Reflections on the Teaching and Practice of Not-self

A Reflection on the Teaching and Practice of Not-Self.
INTRODUCTION
No doctrine of the Buddha has so challenged the western mind as the teaching of not-self, anattā. It is easy to fall
into what the Buddha would call wrong views (ditthi), the opposite of annihilation and eternalism. Either everything
dies at death or something lives on. Here, our exploration begins with basic understandings and uses the Buddha’s
first teaching, The Discourse on Not-self. By following the practice he explains there, we can begin to experience
what he means. It is a start.
The Self
We can describe a ‘self’ in various ways. It is an entity; it is substantial; it is whole and singular in the present
moment and throughout time. Because it can perceive, it therefore exists. It is the subject, the one who feels, thinks
and experiences. It is the doer. It is distinct from other selves and has its own discrete character and personality. It
is a mental construct, a concept.
What description attracts you most from this list?
Self as Identity
When we say ‘me’, what are we referring to? Normally we would have a sense of this ‘me’ as some central identity, a
central self-reference point that is experienced as solid, unchanging and in control. When we point to ‘me’,
paradoxically we usually point to the middle of the chest (the heart chakra), whereas we experience our self-
awareness in the head. This tells us that ‘me’ has a feeling and a thinking part – the one knows, the one who feels,
that is, the one who experiences and experiences. When it comes to the body, we would usually say ‘my’ body. It
rarely becomes ‘me’. When we fall gravely or terminally ill, then we see how intertwined the sense of me and the
body is: ‘I am going to die.’
We are aware of me: I can perceive myself so I must exist and as I perceive myself, I see I am distinct from others.
They are not me. I have a personal and distinct character.
This sense of me is made even more real because we do things: I act; I am what I do.
(There are those who suffer from a conflicted or weak sense of self. It is understood that such a person needs to
develop a strong sense of self before they can begin this sort of exploration.)
Should you say: this is the essential me, what might you mean by it?
Self as Eternal Soul
The self presumes itself to be permanent. While we are awake, a feeling of continual presence is experienced as
always being here. It feels other than the body, emotions or thought. Just being here. A self-awareness. It is,
therefore, eternal or timeless – in other words, outside time and so unchanging.
Do you have this sense of ‘something’ in you being always there? What do you make of it?
Contradiction?
These two descriptions of self and soul are not the same. Whereas the sense of self includes the body, heart and
mind, the soul suggests something ethereal that is in the body, heart and mind, but is beyond them and is self-aware
– it knows itself.
Atta – the Self

During the Buddha’s time, the word atta was understood to refer to that within a being that was unchanging and so
immortal; solid and so substantial; in control and so all-powerful within itself. The spiritual search for the atta led to
freedom from suffering, happiness. Because it was all powerful over itself, the atta would always be able to be in a
state of continual happiness, in whatever way it wished to define it: contentment, peace, bliss and so on. Thus if the
soul said: ‘Let there be happiness’, that’s the way it would be. There were many sects and each had their own
definition and paths to liberation. It was within this atmosphere of spiritual searching and confusion that the
Buddha clarified his teaching.
The Buddha’s Understanding
After his awakening, the Buddha set out to teach. The first people he sought were his five former companions
samanas or wandering ascetics. In the ensuing days, the Buddha explained what he had come to realise and he
constantly asked them if they had ever heard him speak like this before. His was a revolutionary message: There is
an end to suffering in all its forms, from the slightest to the greatest.
These explanations and discussions have come down to us formalised as the first two discourses. The first presents
the platform of his teaching, the Dhamma – the Four Noble Truths. It is, therefore, known as a Turning the Wheel
of the Dhamma (Start the Wheel of the Dhamma Rolling) Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta. His friends were
impressed and one Kondañña had a deep insight, known as Stream Entry. He had broken through the delusion of
his personality, sakkaya-diţţhi, as a permanent self.
The second talk, the Discourse on Not-self, completed the process of liberating all five companions. So this is the
discourse we need to understand: it is the platform of this particular teaching about not-self.
