@jayarava
Banal, sure, but it's not something people are much aware of while going about their day.

When my most recent teacher did his intro-to-Buddhism courses, he'd say that "it's not that there's no self, it's just that if you look for it you can't find it," which I thought was not bad especially in that setting where someone may have never encountered such a radical concept before.

@AndyLowry The problem is explaining why this is a problem.

I don't have to "look for a self", I *am* a unique being *however you look at it*. Everytime I turn around, *there I am*. Same with enlightened people too, btw. All have distinct and recognisable personalities.

Just because some Iron Age Brahmins were obsessed with ātman, doesn't mean I am. I'm not. Never have been.

@jayarava
Okay, but there are times when that autopilot sense-of-self just dissolves. It can be brought back pretty easily and usually does by itself anyway, after an hour or so. I've seen several possible explanations for that, usually having something to do with artificially wearing out the brain's Default Mode Network and forcing its shutdown (which is why and how koans work when they do, I reckon). Anytime something like that has happened with me, there was an intense unresolvable-by-logic problem I desperately wanted an answer to. Never used koan study myself, despite belonging to the Linji bunch that focuses on it, just happens by accident every time.

The best writing I've seen on the topic of no-self is that of the Christian ex-nun Bernadette Roberts. Her "The Experience of No-Self" is astonishing, partly because the poor woman had a permanent (!) kensho or awakening or whatever and then spent the rest of her life trying to explain and describe it using Christian terminology.

Always been a little sad that she didn't have any Buddhist friends who could have told her that words already existed to use in talking about the things she was talking about, but then again reading through her decisions on what to call things and how to discuss them is interesting in its own right.

Her book costs more than I think it should, but is available for loan on the trusty Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/experienceofnose00robe

@AndyLowry Hmm.

An experience that is interpreted as "no self" does not mean "I have no self" any more than the experience of watching the sun go down means "the sun revolves around the earth". Right?

@jayarava
The sun DOES go around the earth, but the math is much clumsier from that perspective. 😜

It's not the self that disappears, but the everyday normal ever-present internal "me" reference almost all of us rely on all the time. An event happens, but it doesn't happen to me, it just happens, if that makes any sense.

The temporary, in and out experience of this kind of thing isn't a big hairy mystical deal. Musicians and athletes get in states like that all the time, where everything just happens by itself. "Flow" and all that. The biggie experience where death isn't a problem anymore and everything you see seems to be as though for the first time seems to me to be just a more thorough version of the same basic thing.

@AndyLowry Sure. I know what you are talking about. And have experienced "flow" every day of my life.

I'm disputing the value of *demonising* something that is an integral part of being human for 99.9% of the population.

@jayarava
Ah, gotcha! Yes, agreed. Nothing at all wrong with everyday! It's the only door we can even knock on, after all. 😀

@AndyLowry In Sanskrit classes I read the Sāṃkhyakārakirā and it became apparent to me that it was also based on the experience of emptiness, with a different interpretation.

No one talks about the experience of no-experience or the "cittam acittaṃ" (as it is called in Prajñāpāramitā). Everyone *interprets first*, then communicates. And then complains about prapañca in the unenlightened! 🤣

@AndyLowry Also, "autopilot sense-of-self". Have you ever noticed how the Buddhist use of pejorative language to describe the self becomes *the content* of the problem.

I mean, FFS, the autopilot was a *hugely and wholly positive* invention for long distance flying. It's a while since anyone died because their pilot fell asleep, eh?

To make autopilot *a bad thing* we have to take it out of context and distort it.

And to what end?

@jayarava
What he meant was that if you try to define it or pin it down in some way, you'll be out of luck. Is this 1957 photo of me really a photo of me? You know, ship-of-Theseus discussions where the problem is what you mean by "me" or "this." Most of us are several different people during the course of a day in subtle ways. One of the other teachers there calls that kind of thing un-pin-downable, which I like.

@AndyLowry Hmm. This approach, it seems to me, is predicated on the (weird) idea the idea that only permanent unchanging things are real.

A 1957 photo of you, is really a photo of you back in 1957. That was you then. This is you now. You have changed. So what?

I have no idea why this change is a problem unless you expect existence to be unchanging, which no one in their right mind does.

See also my discussion of that Ship (which IMHO is much better than others): http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-ship-of-theseus-ftfy.html

@jayarava
What I mean is that there is nearly nothing other than DNA patterns that would link me to the 1957 me. Would there even be a single cell still alive? Maybe a stray neuron here and there. So I'm unable to claim to be the 1957 person, since that person ceased to exist. That person died incrementally and had his cells scattered to the winds a long time ago. The information contained in that body DOES live on, though, physics-wise-speaking.

(I guess it boils down to what one thinks "identity" is. Which is a tricky one in itself.)

I have read your Theseus, though it's been long enough that I remember nothing of it other than being surprised to see it. Will add it to re-read list!

@AndyLowry Here's the thing: Identity is an *epistemic* issue: it's something you know in relation to something. Identity is not a metaphysics issue.

@jayarava
And the puzzlements arise because of difficulties with definitions. What's a chariot? 🤔 😃 No disagreement here, sir.

@AndyLowry It's deeper than a "definition" (i.e. bigger than mere semantics). If something is an epistemic issue only certain methods allow us to get traction on it. If we employ the methods of metaphysics, we get nowhere (at best).

A chariot is a 2-wheeled horse-drawn vehicle, designed for speed and maneuverability, often used in warfare.

@AndyLowry Also, we need to avoid the suggestion that our failure to explain something means that it doesn't exist. This fallacy probably has a name, I imagine, but I can't keep up with all the named fallacies.