How can there be no self...

How can there be no self? I get that everyone's opinion of themselves wrong at least a little but isn't there undeniably consciousnesses experiencing things in your head? is it just semantics? youre conscious but youre memories probably arent very reliable and all life is interdependent on each other? how would that nullify youre experience of being a "self"? is it just dogma to help people cope with being alive? am i missing the point? when people say things like 'if your look for a self it will vanish' or 'who is doing the thinking' i just think 'me, my brain which is alive and forms memories feel feelings and make judgements'. i get that i'm part of the universe but it seems insane to think the dead deer on the side of the road is somehow part of me or that good and bad don't exist, only opposites. imagine there was some piercing screech everywhere causing constant migraines to all living things, how would this not be terrible? how would judging it be an illusion?

book recs on the topic? or just thoughts on it, id love to be wrong but in order believe something you have to think its true

Other urls found in this thread:

theconversation.com/meditation-mindfulness-and-mind-emptiness-21291
plato.stanford.edu/entries/personalism/#IntSub
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

I would suggest Waking Up by Sam Harris. Also watch his talks on Big Think.

If you really want to experience it, I would suggest you give serious thought to taking a psychedelic like psilocybin. Of course, that's not a decision to take lately and you should absolutely avoid it if there is a history of mental illness in the family, specifically schizoaffective disorder.

Relevant?

>In other words, the earliest definitions describe the key defining feature of meditation as an experience of “mental silence”.

>Many other explicit examples of this definition can be found in Eastern literature from virtually every historical period. Lao Tzu, for example, urged us to “Empty the mind of all thoughts” in the Tao Te Ching.

>Yet Western definitions of meditation have consistently failed to acknowledge its significance. Perhaps this is because of the predominance of the Cartesian dictum “cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am) that has come to characterise not only Western philosophy but the psyche as well.

>This might explain why for most people in the West, including the academics and researchers on whom we rely to generate our scientific knowledge, mental silence represents both an alien concept and an illogical experience.

theconversation.com/meditation-mindfulness-and-mind-emptiness-21291

>>This might explain why for most people in the West, including the academics and researchers on whom we rely to generate our scientific knowledge, mental silence represents both an alien concept and an illogical experience.

This must also be why the west has so many great achievements in science, philosophy and culture while the east, just sitting around thinking they don't exist all day, still poop in buckets and don't know math.

Because ignorance is the root cause of dukkha...

"From ignorance as a requisite condition come fabrications. From fabrications... comes consciousness. From consciousness... name-&-form. From name-&-form... the six sense media. From the six sense media... contact. From contact... feeling. From feeling...craving. From craving... clinging/sustenance. From clinging/sustenance... becoming. From becoming... birth. From birth as a requisite condition, then aging & death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair come into play. Such is the origination of this entire mass of stress & suffering.
...when it ceases, so too must dukkha cease

"Now from the remainderless fading & cessation of that very ignorance comes the cessation of fabrications. From the cessation of fabrications comes the cessation of consciousness. From the cessation of consciousness comes the cessation of name-&-form. From the cessation of name-&-form comes the cessation of the six sense media. From the cessation of the six sense media comes the cessation of contact. From the cessation of contact comes the cessation of feeling. From the cessation of feeling comes the cessation of craving. From the cessation of craving comes the cessation of clinging/sustenance. From the cessation of clinging/sustenance comes the cessation of becoming. From the cessation of becoming comes the cessation of birth. From the cessation of birth, then aging & death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair all cease. Such is the cessation of this entire mass of stress & suffering."

— SN 12.2

I'm a big fan of all those things you mentioned but i still cant really grasp it. psychedelics make everything make sense for a few hours but it seems like delusion when I'm sober. there simply is something it is like to be me. i do think life is interconnected in significant ways but i still feel my suffering and joy is important, i still feel it makes sense to judge things
i dont doubt believing this stuff will make me happy but i just dont believe it
i hope youre joking. you have an incredibly narrow world view, just because you dont know bout eastern culture doesnt mean it doesnt exist and calling modern society progress is debatable
i dont understand but if i do understand if i planted a garden but a hurricane destroys it would you say it never existed? just because ill die and be forgotten doesn't mean my being is illusory. maybe that wasnt what you were getting at, i dont understand your post

it's not that there isn't a subject, it's just that it's a secondary effect of linguistic processes

nobody can tell you what self is, so nobody can tell you what a non self is.

anyway, in the dhamma, you just see that for a pleb, there is a divide that he calls things personal and impersonal. too bad that both these are impermanent.

Not him, but there would have been a time when humans existed (or at least our ancestors) and hadn't yet developed language.

I submit that at they time they didn't have subjectivity as we believe we understand it or experience it today.

