could find the same early, but hopefully not interrupted, success that I had at that retreat. It seemed with more and more practice, for me personally, acknowledging and fully knowing the quality of non-self within these aggregates was a key point to getting into deeper states of consciousness. Again, the term anattā in Pali doesn’t mean that there is absolutely no self, and certainly doesn’t mean that there is a self. To latch onto one side or the other of this dichotomy would be to miss the point. As with nearly everything in Buddhist practice, finding the middle way between extremes is the path suggested for success. It’s rather that you inspect each of the five aggregates—form, feelings, perception, (volitional) formations, and consciousness—as not being ‘you,’ as having nothing to do with ‘you.’ You simply do not identify with these things while inspecting them, scrutinizing them, as these five things—given the broad definition specifically of (volitional) formations—compromise just about everything in our experience.
Once you identify with something, you’re not able to see it for what it fully is. When you wear a mask, you barely get to see any of the mask anymore. Even when looking into a mirror, the interior of the mask is still all out of sight. So, disassociating from it allows you to inspect the qualities of it, to see how it fully functions in relation with everything else. I’ve personally found more success in trying to notice all three characteristics within an aggregate simultaneously, as opposed to focusing in on one—either non-self, stress (suffering), or impermanence. When having all three at your disposal at once, it helps to dismantle any attempt of the aggregate to latch onto consciousness and expand and proliferate the worlds created in your mind to distract you away from your practice. Granted, the quality of impermanence is probably the easiest one to notice, which is why the Goenka method uses this one to start with, as statistically speaking for larger groups people probably have much more success with beginning their practice if they hone in on just this one aspect first. And I more than likely wouldn’t have had the results I’ve had in my own practice without having devoted specific focus to just this quality of impermanence for so long. Ultimately, though, I’ve had the most profound experiences when focusing on non-self, but it is essential to not misunderstand it, as it’s very easy to be led astray without proper guidance. The process of understanding and experiencing this lack of identification is very gradual over years of practice. I definitely wouldn’t suggest a forcing of the concept into your mind and trying to make yourself believe that there is no self, but rather closely inspect everything you can in your interior, in your mindset, in your bodily form, in your feelings, in your memories, in the way you identify things, in your thought processes, and try to see what it is that makes up your self, and if those things really have anything to do with ‘you.’ Come to your own conclusions with it, and don’t simply take it on faith. Let your faith in and respect for the Buddha lead you to discovering the truth for yourself.
The primary things to ask yourself in the practice of non-identification are questions like, ‘Is this under my volitional control? Am I doing this?’ More often than not, the answer to this is ‘no.’ That being the case, how can you justify something as being ‘yourself’ if it happens outside of your control? Do you actively think the thoughts that you think? Do you generate feelings volitionally, or do they happen without consulting you first? Do you conjure up memories whenever you feel like it, or does something outside or inside of you trigger them into your mind’s eye? If ‘you’ aren’t in control of these things, how could they be ‘you?’ Do you identify with an obstinate dog? Or with a grease fire on the stove? From here, once you fully understand and experience the reality of the situation, you can use the other two qualities of impermanence and stress (suffering) to bolster the legitimacy of non-identification. If these things under inspection are not stable, do not last, will eventually decay and disappear, how can they be a ‘self?’ If these things cause pain, suffering, stress, dissatisfaction, given these qualities, how could you identify with them, let alone want to? This in turn breaks down the desire to identify with the five aggregates, which is the root of the habitual pattern of doing so. This breakdown only continues to happen with a sustained and motivated practice to reaffirm these realities, otherwise the mind will continue to lazily ignore the issue and go about in the samsaric grooves its grown so used to flowing in. This is a passive mind, which, despite what you may have heard, is not what the Buddha prescribed. Success is only achieved through an active, focused, motivated, disciplined, and ardent mindset, honed in on the truths of reality day after day, minute after minute, and so on down the line.