Understanding Non-self: Khemaka's Story 

I first understood no-selfness in my school biology classes. We are made up of trillions of individual cells, as well as billions of friendly bacteria and we depend upon. But no one cell or bacteria 'is' us. And millions of cells and bacteria are naturally generated and destroyed every day. So we are not the collective of our cells or bateria either. At the time, I found this idea a bit shocking, and asked my teacher "Where is ME??". I understand this concept more easily now, and still chuckle at my 'enlightenment' via cell biology in a classroom.

I'm living in a Buddhist country, but I didn't know about that story. Thank you for sharing that story with us. However, I was a catholic, and I went to catholic schools only. I converted to Buddhism when I was around 11 years old, but I couldn't learn Buddhism from a school. You teach Buddhism well, and your RU-vid channel is like a buddhist school.

Excellent talk much appreciated 👌

That's a beautiful story Doug and you narrated so eloquently. Wondering, why I haven't heard or read this story.

Liked for an appropriate and earned Ask in the right place.

…sort of like the Disney ending…I like that. It feels refreshing and light. For me the business of enlightenment gets sometimes so heavy.

I totally relate to Khemaka and this story, especially as an oldster. I definitely have an intellectual and imaginative understanding of such matters because I am overly-intellectualized and academic, wrestling with that "scholastic conceit" I think you've mentioned in other videos. I really like the analogies/simile/metaphor of a lingering scent, or a stained cloth. It's actually very helpful to know it's kind of normal. I'm glad the story has a happy ending! 😀

Music to my ears.. 🎼🎶🎸

Congratulation to wiser calmer kinder of Doug's Dharma * * * * * !

I really enjoyed the story and it gave me a lot of light to understand Anatta and to understand the difference of how I emotionally feel and how conceptually I feel about the idea of a self. Identification, ownership and conceit; the three selfing activities that don’t go away at the same time. Thank you Doug. Jorge Seguel from Chile.

Accidentally (and fortunately!), I've stumbled upon this great "old" video, Doug! You should - in my humble opinion - add it to your Non-self playlist! As a fan of good metaphors, I like this underwear thing a lot. 🤣 And one thing is for sure: As long as one thinks that one is further down the road than Khemaka, one's underwear is still stinky... 🤣 ❤️🐱🙏

Thank you for sharing this story and for telling it so vividly. I will try to re-tell it in our Sangha

That was a very good and deep teaching. It helped me to understand this complex topic better.

Thanks!

Regarding your video Non self in your bones.... well explained. I think I'm beginning to get some of this

I conceptually understand it... But I still have this image of "self" seems to be attached to the eye of mind. The good news is my long term depression has vanished as I somehow attach this tiny self-concept with Buddha nature. This is still something very beneficial I feel, even if not for total enlightenment. Thanks, Doug.

Doug: Congratulations on getting to 5000 subscribers. Great channel.

Really liked this one stories are really helpful thanks

Just discovered your website... Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge...makes new analyse everything.....

This was very very helpful

The beginning of this sutta is actually kind of funny and I recommend everyone read, or better yet listen to, it once. I'm not sure if humor was intended, but it does make me smile.

Thanks Doug. Very illuminating story. See if I get this right. The Buddha's Dharma does not attempt to answer the question "who am I?" as other Dharmas may do (with the answers my soul, God, Dao or Brahman, for instance) but rather answers the questions "Is this me?" or "is this mine?" with the simple answer "no", hoping that through practice you will desist in asking this question, as there will not be any sense of "I" wondering about its identity anymore (even if there may actually be some self behind but who does not wonder about its identity anymore) . Am I close? (Or, I should say "is it close?).

I don't mean to seem pedantic. I've just always loved that bhikkhu means 'beggar".

Very nice video. Relinquishing the idea that consciousness is not the self (nor owned by it) is extremely difficult even at the intellectual level.

Sadu, sadu, sadu

Thanks for the information that you put across in a way that can be understood. Can you give any information about the buhddist heavens and hells. Best wishes

He [thus] dwelling contemplating impermanence in those feelings, contemplating dispassion, contemplating cessation, contemplating renunciation, does not grasp at anything in the world, and not grasping he is not perturbed, not being perturbed he attains utter nibbana in his very self (paccattaññeva parinibbāyati). He knows ‘Destroyed is birth, lived is the holy life, done is what was to be done, there will be no more of thus-conditioned existence. - M. i. 255-256

Anatta is the heart of the Buddha's teachings. Yet it is very difficult to accept. It simply means there is nothing to be called a permanent and abiding self or entity in a constant flux of inconstancy, impermanence, changes. And to hold on to the idea of a self is suffering. This is the three universal characteristics. A Greek philosopher said "you do not go to the same river twice."

