The Buddha’s concept of non-self is probably one of the most difficult of all the Buddha’s concepts to understand. In psychology, the importance of a well-formed, stable self is central to mental health. To illustrate this conundrum the late Jack Engler, Harvard psychotherapist and early science-of-meditation pioneer, famously said, “You have to be somebody before you can be nobody.”
Meditation teacher and Spirit Rock founder Jack Kornfield said in an interview I shared here some months ago said the characteristic that most distinguished all the meditation masters who had gained freedom was this quality of non-self. It meant that they could laugh at themselves uproariously when they made a mistake or looked silly. There was no holding on to self-image. They could work toward an objective - even a deeply felt objective - and also be happy if their objective was not met. And regardless of that, they could continue working towards that objective. They could lose country and fellow country men and women to tyranny and still find a way to be happy - observe the Dali Lama. This quality of not-self opens up the vistas of freedom from being bound to results, from being bound to suffering because we can’t make things the way we want them to be. It doesn’t mean the Dalai Lama doesn’t care deeply about his country and his country people. He most certainly does. And if there is something he can do, he does it, someone to comfort, he comforts, someone to grieve for, he grieves. But he is not pulled off balance, not a slave to the suffering, he is still able and willing to be happy and joyous when he can.
Mindfulness of Breathing is one of the Buddha’s seminal teachings and can be found in the Anapanasati Sutta. The practice predates the Buddha by some good amount of time but he refined it into 16 stages from the beginnings of finding one’s breath and establishing mindfulness all the way through to enlightenment, freedom from suffering.
These teachings are very familiar, we see iterations of them in practices offered by Thich Nhat Hanh to MBSR to the Henry Benson Institute of the Mind. This summer I dove into the formal study and practice of the sixteen steps of mindfulness of breathing. Step 12 was as follows: I breathe in liberating the mind. I breathe out liberating the mind. What was this mind liberation? According to Venerable Analayo, liberating the mind is letting go of the burden of “I am,” of “selfing,” of making a “me” out of something, of appropriating something as “mine.” In meditation it can be as simple as saying, Look how good a meditator I am. Or how bad a meditator I am. This breath is mine. I’m going to make this breath be the way “I" want it to be. I’m going to hold my breath until I’m enlightened!
At first I was frustrated because I didn’t find any great revelations during this step of the meditation. But I usually found, after even just asking where is selfing in this meditation, when I went about the rest of my day, examples of selfing showed up all over the place - in anxiety about a meeting with an organization, or preparing for a class, in being put on hold for the tenth time by the phone company, in having someone wheel their cart in front of mine at the supermarket. It’s “my” place in line, my “time” that’s being wasted. There isn’t enough respect for “me.” “I” have to get this assignment, presentation, conversation right. Can you hear the sages laughing uproariously when they put a foot wrong?
One way the idea is described in the Buddha’s teachings is “Me-ing” and “My-ing” - the habit of considering my body, my mind as “me? and thinking of my qualities, intelligence, property, family, possessions as “mine.” And in conventional terms, this is fine and acceptable. But my body and mind are not permanent, are subject to aging and illness, will eventually die. Where is “Me?” If I lose a finger or a toe to an accident, was that me? Am I less me? As to my possessions, how can I say another person is mine? Or property mine? I have a relationship with those people but I don’t own them. Even children I may be responsible for, I don’t own them. They have their own personalities, their own gifts and flaws, and most especially, they have their own fate. While I may care for them, I cannot control their fate. The Buddha’s own father tried to shield him from the realities of the world, but eventually the Buddha went out (snuck out like any adventurous son?) with his charioteer and saw aging, sickness, death and a holy man. He left his home then and there to try to understand the inevitable fate of our bodies and to find freedom in this life.
As to property, I “own” it but for how long? If I die, I don’t own it anymore. If there is a hurricane and the property becomes uninhabitable, what is ownership? If I own it, why do birds fly over and nest in my trees so freely? Bugs, deer, rabbits, all manner of small creatures live on my property, roam freely at night and much of the day. At best, I am a steward of my land. The concept of ownership doesn’t apply to the other inhabitants.
Recently, I had occasion to think about organizations large and small but especially two in my small community. Both were highly respected and deeply revered groups. Both had deep roots in the community. One was given the deed to the property used by the other with provisos that the occupying group could use it as they always had and if the first organization no longer wanted the property, they had to give it back. The first organization was the steward of the property. But stewardship involved time, money, effort, pride, and other purposes the property could be used for. So the concept of “my-ing” crept into the leaders of the first organization. In Buddhism, it is called appropriation. The taking of something to be mine or myself that didn’t start out that way. Me-ing and my-ing involves wanting, grasping, craving, clinging, attachment, greed and once one takes “possession,” defending," fighting for, constricting around. In other words, stewardship has turned into selfing - making a self out of the “ownership” - and has now become a source of suffering. Like two small children struggling to possess the same toy, the two groups are struggling against one another. The smaller occupying group have long, deeply held traditions they are holding to - with good cause. And the smaller group has also been doing some deep reflection about whether the oppositional struggle can be converted to mutual caring, concern and respect.
They know this truth from the Buddha, “Hatred is never ended by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased.” Sometimes in modern circles, non-hatred is translated as “love" but what the Buddha was really talking about was non-aversion, freedom from hatred, which includes patience and calm.
That quality of non-hatred is also freedom from selfing, from making a self around the conflict, the property, winning, prevailing, having my way. And letting go of selfing is letting go of a burden, relaxing muscles, letting go of effort, striving, being more in accord with the flow of our own true nature.
One more example. See if you can see the non-self in this story. In Trail to Kanjiroba, the medical teams on the Nomad expeditions hike for weeks through the Upper Dolpa, Nepal, a remote region high in the Himilayas near Tibet where small villages cling to the sides of the mountains, persevere in constant winds, short summers, freezing winters, often snow bound passes. Our author Bill DeBuys (pronounced De Bweeze) is talking with a seasoned trekker who is in charge of the piles of duffle bags of medicines and supplies they carry into the mountains. He is pronouncing a good day for their first clinic - over a 100 villagers seen and ministered to, antibiotics for ulcers handed out, analgesics for arthritis, sunglasses to protect the vision of people exposed to brutal sunshine. They treated kidney trouble, respiratory illnesses from living in smoke-filled huts, a leaky heart, and one pregnancy. A good day. He was surprised when the keeper of the medicines demurred. “The situation is absurd. Look around you: our camp equipment is worth more than the annual incomes of this entire community. We’ll go away and pretty much everything here will revert to how it was, including the health of the people we’ve treated. Follow-up is impossible. It’s entropy, impermanence, like the Buddha says. Even the mountains and this village will wear away, let alone the little things we try to do.”
“So why do them?” DeBuys asked.
The man zips the last duffel and gives a wry smile. “How else are you going to spend your time? Just because in the end it doesn’t make any difference - why should that matter? There is no problem here. It’s fine. Always will be. We do what we do, and nothing lasts.”
His answer combines DeBuys concept of applying Hospice to our changing world - care, not cure - they cared for people and the people were grateful, with the concept of letting go of results. "We do what we do.” Certainly nothing lasts, but lives are changed in ways we can’t foresee. One villager with support from within and from outside organizations managed to get an education first in her village, then in Kathmandu, and finally in a medical school in the states. She returned as one of the doctors on the expedition.