THE DISCOURSE ON NOT-SELF: ANATTALAKKHANA SUTTA
To make the text easier to understand, I have translated it liberally. This link allows you to see how it is more literally rendered:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.059.than.html
In our culture, a religious person tends to think of the human being as made up of three parts: body, mind and
spirit or soul. Scientific materialists would not believe in a soul or spirit and would go so far as to say that mind and
consciousness are ‘emergent properties’ arising out of the body which, again from a strictly physics point of view, is
just sub-atomic energy fields.
The Buddha, keeping his teaching around dukkha (unsatisfactoriness), divided the human into five khanda or
aggregates: the physical body; feelings and sensations of the senses; perceptions; volitional formations, our habits
formed by our intentions; and consciousness. We shall see the purpose of this as we go through the different
sections of the Discourse.
SECTION 1: IDENTITY AND OWNERSHIP:
The Body
Friends, the body is not-self. Were my body my self, then this body would not be experienced as
suffering and unsatisfactory for I could say to the body: ‘Let my body be like this; let my body
not be like this.’ But because the body is not-self, it will still suffer and remain unsatisfactory, for
no one has such power over their body to say: ‘Let my body be like this; let my body not be like
this.’
So the Buddha asks us to investigate and see for ourselves what power we have over the body. Now we can wave
our arms about and walk here and there. When it comes to Olympic stature, it is amazing what we can do with the
body.

But this is similar to a driver of a car. We can make it go slow or fast, turn left or right, but when the car coughs and
grinds to a halt, then we know we are not fully in charge, even though it feels like that when we are driving.
So it is with the body. Consider: who heals the body when we cut ourselves? Our job is to keep it antiseptic. The
body does the rest. Can we stop the body from falling ill or dying? Do we have direct control over organs such as
liver, stomach, intestines and so on? Generally speaking we don’t have a clue what they are doing and certainly not
how they are doing it. The body has a life of its own.
When we sit down and really go through the body bit by bit and ask ourselves: ‘Do I know what this is doing or
how it is doing it. And what control do I have over it’, we find that the sense of ‘This body is me or this body is
mine’ is pretty deluded. We would be better off thinking we were renting the body.
Feelings
Friends, feelings are not-self. Were feelings my self, then feelings would not be experienced as
suffering and unsatisfactory. For one could to say: ‘Let me experience this feeling; let me not
experience that feeling.’ But because feelings are not-self, we will still suffer from them and find
them wanting, for no one has such power over feelings to say to it: ‘Let me experience this
feeling; let me not experience that feeling.’
The word ‘feelings’ here translates from the word vedana which includes all bodily sensations caused by the body,
such as pain in the knees from the sitting posture. These also include the sensations coming from the other four
senses – sight, hearing, smelling and tasting. And it refers also to all the feelings in the body caused by the mind,
such as heat and restlessness when we are angry. Any sensations or feelings in the body are all vedana.
Let us consider. If you bang your head against an open cupboard, can you stop the pain by ordering it away? When
you wake in the morning and feel anxious, can you stop the mild nausea by ordering it to leave? Can you command
yourself never again to feel angry, distressed or anxious? Can you make any feeling of happiness continue
indefinitely?
When we explore the power we have over painful sensations or feelings we again experience our limitations. We
can only ignore or soothe them to a point, such as rubbing our bruised heads or hugging ourselves in our distress.
Even when we want to cause ourselves unpleasant sensation such as sipping tea to test its heat, or unpleasant
feelings such as watching a horror film, we do not directly cause feelings and we have no control over them when
they emerge.
Perceptions
Friends, perceptions are not-self. Were perceptions my self, then perceptions would not be
experienced as suffering and unsatisfactory. For one could say: ‘Let me experience this
perception; let me not experience that perception.’ But because perceptions are not-self, we will
still suffer from them and find them wanting, for no one has such power over perceptions to say
to them: ‘Let me experience this perception; let me not experience that perception.’
Perception here translates the word sañña. When we experience anything, the mind makes a mental picture of it and
these pictures turn into concrete concepts. We then attach a word to them, shorthand for that concept. On first
tasting tea, the mind makes a copy and calls it tea. Next time, we recognise the taste. If we taste many types of tea,
our perception will grow finer and finer. We may even become professional tasters. In this way, a collection of
perceptions arrives at a concrete concept. This also happens at the more refined level of art and philosophy and so
we reach abstract concepts. All these perceptions and concepts lie dormant until circumstance brings them to mind.

