The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast Archives
Buddhist
Hour
Script No. 373
Radio Broadcast live on Hillside 88.0
FM
for Sunday 20 March 2005CE
2547 Buddhist
Era
“Selflessness, Anatta.”
Today’s talk is on the subject of ‘Anatta’,
which is a uniquely Buddhist doctrine. The Buddhist Dictionary,
written by the Venerable Nyanatiloka, defines Anatta as: ‘Not
self, non-ego, egolessness, impersonality.’
The issue of
‘No self’ is of crucial importance within the Buddhist
doctrine, and although it is a difficult teaching to master, one must
come to a correct understanding of it to realise the sublime and
liberating qualities of the Buddha Dhamma.
We will begin by
reading the Anattalakkhana Sutta, the discourse on the ‘not-self’
characteristic, which was originally written in the Samyutta Nikaya
22, 59.
I have heard that on one occasion the Blessed One was
staying at Varanasi in the Game Refuge at Isipatana. There he
addressed the group of five monks:
"The body, monks, is not
self. If the body were the self, this body would not lend itself to
dis-ease. It would be possible (to say) with regard to the body, 'Let
my body be thus. Let my body not be thus.' But precisely because the
body is not self, the body lends itself to dis-ease. And it is not
possible (to say) with regard to the body, 'Let my body be thus. Let
my body not be thus.'
"Feeling is not self. If feeling were
the self, this feeling would not lend itself to dis-ease. It would be
possible (to say) with regard to feeling, 'Let my feeling be thus.
Let my feeling not be thus.' But precisely because feeling is not
self, feeling lends itself to dis-ease. And it is not possible (to
say) with regard to feeling, 'Let my feeling be thus. Let my feeling
not be thus.'
"Perception is not self. If perception were
the self, this perception would not lend itself to dis-ease. It would
be possible (to say) with regard to perception, 'Let my perception be
thus. Let my perception not be thus.' But precisely because
perception is not self, perception lends itself to dis-ease. And it
is not possible (to say) with regard to perception, 'Let my
perception be thus. Let my perception not be thus.'
"Mental
processes are not self. If mental processes were the self, these
mental processes would not lend themselves to dis-ease. It would be
possible (to say) with regard to mental processes, 'Let my mental
processes be thus. Let my mental processes not be thus.' But
precisely because mental processes are not self, mental processes
lend themselves to dis-ease. And it is not possible (to say) with
regard to mental processes, 'Let my mental processes be thus. Let my
mental processes not be thus.'
"Consciousness is not self.
If consciousness were the self, this consciousness would not lend
itself to dis-ease. It would be possible (to say) with regard to
consciousness, 'Let my consciousness be thus. Let my consciousness
not be thus.' But precisely because consciousness is not self,
consciousness lends itself to dis-ease. And it is not possible (to
say) with regard to consciousness, 'Let my consciousness be thus. Let
my consciousness not be thus.'
"How do you construe thus,
monks -- Is the body constant or inconstant?"
"Inconstant,
lord."
"And is that which is inconstant easeful or
stressful?"
"Stressful, lord."
"And is it
fitting to regard what is inconstant, stressful, subject to change
as: 'This is mine. This is my self. This is what I am'?"
"No,
lord."
"How do you construe thus, monks -- Is feeling
constant or inconstant?"
"Inconstant, lord."
"And
is that which is inconstant easeful or stressful?"
"Stressful,
lord."
"And is it fitting to regard what is inconstant,
stressful, subject to change as: 'This is mine. This is my self. This
is what I am'?"
"No, lord."
"How do you
construe thus, monks -- Is perception constant or inconstant?"
"Inconstant, lord."
"And is that which is
inconstant easeful or stressful?"
"Stressful, lord."
"And is it fitting to regard what is inconstant, stressful,
subject to change as: 'This is mine. This is my self. This is what I
am'?"
"No, lord."
"How do you construe
thus, monks -- Are mental processes constant or inconstant?"
"Inconstant, lord."
"And is that which is
inconstant easeful or stressful?"
"Stressful, lord."
"And is it fitting to regard what is inconstant, stressful,
subject to change as: 'This is mine. This is my self. This is what I
am'?"
"No, lord."
"How do you construe
thus, monks -- Is consciousness constant or inconstant?"
"Inconstant, lord."
"And is that which is
inconstant easeful or stressful?"
"Stressful, lord."
"And is it fitting to regard what is inconstant, stressful,
subject to change as: 'This is mine. This is my self. This is what I
am'?"
"No, lord."
