The Buddha pointed to everything that is not self

 Introduction to Meditation     

  The important thing in meditation is attitude, rather than technique or tradition. The right attitude is most important. Even if you have the best teacher with the best tradition and the best methods, if your attitude isn’t right, it won’t work.

Many people meditate with an attitude of gaining, attaining, or achieving. It’s not surprising, because our worldly attitude is based on achievement. We are conditioned by our education and society to see life as something we must use in order to attain or become something. On a worldly level, this is the way it is. We have to go to school in order to learn to read and write. We have to do all kinds of things in order to become something or to attain something, but enlightenment (   nibbā na    ) is not something that we ever attain or achieve. This is a difficult thing to comprehend with the intellect, because the intellect is conditioned to think in terms of gaining.

     Practicing without Gain     

The words “Dhamma” and “nibbāna ” are untranslatable because they cannot be explained conceptually: they are realizations rather than things. The best we can do in English is to use a term like “ultimate reality.” Dhamma and  nibbāna are what we realize rather than something we attain or achieve.

When we are meditating, our intention is to incline toward  nibbāna  rather than toward attaining a higher state of consciousness. There are various meditation techniques in which we can achieve higher levels of consciousness, but for  nibbāna there are no stages, there are no levels, there’s no attainment. There’s no development or progress because it’s a realization rather than an attainment.

The problem human beings have with meditation is their worldly mind. The worldly mind is always looking for something. Even if one meditates for years, there’s still a great desire in the mind to find out “Who am I? What am I? What is the purpose of my life?” But the Buddha was not trying to tell us the purpose of life. Instead, he tried to give us guidance to full realization. Therefore, in his basic teaching of the Four Noble Truths, he pointed to everything that is not self, rather than make any statement about what we are or what our true nature is. Even if he had told us exactly what we are, we still wouldn’t really know until we had meditated and found out for ourselves.

     Everything That Is Not Self     

The Buddha pointed to everything that is not self. In Pali, this “everything” is referred to as the five khandhas, translated as the five heaps, or the five aggregates. These are listed as: physical form, feeling, perception, volition (or mental formations), and sense consciousness. These are what we are not—and this “not being anything” is what we mean by anattā, or non-self. Everything that you can perceive and conceive, know through the senses, or think with the mind—everything mental and physical that has a beginning and an end, that arises and passes away—is included in the five heaps. The five aggregates include the whole universe that we perceive and conceive through our senses.

The five aggregates include our bodies. These human bodies are products of the earth, and their nature is to rely on all the things that the earth produces. We have to eat what comes from the earth, and when these bodies die, the elements of earth, water, fire, and air return to the earth again. Seeing our bodies as part of a larger process is a way of recognizing   anattā, a way of seeing that these bodies are not self.

In conventional reality, of course, the body is very much our “self.” When I talk about myself, I am talking about this body; I am not talking about anything else. But when we investigate and reflect, we begin to comprehend the truth of   anattā    as an actual experience. We are no longer deluded into thinking that we actually are our body, feelings, perceptions, volition, and sense consciousness. We know what is not ourself, fully and completely, without any doubt remaining. This is complete enlightenment, and this is what our meditation is about.

     The Conditioned and the Unconditioned     

The teaching of the Buddha is a very simple teaching, because it comprehends things in terms of the conditioned and the unconditioned. Conditioned phenomena are those which arise and pass away. They include everything that we perceive and know through our senses, through the body, feelings, thoughts, and memories. They are conditions; they begin and they end. The Pali term for the conditioned is sankhāra. Sankhāra includes all that arises and passes away, whether it is mental or physical. We are not quibbling about whether it is out there or in here, whether something arises and passes away in an instant or in an aeon. It does not make any difference as far as this way of meditating goes, because the conditioned includes all time-bound things.

The unconditioned is something that most people never realize because they are mesmerized by conditioned phenomena. To realize the unconditioned we have to let go of our constant attachment to conditioned phenomena.

The unconditioned is like the space in a room. When you come into a room, do you notice the space, or is your attention drawn to the objects in the room? You see the walls, the windows, the people, the furniture, the colors, and the decorations. But the space in the room is not noticeable, even though it is there all the time. And when we’re busy watching all the people and the objects in the room, we don’t notice the space at all. It is only when we let go of thinking, talking, considering, and imagining, that we become aware and we notice the space in the room. When we attend to it, we see that space is peaceful and boundless. Even the walls of the room do not limit space.

It’s the same with the mind. The mind is unlimited and has no boundaries; it can contain everything. Yet we bind ourselves to the limited conditions of the mind—our ideas, views, and opinions. There is room enough in space for every theory, opinion, and view; they all arise and pass away, and there is no permanent condition. So there is room enough for everybody and everything, for every religion, every political view, every thought, every type of human being. And yet, humanity always wants to control and limit and say: “Only these we allow, and those do not have any right to be here.” Trying to possess and hold on, we bind ourselves to conditions, which always take us to death and despair.

Whatever we hope and expect will cause us to feel disillusionment and despair, if we attach to it. This is because whatever we attach to arises and has to pass away. There is nothing that arises which keeps on arising; it can only arise for so long, and then it passes away. So when you bind yourself to any condition that is arising, it can only take you along with it as it passes away. When you attach to anything that is arising, such as your own physical body or any condition in nature, it will take you to death. And so death is the end of that which was born, and despair is the other side of hope and expectation.

