Who realised Non-Self?

Building on the previous but one post there is a very simple version of Buddha's anatta teaching.

Buddha says very simply that all existence are non-self. This contains the awareness that "existences" are impermanent.

But in more depth consider where the self is.

If we think we can see the self then we close our eyes and it must no longer exist. This goes for all the senses.

If we think we can think the self then we think about something other than self and it must no longer exist.

If we think our consciousness is self then we no longer exist while asleep.

And so it goes on. Where ever we think self resides must at some point be unable to hold the self.

So the self resides no where!

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Now it gets subtle. So the next "thought" might be "okay so if I can't find the self then it does not exist". But this is just the son of saying the self exists. Only conditional things can exist or not exist. We say Unicorns do not exist because they could exist but they just happen to not exist. To qualify for not existing you must be a thing that could exist. To say self does not exist is like being told there is a TV in the next room, and we go in expecting to see a TV and find there is not one. That is not existence.

But self is not like that. The above search for self and finding that actually it can't reside anywhere actually also undoes the idea of self itself. We know there is a self, but it does not reside anywhere. Its not like a TV that is not in the room. Its more like we have to rethink what we were looking for.

Self is luminous but it does not reside in anything we can experience or think of. We need to dump this idea that the self "is" something that is "somewhere" or even that it is something we can think about. Its not a thing "over there" it is always present, it doesn't turn on, it doesn't turn off. It doesn't start or end, get larger or smaller, we can't gain it and we can't lose it. It is quite unlike all the "things" we are familiar with.

This is what is called attachment. The belief that the self is things leads us to hold onto things that we think are precious and important to self. At it deepest level it makes us hold onto life. Death becomes a fearful thing because we think it will rob us of these things we hold on to. Before that old age looks like it robs us of our life as well. Everything seems to be taking chunks out of us. But this is because we are mistaken about the self and chose to stand with inferior entities. At its worst we will stand with material goods like houses and cars and even watches and jewellery. These things are just ornaments to life. They actually have nothing to do with us, and we are neither bigger or smaller with them or without them. They make no difference whatsoever. Perhaps our fear is that without them we will lose status and people will hate us or ignore us. But they only notice the body or personality or other such things which are nothing to do with us.

Now I recently argued that one hindrance here is our name. It is best to reject our name. The being so named does not exist.

I was rebuked by someone I know and respect. And that reminds me not to go to far with all this. There is self, but we must be very, very careful not to fall into the trap of identifying with it or making it into a thing. Self is just a transcendent luminosity that pervades everything even our thoughts and consciousness and even unconsciousness. Self is not the "lighting up" which Heideggar called the luminous emergence of things in consciousness (that luminosity fades when we sleep), the luminosity of Self is even present in unconsciousness. It never increases or decreases under any circumstances.

I think its correct to say we cannot speak of the number of such Selves. Being non-being and a non-things we can't say of Self that it is either one or many. If we were pushed we would go for One but even this is probably too much attachment to a form. It is boundless so cannot be separated from another one or even counted as it is. So when asked how many Selves are in the world we can only tentatively say One. It means that the usual idea of self as something that each person has in a very Democratic way doesn't work. And if we think about this whole idea of selves inhabiting people doesn't really make sense. But we must be careful not to go the other way and think that everyone is just faces on a single core person or God. In Hinduism they do say this, and its not completely wrong, but really we should steer far away from positing any existence at all, its pointless speculation and not really anything to do with self.