Consider this. When you direct your eyes towards a flower, the eye as the primary sense base and the brain-mind
complex cause us to see a shape and the colour. Past experience tells us it is a red rose. Only when the mind offers
that definition do we know what we are looking at. We know when we are looking at a flower we have never seen
before because we have no former perception of it nor a concept-word for it. If we take this formula into everyday
experience – nature, people, places and so on – we shall find the same mechanism.
What power or control do we have over this process? Can we stop the perception of ‘tea’ when tasting tea? Can we
change the perception of a red rose when we are looking at it? When a person is mentioned whom we know, can
we stop their image or name from arising? And if we have forgotten the face or name, can we make it come back
into memory? You may understand, as you read, how the free market and monetarism work, but then have
difficulty recalling the facts. Sañña here refers not to reasoning, but to the percepts and concepts that reasoning
uses, much as a painter uses different hues to produce a picture.
But again we find our power over the process of perceiving is limited. We cannot stop the eye seeing once it is
open, though we can intentionally look at something. We cannot stop the ear from hearing, though we can
deliberately listen to something. We can put what we want onto the tongue, but we rely on the taste buds for the
taste. We can enjoy art, nature and relationships only in so far as our sense bases will allow us. Only in so far as our
brains and minds can remember and process the data.
Habits
Friends, habits are not-self. Were habits my self, then habits would not be experienced as
suffering and unsatisfying. For one could to say: ‘Let me experience this habit; let me not
experience that habit.’ But because habits are not-self, we will still suffer from them and find
them wanting, for no one has such power over habits to say to them: ‘Let me experience this
habit; let me not experience that habit.’
The word ‘habit’ here translates saņkhâra, a difficult word to explain. It has been variously interpreted as volitional
conditionings, volitional formations, mental fabrications, determinations, preparations, and even concoctions. For
our purposes, saņkhâra are the mental states or mental habits that we create through our intentions and will. It’s the
will (cetana) that is crucial here for it is that power that actualises our desires. Up until now with body, feelings and
perceptions, we have seen we have very minimal control. But in this instance we do create our own mental states
from all the joyous, happy ones to all the miserable and despairing ones. And it is here we develop our habits of
thinking and imagining. However, once we have developed a habit, we find again we have minimal control. If we
have taught ourselves to get angry when the bus is late, whether we want to or not, when the bus comes late anger
arises. If we have taught ourselves to get excited about and glued to the TV screen when Wimbledon is on, we find
it painful when we can’t gratify that desire. If we have taught ourselves to daydream a lot, we find the mind
daydreaming even when we don’t want it to. Habits cannot be annihilated at will.
What causes these mental habits to control us is that they are attitudes that can be transferred onto other objects.
We can get angry with anything that displeases us and excited about anything that pleases us. We can intellectualise
or fantasise about anything. And so we swing from negative to positive depending on the situation. When we
meditate, we find these mental habits arise, often without reason. If they are negative, we can choose to ignore
them by distracting ourselves, react with anger or fear, or bear with them. We can, of course, practise vipassana on
them. But we can’t get rid of them simply by an act of will. We can determine as much as we may: ‘I will not be
angry ever again’; ‘I will not allow myself to get so insanely excited about tennis’; ‘I will stop daydreaming!’ But it
usually doesn’t work and if it does, we will be supressing them and we know that won’t do us any good.
Paradoxically, we don’t want to get rid of habits. What we want is for them to help create happiness and support
our endeavour to become liberated. The Buddha had habits. They were always beautiful and spontaneous to the
situation for even he could not stop rejoicing when someone accepted his teaching and training. Indeed he says of
those who attain nibbanic consciousness that they are ‘happy and with it, contented’. Because they are beautiful, in

harmony with the situation and especially spontaneous, they no longer cause suffering. Suffering arises because of
clinging, attachment, expectation and so on.
Consciousness
Friends, consciousness is not-self. Were consciousness my self, then this consciousness would
not be experienced as suffering or unsatisfactory, and one could say to consciousness: ‘Let
consciousness be like this; let consciousness not be like this.’ But because consciousness is not-
self, it is experienced as suffering and unsatisfactory, for no one has such power over cognition to
say to it: ‘Let consciousness be like this; let consciousness not be like this.’