The self cannot disappear when you are still thinking. Because the “I am” is a product of the thinking process. As soon as something happens the thinking personalises it and says “I am this and that”. The Buddha saw this personalising step and became awakened. Because he saw how the mind works to produce the “I”, the fundamental ignorance. The Buddha woke up from the Dream of Existence, enlightened.

My Buddhism practice goes back to my first teacher, Alan Watts; books and tapes. Vipassana from early '80's with Jack Kornfield, before Spirit Rock. Never figured out no self. It IS a practice! Thank you. Subbed.

Hey doug, the self or eternal viwe in buddhism is realy a thing which exist according to somone's desire or someone can controle it within the inside. Also that viwe is born due the desire. That means, when the desire happens in someons mind this self viwe is automatically built. Therefore every one in the world do everything on that viwe. If you realy see it, you will see it is like a flower(the sin flower). That means, even if you did whatever kind of thing, every thing are happening based on that viwe. Therefore that self viwe is the middle of the flower built from the burning desire.

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If I could pinpoint where I'm at in this journey of enlightenment, I'd say nowhere. 'I' never becomes enlightened, 'I' is just a thought that seems to capture the whole space of awareness when it arises. The feeling of 'I' is impossible to get rid of if you're born in a culture where you are implicated. The one who is experiencing these words as they're being typed has the recognition that none of what is appearing is for anyone. What's left is the space in which buddha, and 'I' appear in. What strikes me odd is the idea of reincarnation, in what sense does this moment give the idea that there is such a thing as being reborn in another body until there is enlightenment? This sounds like the ego trying to explain what this is, truthfully no words can describe what this moment is.

Joko Beck, the late Zen priest, said In Nothing Special, that enlightenment is simply the absence of concern for self.That comment really cuts through the mostly ethereal and abstract descriptions of the process. She also considers enlightenment much less valuable than an enlightened life. That fits with the Zen saying, Before enlightenment, cut wood and carry water. After enlightenment, cut wood and carry water.

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The Inquisition "What a Show, the Inquisition, Here we go"

I understand myself as an emergent phenomena.

Nice story Doug. Q: how is embodying non-self in your bones compatible with Sila and ethical responsibility? Ethics surely requires a self-other relation...

Do you think the "Non-Self" is the Missing of a indiviual and immortal and not-changeable core (like the missing of a eternal soul) inside of us, but because there is "Self" in the word "Non-Self" also a changing, mortal and collective core, which connects us to our surrounding world and other humans and living beings? Or is the second aspect more the function of Buddha nature (= Self ?) ?

Hi Doug, thank you for your expositions - clear and v. Helpful. How do you think about/relate to the non-dualism of some one like Francis Lucille or Tony Parsons - who, I understand, attain enlightenment in a moment and see ‘self’ as an illusion? The gradual process associated with Buddhist practice appears to be seen as unnecessary...I would be grateful to hear your thoughts.

Very well put. The greatest difficulty for this set of aggregates is that living life in the world requires these aggregates to be functioning well (evolutionarily adaptive traits that they are), and so it is hard to even imagine intellectually any theoretical possibility of every residue finally vanishing. It seems a set of aggregates would have to fully drop out, perhaps riding the liminal just barely above death in order to be fully rid of identifying as self any particular aggregate or set of them. This also points to why philosophers like Nietzsche called these paradigms nihilistic. Is it even a theoretical possibility not to just fully extinguish every residue of self but to fully immerse in the world, thriving and achieving great things? The West with its individuation paradigm has tended to resist this perceived de-selving nihilist program, also pointing out that for the Buddha to abandon wife and family was quite irresponsible and not worthy of emulation. This isn't meant as a challenge. The value of realizing directly the lack of self is not doubted. The quest is to have better insight regardinf integration.

If there is no self, what does it matter if you believe it or not? Also what is there to be reborn if there is nothing there? Thanks!

Doug, where does the Bodhicharyavatara fit into all of this? Do you have any plans to cover it and its place in buddhism, particularly from a secular perspective? It seems to be ever present but hardly discussed. Many thanks for the service you provide to the community. It's greatly appreciated.

Then the concept of Non self and the concept of Self in Advaita Vedanta a Are in essence The same, we are neither the body nor the mind

Khemaka was alluding to essence of true self, which can only be pointed to. Not this body am I, this body is not the true self of me.