"Thus, monks, any body
whatsoever -- past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant
or subtle; common or sublime; far or near: every body -- is to be
seen as it actually is with right discernment as: 'This is not mine.
This is not my self. This is not what I am.'
"Any feeling
whatsoever -- past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant
or subtle; common or sublime; far or near: every feeling -- is to be
seen as it actually is with right discernment as:
'This is not
mine. This is not my self. This is not what I am.'
"Any
perception whatsoever -- past, future, or present; internal or
external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near: every
perception -- is to be seen as it actually is with right discernment
as: 'This is not mine. This is not my self. This is not what I am.'
"Any mental processes whatsoever -- past, future, or
present; internal or external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime;
far or near: all mental processes -- are to be seen as they actually
are with right discernment as: 'This is not mine. This is not my
self. This is not what I am.'
"Any consciousness whatsoever
-- past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant or subtle;
common or sublime; far or near: every consciousness -- is to be seen
as it actually is with right discernment as: 'This is not mine. This
is not my self. This is not what I am.'
"Seeing thus, the
instructed Noble disciple grows disenchanted with the body,
disenchanted with feeling, disenchanted with perception, disenchanted
with mental processes, & disenchanted with consciousness.
Disenchanted, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion, he is
released.
"With release, there is the knowledge, 'Released.'
He discerns that, 'Birth is depleted, the holy life fulfilled, the
task done. There is nothing further for this world.'"
That
is what the Blessed One said. Glad at heart, the group of five monks
delighted at his words.
And while this explanation was being
given, the hearts of the group of five monks, through lack of
clinging, were released from the mental effluents.
We now
continue with the next part in our series of transcribed Buddha
Dhamma talks spoken by John D. Hughes at the Buddhist Discussion
Centre (Upwey) Ltd. during a five-day meditation course in June
1988.
The talk is entitled, ‘Selflessness, Anatta.’
The
teaching begins with one of John’s students relating her
experiences of meditation on selflessness, or Anatta, with John
commenting throughout. Finally, he gives further instructions to his
students on the subject of selflessness.
The student
begins:
This evening we are discussing Anatta and this is the
sense of being totally without ego and most of us, in fact all of us,
have come to the Buddhist Discussion Centre because we are suffering
pain, despair and our various other problems that are too difficult
for us to handle by ourselves.
Now, we come here for help
from John and then we listen to him and we try very hard, we try very
hard to follow those teachings and put them into practice, but most
of the time the basis on which we build this practice is an ego base.
We come here because we are in pain which is caused by ego, our
thoughts centre on what passes for Self and so we say, "This
hurts us", or "We can't cope with this", or "We
want help, hat can you do to help me"? And then you say "I
will try", "I will help other people", "I will be
kind", "I will give flowers", "I will light
candles", and the rest of the things that we do. And these are
all really quite praiseworthy in themselves if they were not tied to
an ego base.
But if you do these things with the idea behind
it of saying that "I will benefit from lighting a candle",
"I will earn merit from giving flowers", "Aren't I
kind for helping so and so, I gave them time, my time is precious",
"Nobody knows how much effort I've put in", and all the
rest of the things that most of us say to ourselves. And then we get
upset if our efforts are not recognised. We get hurt when we're told
that we're not trying enough. I think I can speak for everyone over
there.
And the thing that is holding us back in our practice
is this very strong sense of 'I', "What am 'I' getting out of
all this? So that then in effect you are defeating of your own
efforts by making it ego based. If, when you give your flowers, you
give them for the benefit of other people, other beings, other
sentient beings, without any sense of what you will get out of it or
any sanctimonious feeling of doing good, then that action is the one
that is most meritorious and is going to help you on your path much
more.
So that what you have to do, what we all have to do, is
to understand that this ego is simply a kammic package, it is a
product of what has gone as the residual of many lives that we've had
before and also of what we're building for the future. So if we build
for the future on an ego base, then one simply perpetuates the kammic
package that one has inherited rather than changing it in any
meaningful way at all. So the essence of practice then is to get rid
of the ego because when one does that, then the merit, it's almost as
though you stop doing things for what you can get out of it.
And
then once you do that and drop that ego then the merit becomes a sort
of free-flowing form that just goes on and accumulates merit because
there's nothing else it can do because it's not based in anything
that is tied to this, this ego that is searching for some identity
all the time and some sort of reinforcement through trying to do
good.
JDH: So that type of merit is never consumed. An
inexhaustible supply. Thank you.... Triple Gem Refuge how it came
that time when you did it different to any other time.