The word ‘consciousness’ here translates viññãna. These days consciousness has come under the scrutiny of science
and its usage now as before is varied. You can access Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness to
find out the various usages of consciousness. The situation is made complicated by the various ways the Buddha
uses viññãna.
The best way I can describe consciousness as an Aggregate is to ask you to imagine a multidimensional screen
which can hold sensations and feelings; moods and emotions; thoughts and images. That screen is viññãna. And it
is within this screen that habits manifest and activate.
So what control have we over the processes of consciousness? It happens automatically if the information coming
into the brain-mind complex is sufficiently strong enough. Sometimes because we are engrossed in something, we
fail to hear the doorbell. Other times, we are not so concentrated and we become conscious that a door bell is
ringing.
SECTION 2: IMPERMANENCE AND UNSATISFACTORINESS
In this section, the Buddha introduces the other two Characteristics of Existence: impermanence and
unsatisfactoriness. Here it is set out as a dialogue.
Friends, what do you think? Is the body permanent or impermanent?
It’s impermanent.
When the body is ever changing [and not under our control] does that satisfy us or not?
It does not satisfy us.
So if the body is impermanent and unsatisfactory because it is subject to change, should we be
saying, ‘This body is mine. I am my body. My body is my Self, my Soul?’
No, we shouldn’t.
The same questions are asked about the other four khanda or aggregates: feelings, perceptions, habits and
consciousness. All are impermanent and unsatisfactory and therefore we cannot say of them: ‘This is mine. I am
this … My … is my Self, my Soul.’
The Buddha is not saying here that we cannot enjoy the pleasures and joys of life. He is instead arguing that they
cannot be permanent and therefore from a Self or Soul’s point of view, they are just not going to satisfy.
He then drives the point home.
Therefore, friends, considering any kind of body or indeed any material form, whether of the
past, the future or as we experience it in the present, whether it is obvious or subtle, within
oneself or outside oneself, near or far, we must correctly say of any of it, ‘'This is not mine, this is
not me, this is not myself.’
And the same formula is repeated for feeling, perception, habits and consciousness.
A WAY OF PRACTISING TO REALISE ANNATA

Vipassana – Insight Meditation
In our practice of vipassana we are attempting to realise these insights for ourselves. One advantage of the noting
technique is that it directs us to what is being observed or felt. On the breath when we note ‘rising’, we could say
‘there’s rising’. If there’s a pain, we could note, ‘there’s pain’. If there is anxiety, ‘there’s anxiety’. By doing this we
create a separation between that which knows and what is known. There is a mental distance between the two.
When this becomes clear to us, the sense of being the knower becomes more acute. And this process of
objectifying what we experience has been going on since birth.
Margaret Schönberger Mahler
Margaret Mahler (May 10, 1897 – October 2, 1985), a Hungarian physician became interested in psychiatry. She was
one of the most important figures within psychoanalysis. Her main interest was in normal childhood development,
but she spent much of her time with psychiatric children and discovered how they arrived at a sense of self. Mahler
developed the Separation-Individuation theory of child development.
She observed three stages of development: The first, ‘autistic’ stage lasts from birth for about four weeks. It begins
with the infant inhabiting its own world, unaware of anything outside its ‘self’. There are no ‘objects’.
From the fifth week, it starts to objectify. Usually the first object is the mother since she is tending to its needs. This
process of objectifying into a ‘symbiotic’ relationship lasts until the fifth month. Yet even so the other is as yet not
entirely separate from the infant. There is a vague understanding that somehow someone soothes and feeds. The
baby begins to smile, but it is still within an interpersonal relationship so it reacts to the mother’s moods as if they
were its own. Mahler says that at this stage the infant is categorising the pleasant from the unpleasant (in other
words beginning to experience vedana, feeling, whereby we begin to experience the world as either pleasant or
unpleasant.) As yet the baby is still ‘pre-objectal’.
The third and final stage to individuation is more complex and has a series of steps. From the fifth month to the
tenth month, (these times are approximate), the ‘differentiation’ sub-phase, the self and object become more
differentiated. One sign is that the infant becomes afraid of strangers. It is as though up until then the infant has
been looking and now realises that ‘others’ out there are looking at it! Then the ‘practising’ sub-phase begins where
the infant can crawl away and physically separate itself from mother. Mahler calls this ‘hatching’. The infant still
needs mother for ‘emotional refuelling’ and returns constantly. By the end of this phase, the infant is upright and
actively exploring the world.