As soon as anything becomes unpleasant or unsatisfactory, we tend to jump into some other condition, into something that is arising. This makes life a constant search for pleasure, romance, and adventure. People are always running after that which is interesting or fascinating and running away from the opposite. We run from boredom, despair, old age, sickness, and death because these are conditions that we do not want to be with. We want to get away from them, forget them, not notice them.

But in meditation, the attitude is to be infinitely patient with conditions, even when they become unpleasant or boring. If we’re always running off to find something more interesting, we just keep going round in circles. This is called the cycle of saṁsāra   .

     Meditating on the Ordinary     

When we notice that the conditions of body and mind are just the way conditions are, it’s a simple recognition. It’s not an analysis, and it’s not anything special. It’s just a bare recognition, a direct knowing that whatever arises passes away. Knowing in this way demands a certain amount of patience; otherwise, as soon as any fear, anger, or unpleasantness arises, we will run away from it. So meditation is also the ability to endure, and bear with, the unpleasant. We don’t seek it out; we are not ascetics looking for painful things to endure so that we can prove ourselves. We’re simply recognizing the way it is right now.

The Buddha established his meditation on that which is ordinary, rather than on that which is extraordinary. For example, one technique of Buddhist meditation is mindfulness of the breath (P. ānāpānasati), which is meditation through attention to normal breathing. There are meditations on sitting, standing, walking, and lying down, which are also very ordinary—even boring. With meditation on these ordinary conditions, what is required is an attitude of infinite patience; we make all the time in the world to be with one inhalation and one exhalation. There’s nothing else to do except to be with what is—with the body sitting down, the body standing up, the body walking, the body lying down.

That’s a mental state very different from the one we are accustomed to, isn’t it? When we are sitting down, we normally do not notice sitting. We might sit and collapse out of exhaustion, or we might sit and read, sit and smoke, sit and eat, or sit and talk. We’re always doing something while we’re sitting. And it’s much the same with the other postures. When we lie down, we fall asleep heedlessly. We walk heedlessly, stand heedlessly, and sit heedlessly, so we never really see what is now and what is immediate. We are always thinking about what we have to do now in order to get what we want in the future, and that is endless. Even when you get what you want in the future, you find it only satisfies you temporarily, and then you start thinking of something else you have to have.

     Looking at the Movement of Desire     

I remember, when I was a little boy I saw a toy, and I told my mother, “If you buy me that toy, I promise I will never ask for anything ever again.” I really believed that full satisfaction could be gained from owning that toy! So she went and bought the toy and gave it to me. I think I played with it a little while and set it aside, and then I found something else that I wanted. But I remember how thoroughly convinced I was that, if she would give me that one thing, my desires would be satisfied forever—and I remember that I was not satisfied. Even at that young age, this realization made an impression because I can still remember the lesson: even getting what I wanted was disappointing because then I had to start looking for something else.

In meditation, we are looking at the movement of desire, but we are not passing judgment against desire. Some people think that Buddhists are all against desire, but the Buddha’s teaching is not an annihilationist teaching—it is an awakening. Desire is not something that we reject, or try to annihilate. We reflect on it and understand that it is a condition in nature.

There are desires that are good and desires that are bad. Desires to kill, hurt others, and steal are considered bad desires; all of us have bad desires at times. And then, there are good desires that make us want to help, be kind, or develop into good and wise beings. Whenever we recognize desire—whether it is good or bad—we are using wisdom. Only wisdom can see desire; desire cannot see wisdom. So when you are trying to find wisdom, just know desire. Watching the movement of desire lets us see its nature as a changing condition. And we see that it is not self.

     Buddha-Wisdom     

Buddha-wisdom is something that we use in our meditation, not something we attain. It’s a humbling kind of wisdom; it’s not fantastic. It’s the simple wisdom of knowing that whatever arises passes away and is not self. It is knowing that the desires going through our minds are just that—they are desires, and they are not us. Wisdom is living as men, women, monks, nuns, Buddhists, Christians, or whatever, using the conventional realities of gender, role, class, and so forth, but understanding those realities as mere conventions. Wisdom lets us see that they are not ultimate truth, so that they do not delude us.

Buddha-wisdom is that which knows the conditioned as the conditioned and the unconditioned as the unconditioned. It’s as simple as that. You just have to know two things: the conditioned and the unconditioned. When you are meditating, don’t try to attain, but just open up to your intention for meditating. When you suddenly awaken to the fact that you are trying to get something out of it, that is a moment of enlightenment. With an open mind, you begin to see what is really happening. But if you sit for a year trying to become and attain, you will feel terribly disappointed at the end of it. You will have lost everything because, if you don’t have the right attitude, you will not have the wisdom to learn from failure.

In our meditation, we learn from both successes and failures. People fail all the time. Mindfulness of the breath is one of the most frustrating meditation practices ever conceived because, if you try to get something out of it, it is not a very giving practice. You have to be patient. You have to learn from your successes and from your failures, until you no longer really care whether your experience is pleasant or unpleasant. Then both conditions can take you to enlightenment, to nibbāna.

Ajahn Sumedho from

The Mind and the Way