This is something I didn't really fully feel until I did one dose of a psychedelic, I'm not some cool ass drug person rn, but I would recommend drugs instead of books haha.

I think every book technically addresses it since they're supposed to be like units of individual consciousness expressed thru words. But there's the binding etc, and language is a construct etc

Meditating is also cool but I'm bad at that.

I talk to strangers on the internet why

haha

Transcendental unity of apperception IS a condition of consciousness

Also look into personalism
plato.stanford.edu/entries/personalism/#IntSub

>This is something I didn't really fully feel until I did one dose of a psychedelic, I'm not some cool ass drug person rn, but I would recommend drugs instead of books haha.
yes be an hedonist

There just isn't a spiritual self in command of and separate from the brain/body that will zoom off to other places once *you* die.

Perfect Brilliant Stillness
by David Carse
David Carse was not a spiritual seeker. Yet, while trekking through the jungles of
Ecuador, as he was staring from a thatched longhouse into the rainforest, David
experienced an intense and graphic fear that culminated in a resignation toward the
certainty of death. The ensuing state of surrender and acceptance—which as David
describes "landed in my lap without any accomplishment on my part"—resulted in the
following "total Understanding."
* * *
Still later that night in the jungle, toward morning, lying there in Presence, there was a
point when all the experiencing stopped. The thinking and the feeling and the
processing that had been happening all completely ceased. I was not aware of it 'at the
time,' because there was no thought and no awareness of time or indeed of anything;
only in hindsight is there a looking back and realizing that there was a 'period of time,'
out of time, when there was no thought, no experience, no thing, nothing.
It may have been hours, it may have been an instant; it was not of time. Only in
retrospect can it be called a place or a time of stillness or emptiness, because when it
was occurring there was no time and no place and no sense or awareness of anything
happening. I was not asleep. It was a condition of complete stillness and completely
alert awareness. But there was nothing there to be aware of, no sense even of self to be
self-aware. It could be called a completely empty stillness and awareness. I have no
idea how long this lasted.

Eventually, at some point, in this place of no time, no thought, no place, no self, there
gradually began to creep in an awareness that there was a simple watching of
something. As this awareness distilled out of the emptiness, attention focused; and the
realization was that what was being watched, what there was awareness of, was a guy
lying in the bamboo hut in the jungle. This continued to focus until there was awareness,
a kind of recognition, of what had always been thought of myself, 'david,' lying there on
a matt in the middle of the rainforest. And there was an abrupt realization: "my god,
there's nobody home."
This was the moment at which nothing happened. Like a 'pop' of a bubble bursting, a
shift in understanding. I am not 'david:' there has never been a 'david:' the idea of 'david'
is part of a thought, something like a dream, that doesn't matter. The individual 'self,' the
one I thought resided in that body, looking through those eyes, the one I thought a few
hours ago had woken up enough to perceive Presence, is not there, does not exist,
never has. There is nobody home.
This was not an 'out of body' experience. I have had these, in which 'me', my'self,'
experienced being out of this body rather than inside it, and experienced looking at the
body from outside instead of looking out through the body's eyes. This was not like that
Perfect Brilliant Stillness 1 David Carse
at all. What was being watched here was not only the body, but the whole 'david'
apparatus; body, mind self, soul, personality. What is watching is All that is. The
watching, what I came to know as 'witnessing,' is neither other than the body or mind or
the whole 'david' thing, nor not other. It does not originate from here, from the
body/mind; but also It does not stand apart from it, because It is inclusive of it. The
witnessing is clearly not being done by 'me,' even a disembodied 'me.' This witnessing
is not being done by anyone, any entity. That's the point: there are no entities, there is
nobody home. There is only the witnessing.

Abruptly, instantly. Effortlessly, out of stillness.
A moment, an instant, of radical, severe disorientation, discontinuity; then a stepping
through into perfect clarity, not at all unlike the experience of waking up.
A dream, seemingly real, lasting all one's apparent life.
A stirring, and the sleep dropping effortlessly away.
A moment of disorientation as the dream is recognized as dream and there is waking to
the Real.
Immediately, the dream falls away and it is known that the dream was never real, that
one never was what one had been dreaming. There is no 'before and after,' no moment
when I was 'no longer' david. This is the 'gateless gate:' only the seeing that david never
was. As near as can be said: the perception now is that there is no 'me,' no 'david;' and
'I' is that which has never not been All That Is. Always everywhere perfect Brilliant
Stillness, and no-thing which has no name continually outpouring, seen now always not
as from this mind/body thing.