Female
student: Well, I felt, I felt completely without an ego that time....
and I wanted to very much, when I say 'I' ....
JDH: That's
conventional.
Female student: It's conventional.
JDH:
Your mind knows what it's looking at.
Female student: I wanted
very much to pay respect, I was so filled with, with gratitude and a
kind of awe that such a thing could happen and I know that I couldn't
do it on my own and that John helped me very much and that John is,
John is Dhamma and I wanted to pay respect to it very much. In fact,
it was sort of compulsive. It almost happened without me
knowing.
JDH: Yes, because it's so much you want to pay
respect to the combination, which happens to be manifest here, of the
Buddha Dhamma Sangha which got you through patient long, long
training to see for yourself. So therefore, it is spontaneous, minus
ego. And therefore such a thing with intention, there's still
intention there, is correct.
Because of that, because of
that, that connects you forever until your Samsara ends, to the
Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha. So you have security. Now you might see with
that mind the, why I say, is a choice of words, loyalty to Dhamma
practice, loyalty to Dhamma culture, is a choice of words.
Female
student: I thought of immersion.
JDH: Yes, well it depends on
your kammic thing but you can see what I mean that something so
beautiful you would never turn away from. Because it would be, like
the mind, the thought can't enter the mind. So you find security in
the Triple Gem Refuge. I'm Dhamma, but I also know Buddha, also know
Sangha.
Joy Kirby: You look very beautiful to me. Very
beautiful.
JDH: You're seeing me without your ego. I am
beautiful, I am a great being. You see when you, you're now seeing me
minus your ego nit-picking mind, if you know what I mean. So I'm
something else.
Joy Kirby: I don't know how you've tolerated
it. Yes I do.
JDH: Ah well, yes you do, because of Buddha
Dhamma Sangha qualities. My sense of gratitude to Buddha Dhamma
Sangha goes back a long way. And, I mean there's no way I could ever
repay the kindness of all the Buddhas I've met, all the Bodhisattvas
I've met. So I took Vows, like Bodhisattva Vows, a long time ago to
help other beings to come and have ... Why should I have all the fun?
You know, why should I have all the...
Female student: But
it's lovely in here too.
JDH: Yeah, I know this is pure place,
because I built it personally myself, so it's uncontaminated. And
that's why all the monks say this is great place to become
enlightened, they know. Good. Happy.
Female student:
Yes.
JDH: So to continue at about 8.30 pm. The events occur in
the, in your Samsara from time to time which are very clearly, you
cognate that the Buddha Dhamma Sangha is correct. You go through, if
you like Path of Gradual Enlightenment. And it all depends on doing
the best you can and trying the best you can and listening to your
Teacher's corrections and trying again, and so we come to this part
of the commentary from Chandrakirti where he says, "In order to
illustrate this point of mutual unconnectedness with an example; it
is like when one sees a snake hole in the wall of one's house and one
removes one's worry by saying 'There is no elephant here, and if this
were to remove the fear of the snake alas how ridiculous it would
seem to others".
Now, there are layers and layers of
meaning on that. When the mind unbundles the ego, which is unreal,
and it falls away, it just vanishes suddenly, and then the mind
understands Anatta, the, the mind might say, "Ah" you know,
"Thank you very much" or something or something or
something, and it's not obvious to the other people what's going on,
it just seems like a bit of mumbo jumbo.
If you take it at
one level, this fear, a snake hole may not have a snake in it. It
might be an imagined snake. But an elephant is dangerous,
particularly when they get on musk; they'll trample people to death.
So at one level you can say, "Don't worry about it there may not
be a snake in the snake hole, but I've seen now that something more
dangerous, like a wild elephant, was, was troubling me. My attention
was on this small ego's fears. Because of this, I nearly wasted my
whole life in Samsara. And now I see that I've removed a greater
danger than my ego could ever imagine".
See the ego can't
really understand the Dhamma. It can't understand that a one-minute
negative kamma act could put you into hell. The ego can't understand
that. I mean it will go along it says, "Oh if the texts says
this", but it doesn't understand how it happens.
So we go
around in a rather roundabout path now for the rest of you. This is a
quote from Chandrakirti. "When one understands", and the
emphasis I make again is on this word understanding as a knowledge,
Anatta selflessness is a knowledge, it's not a thing. Like as the
Venerable said the other day, Anatta can't be seen or touched or
tasted. So it's a matter of getting a knowledge of no self. It's got
to be a knowledge, a wisdom knowledge. Lokuttara supermundane wisdom
knowledge [that] this is the way it is.