Finally there is the ‘rapprochement’ sub-phase, between 15 and 18-30 months and even to two and half years, the
child now begins to speak to others and significant others, like father, appear. There is a great self-assertion (the
terrible twos for example) and slowly the child establishes its ‘self’ as himself or herself. In all it is not until the age
of three that the child has objectified the outer world from itself and is able to say confidently, ‘I am a girl.’, ‘I am a
boy’.
Objectifying the Inner World
The process of ‘awakening’ is the slow realisation that we are not ‘the world’. Just as the infant begins to separate
from the outer world to discover itself as a unique individual, the meditator is taking this process into the inner
world.
We discover that we have been internally ‘autistic’. We have believed ourselves to ‘be’ this psychophysical organism.
We then begin to differentiate between the observer, the feeler, the experiencer and what is being observed, felt and
experienced, that is the knower from the known.
In terms of the khanda, the five aggregates, the body with its movements is seen as an object. We can watch our
hands washing pots. Feelings derived from emotions and sensations in the body are clearly separate from the
experiencing of them, just as the carpet felt is separate from the foot feeling it. At a more subtle level, when the

eyes are closed, perceptions are seen as images or cognised as concepts arising in the mind. Yes even thoughts can
be perceived as objects. And at the most subtle level the screen upon which all this is happening can be experienced
as an object – the screen of consciousness*.
Through this process of objectifying the interior life, the knower individuates. Yet a strong sense of a self persists: ‘I
am the knower.’
Beyond the Knower
So now we come to the final barrier to realising what the Buddha refers to as the ‘not-born, not-created, not-subject
to conditions’ and so on. The feel of presence, what I earlier referred to as the ‘soul’, is the mirror image of the
‘knowing’ in the screen of consciousness.
When we see our reflection in a mirror we think this is how our face looks. If we take another mirror to view the
first reflection and look into that, then we see how our face really looks like. (If you haven’t done this you may be in
for a shock ... or surprise.)
Similarly, we believe ‘self-awareness’, awareness-of-me, is what we are. However, in the same way that we have
come to realise that whatever we experience as an object, whatever we are aware of, cannot be ‘me’, so we can’t ‘be’
the ‘self’ in the self-awareness!
So now we must investigate this ‘feeling of presence’, self-awareness.. By making this feeling of a self the object of
our vipassana, that is, just to sit in its presence with curiosity – and this is best done when tranquillity of body, heart
and mind are established – the realisation, by direct experience, of the Nibbana dhatu, the principle or element of
Nibbana is available. To know the Nibbana dhatu is also to know the Tathagata dhatu, the Buddha principle or
element. (Southern Buddhism tries to avoid ‘personalising’ the experience. Northern Buddhism feels at ease
referring to this as Buddha Nature/Mind.) That’s the why Buddha says in the Dhammapada No.372: those who are
steady in attention and insightful are in the presence of Nibbana.
Spiritual Purpose of Human Life
Now we come to know the purpose of being here as humans. This is the realm of existence the Buddha points to
as the best for awakening. It has the inherent pain of the body and the unsatisfactory nature of all the pleasures and
joys of life – and the intuitive awareness to know it. It is the dukkha, the unsatisfactoriness of the world that drives
us to seek the end of dukkha. All we ever wanted was to be happy. All we are doing is seeking it in the wrong place.
Yet even the Buddha continued to suffer physical pain and pleasant sensations; sorrowful occasions arose and so
did joyful ones. A different relationship to this world was established, however. Seeking undiluted and ever present
happiness in the sensual world, both inner and outer, was over, for the Buddha was grounded in the inner
unchanging happiness of Nibbana.
CONCLUSION
We know through our practice that the outer and inner worlds become more bearable when burdensome and more
enjoyable when delightful. But can we have some idea of what Nibbanic happiness might be like?
When we have clearly established the knower within ourselves, when the body is still, the heart calmed and mind
silent, after we have been in that state of the equanimous observer, feeler, experiencer, we can ask ourselves what
were the inner factors of the knower. When we recognise the inner qualities of the one who knows, we will know
why all spirituality is drawn to silence.