>I'm a big fan of all those things you mentioned
>things being Sam Harris

Wew lad. Are you new here?

sorry, you cant shame me into not liking an author. I dont read to impress strangers on the internet, i read to hear different perspectives and Waking Up is one of my favorite books. Who cares if he doesn't invent the fields of thought he discusses himself (pretentious people like you)? He has interesting things to say if you can get past the fact that he has some unsavory fans. maybe you should ask yourself why it bothers you I read his books

>I get that everyone's opinion of themselves wrong at least a little but isn't there undeniably consciousnesses experiencing things in your head?
Consciousness isn't self.

>youre conscious but youre memories probably arent very reliable and all life is interdependent on each other?
Your consciousness is just your memory of having a memory, and your memory, like any other part of your being, is limited and (ergo) implies something beyond it.

>how would that nullify youre experience of being a "self"?
It wouldn't. The point isn't for your "sense of self" to disappear.

>when people say things like 'if your look for a self it will vanish' or 'who is doing the thinking' i just think 'me, my brain which is alive and forms memories feel feelings and make judgements'.
So many preconceived notions.

>i get that i'm part of the universe but it seems insane to think the dead deer on the side of the road is somehow part of me or that good and bad don't exist, only opposites.
See how you immediately start thinking of horrible, dangerous things the moment your sense of self gets questioned? Why is that so?

>imagine there was some piercing screech everywhere causing constant migraines to all living things, how would this not be terrible?
A constant, absolute pain imposed on all people would not be perceived.

>A constant, absolute pain imposed on all people would not be perceived

U wot m8?

Basically what that means is that there is no core unit in your consciousness that can be said to be a self. When you actually examine your mind, look at what is there. You have sensations, you have feelings, you have memories, you have thoughts, and ideas, by are any of these things a self? At any one point in time you are basically only experiencing one of these things, and almost oblivious to all the rest. When you meditate you are only aware of sensation, sensory input, breathing but nothing else. What is the self then? In many ways OUR PERCEPTION that there is a self is a kind of fixtion, because there is no core self, rather we percieve all these things as being connected through Spacetime and our memories make this seem continuous. But in reality, that's essentially an illusion. It doesn't mean you aren't a person, or that you aren't aware, but that the idea of a core self is simply not real. It's an idea, a conglomeration of various systems, that when you meditate, you see there is no core.

Also see Hume's bundle theory of consciousness.

>U wot m8?
Air is transparent.

Cool, and pain is an experience of damage to our systems. All because everyone feels it doesn't mean you don't feel it.

It's an experience of *a* damage; the constant experience of damage can't be classified as pain--speaking realistically, either the shock would be too great and the subjects would die, or they would integrate it to the common pattern of their lives.

ok let me rephrase it then. occasion jolts of intense pain to every creature twice per day. isnt this objectively bad? besides incredibly rare instances someone wants all living things to suffer but i think the vast majority of people can admit it wouldnt be an illusion to judge it as bad. this way tolerance wouldnt set in, though even in the first scenario it'd be objectively bad till tolerance sets in. if you could chose, wouldnt you choose to spare creatures of the suffering?

You have no idea what you're talking about.

Talk to anyone with chrinic pain.

Your little Epicurean argument is fun to think about, but it does not agree with reality.

>this way tolerance wouldnt set in
It would if it's regularised.

>isnt this objectively bad?
>i think the vast majority of people can admit it wouldnt be an illusion to judge it as bad.
Why are you so insistent on acting out of something that isn't illusory or subjective. Why does it need to be True suffering for us to consider it?

You mean chronic pain? It really isn't the same thing.

Thinking for oneself isn't really important. It usually leads to bad decisions.

i never reeally understood the concept until i did LSD. it was a strange experience, realizing there is no self. literature can explain the concept to you but as for experience, i feel that would come through either meditation or use of psychedelic drugs.

When you break it down the self is unidentifible. Are you your brain activity? It doesn't feel like you are your brain activity. But neither does it feel like being all the atoms that make up your body.

Whenever you try to pin down the self it flees into fleeting memories. It always tumbles into the past. Is the you of your childhood the you of today? People go through unrecognizable transformations.

Plus, when we identify our ego in our deeds and social relationships, we limit a fundamentally plastic concept to a fixed field. You can be a thousand different people with a thousand different people.

So the self is like a fluid, something without fixed location but rather distributed or bundled in time and space.

So the question is, is that really a self, or as Hume claimed, just a bundle of sensations concentrated in one moment of awareness?

It made most sense to me after reading something like this: the ego, and components such as personality are merely attributions of ourselves, by ourselves. The self is a construct that we create which we consider to be ourselves. In reality, all is impermanent, so the goal of the self can never be reached, and this is illusion, of a fixed self, becomes the source of much pain (of the psychological sort).

No-self does not equate to no-consciousness.
Look up the Buddhist concept of "mindstream".
There is a stream of consciousness, but it is the egoistic division of self and the rest of the universe that Buddhism seeks to break.