Hi Doug, I've just discovered your channel and Secular Buddhism; great information and presentation. As a long time practitioner and avid reader I am always surprised by the points of view on this subject of non-self. Depending on the source you will get either a otherworldly impossible to attain, for the privileged, or a nothing special, for the common man view. I just read an article by Jack Kornfield that appeared in the Inquiring Mind magazine www.inquiringmind.com/article/2701_w_kornfield-enlightenments/, in it he speaks of asking three different teachers about enlightenment and getting three different answers. I personally resonate with the one that defines it as a "simple yet profound shift of identity from the myriad, ever-changing conditioned states to the unconditioned consciousness-the awareness which knows them all" . Following the story you present, I think of this in a more vulgar way. A jump from "what a smell !" to "so, it smells".

One thing I have struggled with (sorry this is not exactly related to the content of this particular video) is the apparent conflict between trying to get rid of craving and desiring (as it seems that buddhism stresses that this striving can be the source of suffering) and the notion of trying to better myself, striving to further my career, improve my lot in life, etc. Is there the potential to become fatalistic if you try to follow buddhist philosophy too strictly?

Would you be interested in doing a video about the Buddhist view on psychopaths? I was confounded in my practice on how to view someone like Jeffrey Dahmer as basically good or ignorant. Perhaps this is outside the scope of the channel but I found it difficult to address.

Thanks Doug! Do you do anything specific to cultivate the practice of seeing the arising and passing of the five aggregates throughout the day? I notice during the afternoons at work my energy and desire for this practice wanes and i start identifying easily to feelings and stories.

Doug i highly recommend this essay on the nature of self. This blog contains articles written by well read folks that are working in cognitive science and artificial intelligence, so the perspective, wording and the examples used would be refreshing for some. phantomself.org/the-illusion-of-survival/

I wonder, how can one consider the consciousness (the one that seeks and answers) as non-self? Kindly enlighten.

Can u make a video how Shankara differs from Buddha?

Guess intellectual understanding or too much intellectualization can be an obstacle towards awakening

Do you have workshops?

Nice video Doug, although i disagree with you on one point. I dont think those you would call "awakened" believe in non self. From what i gather they're free from all beliefs and rather embody non-self by being.

Why is the word aggregate used?

I think Lord Buddha taught non self so that people don't grasp at form Feeling perceptions.. because whatever Perception we consider as self we tend to grasp it and Don't let it go.. The purpose of teaching non self was different than how we interpret it now.. nowadays we are trying to see it more scientifically.

Ah, the ever permeating dookie stain of the Self.

If you do not have a self... who or what is reading this text?

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No-Self means no permanent eternal self. Every healthy person has a sense of self. Practicing Buddhism to get rid of a self is foolish. Better to have no concept of Self or Non Self.

Could you seperate self from ego? And see the Buddha trying to do the same? Whereas the self can be real but indescribable thru words and ego is illusion.

You can't talk about no self unless you're using the intellect. Getting out at deeper? The best you can do is ponder it , and it takes a mind to do that. Seems that this whole no self teaching is an Upaya... a skillful means way to deconstruct a self that over identifies to it's sad songs and stories, attachments of aversions, aggregate cluster of mind streaming habits.

it is not complicated at all. Why did the buddha say no self ?. No one in this world nowadays is able to understand except some people in Cambodia because Mr Khem Veasna , who is the greatest man, can understand the teaching of the buddha. We are not our bodies but our mind. So what is mind ? mind is force, force is not ours but it belongs to nature. I can't expand more why I say like that. Sir if you want to understand you can travel to Cambodia to meet Mr Khem Veansa in person, he'll explain you more details about no self or you can wait for him, if someday he explain in english in his RU-vid. I am not lying to you, I swear to god.

I prefer the story of the garlic kept in the jar instead of the shit stained underwear......but thanks anyway

The purpose of a soul's creation by the Source of ALL... IS ... for that Soul to Love, thereby becoming identical to the Source of ALL. Once that condition is achieved....Each Soul will request the creation of a piece of their soul become alive...that new soul is watched by the larger Soul...As a result, there is no permanent leaving the material world. The personal God is the Larger Soul (an intelligence who is identical in Love to the Source of ALL) who watches you through all rebirths....and so and so infinity. So there is a personal God and rebirth at some level is forever & ever.....infinity

Doug, did you ever think of doing a live chat? 🎐