Experience and ownership

We explore the nature of mind – its fabric and its field of experience – by looking inwards and thus develop the quality of insight. As we reflect upon the nature of experience and how it works, anattā (not-self) slowly becomes a bit more understandable and meaningful. 

With perceptions – the sound of a bird chirping or the sight of a cloud floating by overhead – it is easy not to have a sense of ownership. We don’t feel that we own the song of a bird or that a certain cloud is ‘ours’. With feeling it’s usually trickier. When there’s a physical sensation in the body, like an ache or a pain, we usually experience it as ‘mine’: an ache in ‘my’ back or a pain in ‘my’ knee. Yet when that is explored, insight deepens. There can be moments of revelation, a clear knowing that the sense of ‘my-ness’ (mamaṃkara) has been added onto the bare sensation of pain arising, abiding and passing away. We see that very feeling of ownership as merely another mental impression, like a sound or a sight or a taste. 

Mental formations (thoughts and emotions), in a similar way to feeling, may seem even more personal at first: ‘my’ story, ‘my’ memories, ‘my’ ideas, ‘my’ fears, ‘my’ excitement, ‘my’ love, ‘my’ hate. As insight deepens, this is explored as well. The selfless nature of thoughts and emotions can also be revealed and experienced. Remembering our story is simply ‘remembering’; it is a mental image from the past. It too arises and passes away. Emotions then are another layer to be examined. Eventually their empty nature becomes clear as well: ‘This regret, excitement, jealousy... is just a pattern of perception, a pattern of consciousness. It arises, abides for a while, and passes away.’ It is as if we are digging down, deeper and deeper – from sensations to perceptions to thoughts, then emotions – through layer upon layer of experiences that seem more and more personal, more totally ‘who and what I am’. And when the nature of sensations, perceptions, thoughts and emotions are recognized as empty of self, awareness continues beyond into the exploration of decision-making and choosing.

Yet even if these other experiences are seen as not-self, somebody seems to be making a choice. Someone seems to be saying, ‘Go this way, don’t go that way.’ It feels like a person. It feels like an ‘I’ who decides. After all, isn’t there a ‘me’ creating karma? But we can dig deeper into that, too. What happens when a decision is being made? Is it really an ‘I’ who is doing the deciding, the choosing, the intending and the acting? What is the stuff that choosing is made of? These are questions we can ask ourselves as we explore this mind.

THE ANATOMY OF DECISION 

Let’s take a look at the process of making a decision, for example, when we’re driving to reach a destination. First, the mind is aware of arriving at a crossroads. 

Then there is a perception of possibilities – left, right or straight ahead. Next there is the memory of a plan (‘need to go south’). The memory (‘need to go south’) maps on to the perception (‘this is a crossroads’), and intelligence is engaged. The idea arises: ‘turn right to go south.’ With that thought, the hands and arms move, turning the steering wheel to the right. 

As we watch this process unfold, we can ask ourselves, ‘Who is deciding?’ We reflect, ‘Perception is not-self. Memory is not-self. Thinking is not-self. Physical action is not-self.’ So there we are, turning right at the crossroads. Someone seems to have made that decision. It certainly looks like ‘I’ am the one who chose to go right. But when the process is separated out into its constituent parts, that ‘I decided’ is only an apparent reality. Each of its elements is not-self – no ‘I’, no ‘me’, no ‘mine’ – can be found. Thus even decision-making is not-self. Right at its very core, there is no person; there is just mind, awake to the present. 

When there is a strong influence from avijjā (delusion, not seeing clearly), choices are guided by desire, craving, compulsion, fear, aversion, unconscious habits. Those apparent choices are guided by ‘me’ chasing after what ‘I’ like, or ‘me’ running away from what ‘I’ am afraid of, or ‘me’ opposing and attacking what ‘I’ don’t like, or me opinionating about the world. Such actions are reactive, acquisitive, conflicted, afflicted and lead easily to dukkha. 

With avijjā, when it is not recognized that the mind is what matters, then the world is the locus of all our hopes and is blamed for all our suffering. As Jean Paul Sartre famously wrote, through the voice of one of his characters, ‘Hell is other people,’ although I’m not sure if he meant that ironically or literally. 

The crucial relevance of this mind, and how its attitude can be changed for the better, is not recognized and the only way that any happiness can be found is taken to be by rearranging the world: by getting what we like and getting rid of what we don’t like. This is a sorry prison; no exit indeed.

But when there is vijjā (awakened awareness), choices are guided by mindfulness and wisdom (sati-paññā), attunement to the time, place and situation. There is no ‘self’ involved. If an action is taken and it works well, there is no ‘self’ to get drunk on it. And if an action doesn’t work, there is clear comprehension: ‘This road is closed. Let’s take a detour.’ There is no sting of failure. The experience is that of freedom and ease in all circumstances, ‘wide open, free as air,’ as the Buddha put it. When the mind learns to consider, choose and act based on mindfulness and wisdom rather than on self-view and blind habit, the heart is freed. It is no longer imprisoned by the traumas of longing for success, fear of failure, desperation for approval, fear of criticism. Rather, we do what we do, based on mindfulness and wisdom, and let the world make of it what it will. 

When there is success and things go well, we can enjoy it but not take it as a personal achievement, carrying it around like a big prize. There is just the sweet taste of things going well. And when things go badly and fall apart, we often learn deeply significant lessons from the experience. We can remind ourselves, there is just the bitter taste of things going badly – it’s just a taste, empty and ownerless. We don’t have to take it personally. Besides, something that might seem like a ‘success’ may lead to all kinds of trouble, while a so-called ‘failure’ may provide unique, precious and wonderful opportunities. 

In the final analysis then the nature of the subject – the feelings of ‘I’ the experiencer, ‘I’ who remembers, ‘I’ who thinks, ‘I’ who plans, ‘I’ who decides, and ‘I’ who acts – is revealed as completely empty, like a lump of foam or a water bubble or a mirage, like the layers of the onion or a conjuring trick – there is a shape but it is empty, void of substance.

Mind Is What Matters 

Ajahn Amaro