-contributed by Joe Costello
"I teach the Dhamma for the abandoning of the gross acquisition of a
self, such that, when you practice it, defiling mental qualities will be
abandoned, bright mental qualities will grow, and you will enter &
remain in the culmination & abundance of discernment, having known
& realized it for yourself in the here & now. ... I also teach the Dhamma for the abandoning of the mind-made acquisition
of a self... for the abandoning of the formless acquisition of a self,
such that, when you practice it, defiling mental qualities will be
abandoned, bright mental qualities will grow, and you will enter &
remain in the culmination & abundance of discernment, having known
& realized it for yourself in the here & now..." -
The Buddha, Potthapada Sutta (DN 9)*
Just as everyone’s journey is unique, everyone’s practice seems to be different. Due to temperament or developmental history specific themes and aspects of the Dhamma can predominiate for different practitioners.
For me, one way to cultivate interest in mindfulness/concentration immersed in the flow of experience has been to frame practice as an investigation of selfing-becoming events. This is a little more complex than observing body sensations and thoughts but one has to observe body sensations and thoughts to observe selfing-becoming. The selfing-becoming process can be detected, observed, isolated and taken a part with even a moderate amount of concentration and mindfulness if the inclination and intention to do so is genuine. The Pali suttas clearly and repeatedly exhort us to critically examine self-fabrication in relation to the flow of experience.
For me anatta has always been central. I devoted a lot of years to studying and chasing the elusive “self” that seems to be at the heart of our culture and most peoples mental architecture. Despite graduate degrees in both sociology and
psychology, I wasn’t ever able to locate a stable, static self anywhere. It wasn’t in the body, neurochemistry, social relations, intersubjectivity or cultural identity. It also wasn’t “in” the construction of the last three.
What I did find was lots of little bits and pieces of events and processes that are often assembled into projections of self. While I can’t speak for other practitioners, all I have ever been able to observe is just the activity of assembling and projecting. There isn’t even an assembler or a projector behind any
of this selfing-becoming activity. Any sense of self is always linked to some evanescent event of consciousness or experience. It is never stable and was always morphing and shifting around. It is always arising and passing away in the most unpredictable and inconvenient ways. The inability to control or stabilize a sense of self is something most of us are familiar with. The machinations we engage in trying to control or stabilize a sense of identity or self is often a great source of suffering.
I would like to talk about two levels or dimensions and two modes of selfing –becoming activity that I have directly observed through mindfulness. As
mentioned before there are many entry points to the Dhamma. Even if you aren’t particularly inspired by this line of investigation it may inspire you to discover a theme or line of investigation that yields beneficial insights for you. We should always strive to be curious, open, respectful and encouraging about each other’s
practice, even if someone’s practice doesn’t look like ours.
Blatant selfing-becoming around views or identities is usually pretty easy to spot – at least in others.
The relationship between selfing-becoming and sensory contacts is sometimes a little harder to detect because it is usually ubiquitous and more generalized. While the mindfulness-concentration feedback loop creates the right conditions for selfing-becoming to be seen
for the activity it is, we have to also cultivate a sense of unconstricted curiosity and the genuine intention to see it. Mindfulness can help us to create enough space between the experience of the fabrication and the fabrication to actually make
the distinction.
The two levels of selfing-becoming I have been able to detect are the diffuse-fuzzy level and the stronger, sharper object-subject levels. The edges at the diffuse-fuzzy level are softer and less defined. I most notice the diffuse-fuzzy dimension when I am sitting quietly, in
between tasks, or when I am attending to some object without any particular purpose or intention. The two dimensions seem to oscillate back and forth a lot. The diffuse-fuzzy level can have an object (like gazing at the stars or out a window) but the relationship to the object is more open, softer and looser. While the
level is more diffuse there is still a fuzzy but definite self-centered, self referential orientation to the experience.
The hallmark of the diffuse-fuzzy level is a more vague and neutral sense of self-reference or self-orientation. It is precisely because the vague, neutral sense of self orientation operates implicitly in the background that we have a hard time noticing it as activity at all. The activity of discriminative awareness at the
diffuse-fuzzy level can be compared to the way the mass of a planet invisibly warps space-time. It is a very subtle level of distortion that can easily be missed.
At the object-subject level there is a much sharper, more clearly defined and intentional relationship between object and the sense of self. Here the sense of
I or me is much stronger and more clearly defined” in relation” or “in contrast to” an object. Both “in relation” and “in contrast to” show the dependent nature of this level of selfing-becoming. At this level we often relate to objects or experience in terms of wellbeing, integrity or identity. The appropriation or rejection of the object-experience is seen as imperative to preserving wellbeing, our sense of integrity or our sense of a consistent/coherent identity. Examples of this level can range from feeling like “I”really need “that” (fill in the blank) to make everything right with the world to “that” or “they” are an affront to my existence. Buddhist psychology and object-relations theory in Western psychology. The cycle of lack and desire has no end.
If we include mind as an internal sense organ and mental objects as a form of sense consciousness the second level of selfing-becoming (object-subject) wouldn’t actually have two dimensions. I have found it helpful to distinguish
between selfing-becoming that arises around the Western five senses and the selfing-becoming that arises around purely mental objects. Since mental objects often arise due to sense contact the distinction may not be helpful for others.