So you can't, it's
like you can know without doubt that there never has been a self. You
can know without doubt that that ego mind is so stupid, so imagined,
so unreal, so, such a fantasy and yet that fantasy caused you
trouble. Just as fantasizing that there might be a snake because you
see the hole of the snake, a snake hole in a house, there might be a
snake. There mightn't be a snake. The snake hole could have been, the
snake could have died ten years ago. It's like if you saw a mouse
hole, if you saw a mouse hole it doesn't mean there must be a
mouse.
The ego sees something and then jumps. It's, it's like
it thinks it's being sane or logical. For example if it saw a horse
with a saddle on it, it would say something like this, "Oh",
it would fantasize. it would say, "Oh, that horse had a rider on
it and the rider's fallen off". You know, the reality is it
might have been just saddled and the rider hadn’t got on the
horse or something.
But the ego, once it makes one of those
jumps, it then believes, "Oh, I'd better call an ambulance, I'd
better call the police, there's probably a dead rider lying
somewhere". It never stops to think what is true; it's not
interested in what is true. It's interested in the buzz of the worst
possible script. "Wow", you know, "Dead oh, oh"
you know, "Wow". It always goes to the worst possible
construction of what it sees.
You know, there's many stories
about this, even in western literature about, someone says you know,
"Oh this guy", blah blah blah, "he's buying presents",
you know this guy's ... ahhh .. wife gets paranoid thinks, you know
so this, and then rings up and finds he has bought flowers at the
florist, he has gone to this shop and bought this bloody French
perfume, he's gone to another shop he's bought this lingerie. She
gets paranoid about "Who is my husband's lover?" The
husband comes home that night and says, "Happy birthday dear.
Here is some lingerie, some perfume, and some flowers" and her
mind just goes, she had forgotten it was her own birthday. Things
like that, there's plenty of those sort of stories.
But this
ego mind will jump to conclusions, if you like, but what it jumps to
is always defiled, you know, and that is nature, just the nature of
this pitiful ego mind and yet people, of course, protect it. It has
no wisdom, it is unreal, it fantasizes, it takes the worst possible
case, it has no compassion in it, you can describe it in a series of
negatives. This is this I my, mine me. It's got to go.
Personal
selfishness is the only thing that an ego mind knows. And the goal is
to get to know there is no self so something's got to give. You
can't, you can't have two, you can't have a knowledge of Anatta and a
personally self habit selfish mind.
When one understands
selfishness, understands as a knowledge, and abandons the
intellectual self; the intellectual self he's referring to is the one
that says, "My husband was buying perfume, my husband was buying
flowers, my husband was buying lingerie therefore I deduce he has a
mistress". But the same mind forgets that it's the wife's
birthday. And when the husband comes home and gives her the presents,
she never says, "I will never trust that ego-centered mind
again".
It's proved, the selfish mind is proved wrong
and wrong. But it has no memory of its, the fact it's been proved
wrong. Really stupid, like a child. So it's very strange to say that
knowing selflessness will totally wipe out misknowledge. It sounds a
strange statement, but you can see how it works. And this "I"
habit which has been with us.
"The intelligence see
absolutely all the faults of the afflictions as coming from the
egoistic views", Chandrakiti says. "There's no problem here
according to the dialectical system. The two self-habits are
differentiated according to their objects and not according ... "
and so on. So you must understand that to get omniscience, the "I"
must be removed.
So the minute you see your "I" or
your ‘me, me, me’, you identify with it. And the minute
you identify with it you know you're on defilements.
May you
come to understand selflessness.
May you come to know the
sublime qualities of the Buddha Dhamma.
May you be well and
happy.
May all beings be well and happy.
This
script was transcribed, prepared and edited by Frank Carter, Leanne
Eames, Jocelyn Hughes, Julie O’Donnell and Alec
Sloman.
References:
1. Anattalakkhana Sutta,
Samyutta Nikaya XXII, 59
http://www.cains.com/bucha/Anatta.htm
2.
John D. Hughes Recorded Dhamma teachings.
Recording Title:
Selflessness, anatta
Tape 9, Side 1
Teacher: John D.
Hughes
Date of recording: 28 June 1988
Transcribed by: Frank
Carter, Jocelyn Hughes
Checked by: Frank Carter
CD Reference:
28_06_88T9S1A
File Name: 28_06_88T9S1A_JDHtranscribe.rtf
5 Day
Meditation Course
Tuesday 28 June 1988 6.00pm.
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