In psychology there is a concept called the "sense of self." When I first heard the term, I was fourteen. I didn't really understand what it meant then, and now at twenty-four, am still as mystified. I can describe attributes of myself - I have integrity, for example, or I'm slow to pick up on sarcasm. But these are all measuring myself by an "external yardstick" - I say I'm smart because I do better in school than most people, and I say I'm bad at getting sarcasm because I'm worse at it than most people. These are also things people have told me all of my life, which adds to my perception of them. But either way, I'm measuring my "smartness" and sense of humor by looking outward.
I always thought that there was something more to my "self," something more significant or substantial...or something more inherently mine. Something that had nothing to do with any external yardstick. Then I came across this passage in the book "A Heart As Wide As The World" by Sharon Salzberg, which discusses anatta, or the inherent lack of substance in all things:
This is the first idea about self that has made sense to me, that has "rang true" to me. The cool thing also is that had I read and believed this a few years ago, I would have been horrified. But now I can see how I can still feel compassion for "myself" and my own feelings even if "I" is an illusory concept. This is hard to explain, I just feel I can do it. Maybe the best way to say it is that I am part of an ever-changing whole, and when anger arises in me, it results from suffering, and even if "I" don't exist in the way I previously thought I did, I can feel compassion for that suffering that exists in "me." And a cool thing is that by feeling compassion for me I also sense I am extending it to the whole (and the reverse applies too.)Some people ask: If there is no I, no me, no one behind the process, then who is reading? Who is meditating? Who gets angry? Who falls in love? If there is no self, who has memories? Who gets up and walks out of the room? Who dies? Who is reborn? In order to answer these questions, we have to see how we use the word self as a conceptual framework. Thinking of the self in this way is very useful, but ultimately this "self" is revealed as a hallucination of perception - an illusion placed on top of the contingent parts of our existence. Consider the body, for instance. The body is said to be approximately 90 (sic) percent water. This water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Atoms, comprised of energy, are essentially empty space. Where then is the solid entity we depend upon and call the body? Science points out that what we call matter and energy are both inseparable and interchangeable. And so the concept of "matter-energy" has arisen, as we attempt through language to convey the constant flow and flux of our universe, and the intricate relationship between all things...
...Our bodies, as well as every object around them, have never been static and self-contained entities, separate from the changing conditions that create them.
I had a question about all this...I want to meditate on this idea of "Who reads? Who meditates?" etc. and I feel I have the tools to do it. However, I wonder if anyone knows any good online guides or printed literature I could pick up on this concept. I ask because I remember when I was going to see a therapist and they told me, "sit with your feelings and accept them." Then I read about Inner Dissolving, and was like "holy crap this is like sitting with your feelings, but so much better." It just worked so much more efficiently, and more quickly, than the vague statement of "sit with your feelings," and I felt I was really getting to the meat of matters. I wondered if anyone had a guide I could read about contemplating the "I" that would help me dispel the lack of clarity I feel about it in a similar way.
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Originally Posted by Seeuzin
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