The two modes I tend to notice at the object-subject level are the sensory
consciousness mode (becoming) and idea/story consciousness mode (selfing). The sensory consciousness mode is a reaction to a sensory contact, “that is wonderful”, “this is awful”. Preference, reaction, polarization and intention really become active at this level. It is in this mode we can detect the beginnings of a
becoming in relation to some contact or element of experience. If the proliferation isn’t seen and dropped here the idea/story mode generally comes on line and takes it to the next level. It does so by fashioning a distinct kind of self-projection around, in relation to, or in contrast to a particular sensory contact or element of experience. The two modes almost always interact and get
entangled so that is the reason for the selfing-becoming compound here.
Selfing-becoming in the sensory consciousness mode is almost always organized around desire or aversion. When I hear an irritating noise impinging repeatedly with
aversion arising and passing away enough times it seems to trigger a quick transition from the diffuse-fuzzy level to the object-subject level. Selfing-becoming proliferation starts constructing and projecting a self suffering the impingement and irritation. The self projection is dependent not only on the aversion but the ongoing sensory contact/impingement. The sensory
contact and aversion are the raw materials that get woven into the fabrication of an irritated self.
The idea/story mode then often kicks in and starts generating all sorts of views and stories about why this is happening and what needs to be done about it. The self created in the “what can or needs to be done about it” story is actually slightly different than the “irritated self” construction. They are related because they share some raw materials but “what can or needs to be done about it” self starts drawing on newly proliferated materials. The two versions of self might even
be merged at some point.
Selfing-becoming in the idea/story consciousness mode on its own involves selfing activity around imagined five sense sensory contacts, views, identities,
mental associations, mental activity and social interactions. Selfing-becoming around social interactions includes my reactions to others and the perceived reaction of others to me.
Because the raw materials or foundations we use are using to fashion I-me
mine are evanescent and constantly disintegrating the episodic sense of I-me-mine-becoming always wavering, unstable and less than real. The sense of I-me-mine-becoming is constantly flickering, oscillating in and out of existence. It is always decaying and dying. We are constantly working to keep all the balls in the air lest the uncomfortable voidness or emptiness creeps back in. Part of the magic built into the process here is that we are actively hiding the momentariness of it all from awareness. From time to time the juggling act lapses at a certain point in the cycle but due to the momentum of past kamma it always reboots. Due to fear, ignorance and
compulsion, the process is never allowed it to lapse for long.
When directly observed the sense of self ebbs, flows and morphs moment to moment – object to object and contact to contact. It can be soft, vague and diffuse or constricted, florid and hard-edged. The common landing spots for the construction-proliferation of a grasping-self micro event include will-intention, the background sense of the body, movement, sense contact, habitual reactions to others, reactions from others, provocative associations, conditions, views, aversion and desire regarding pleasant/unpleasant sensations of hunger, thirst, hunger, heat and cold. The raw materials are plentiful and never seem to exhaust themselves. The thing is that all of these phenomenon are just discrete, empty, selfless bits and pieces. Even the assembly program that gets triggered is itself empty.
The message of
Bahiya Sutta hits home. There really is no I-me-mine with regard to this, this or this.
The body is just the body. Sensations and reactions are just sensations and reactions in and of themselves. It is through grasping, compounding, slanting and distortion that a self is fashioned and projected from very particular bits and not others.
We choose to see and reify the assemblage but not the assembling.
This looks like a good place to bring things to a close. Hope that this has been of some help or of some benefit to others interested in anatta as a theme of practice.
May your practice flourish!!!
Sukhi Hotu!
Sutta’s that
illustrate the relevance of closely examining sense experience:
- *"Potthapada Sutta: About Potthapada" (DN 9), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight, 12 February 2012, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.09.0.than.html . Retrieved on 5 August 2012.
- MN 43: A monk goes to sit in a quiet place and
intentially perceives the six senses and their objects as empty of a
self or anything pertaining to a self.
- MN 137: Salayatana-vibhanga Sutta: An Analysis of
the Six Sense-media
- MN 149: Maha-salayatanika Sutta: The Great Six
Sense-media Discourse
- Ud 1.10: Bahiya Sutta: About Bahiya
- SN 35.23: Sabba Sutta: The All. The All as defined as
sense consciousness
- SN 35.24 Pahanaya Sutta: To Be Abandoned. What, exactly,
is it that we must let go of? (sense bases and sense contact)
- SN 35.80: Avijja Sutta: Ignorance. What one thing
must be abandoned in order to overcome ignorance? Seeing sense bases
and contact as separate.
- SN 35.187: Samuddo (1) Sutta: The Ocean (1). What does
it mean to cross over the ocean of the six senses?
- SN 35.85: Suñña Sutta: Empty. The Buddha explains to
Ven. Ananda in what way the world is devoid of anything that can
rightly be called "self." Again, points to sense contact.
- SN 35.132: Lohicco Sutta. Ven. Mahakaccana's advice on
guarding the sense doors.
- SN 12.11: Ahara Sutta: Nutriment. Sense-impression is a
basic nutriment, that is a sustaining condition of life, and what is
nourished or conditioned by it are feelings or sensations (vedana)
which are living on that multitude of constantly occurring
sense-impressions and assimilating them as pleasant, unpleasant, or
indifferent.
