Meditation on the Emptiness of the False "Me"

Anyway, we wanted to do some meditation. We don’t have much time. For meditation on the voidness of the self in the context that we were discussing it, we need to understand something first. Remember, yesterday we were speaking about how the self is imputed on a basis of imputation, and we saw that the context that we work with is the understanding of the aggregates in terms of the four noble truths. Our discussion of the self is the self in relation to body and mind – if we simplify it. 

First, we need to understand and focus on the basis for imputation. That is what we need to establish first in our meditation. We don’t have time to go through the four noble truths and each of the five aggregates, so we will just deal with the first, the body. Remember, we said that each of the four noble truths has four characteristics that it has and four that it doesn’t have. 

Again, we don’t have time to go through all four, but with the body, let’s start with the first characteristic, which is that the body is nonstatic. We need to understand that “nonstatic” has two levels of meaning: that the body changes from moment to moment – that’s gross, or coarse impermanence; subtle impermanence, or subtle nonstaticness, is that the body is from moment to moment going closer to its end. It’s falling apart like a bottle of milk. It is slowly, moment to moment, getting to the point where it will turn bad. 

• When we focus on our body, it’s going to be conceptual – so there’s the category “body.”
• There’s going to be some sort of mental hologram that represents our body in our meditation, whether we are visualizing it in front of us or just imagining our own body. I mean, obviously, it is a hologram; it is not that we are aware of every cell in our body simultaneously, are we? We represent it by a hologram, and that refers to our body; that’s how we’re focusing on our body.
• What we’re distinguishing is the characteristic feature of it changing from moment to moment and every moment getting closer to its death, closer to its falling apart.
• We understand that as true suffering. That’s really a drag; it’s terrible that it’s like that.

That’s the start of the meditation; that will be the basis for imputation if we’re going to think in terms of what’s the relationship of the “me” with that. Let’s spend just five minutes focusing on this. In meditation, what we do is:

• First, we analyze: is this the way that the body is? Is it nonstatic? We have to understand that.
• Then, we focus on our body while discerning this characteristic feature of it.

We call that “analytical meditation.” However, what does that really mean? It means that we discriminate that it’s like this and not like that on the basis of two mental factors that are: we investigate roughly, and then we discern very specifically. 

To analyze, we can use all sorts of lines of reasoning. Everything that is affected by causes and conditions changes from moment to moment; the fact that we eat different things at different times every single day and we sleep and do different types of exercise and so on, that obviously affects the body; therefore, the body is nonstatic, changing from moment to moment. Everything that is produced by an original combination of causes and conditions, in other words, things that arise from a specific cause and condition – like the meeting of the sperm and egg of our parents – if that initial cause that gives rise to it doesn’t continue to renew it each moment, then it is slowly going to degenerate. It will degenerate; it will go downhill, fall apart, just by nature. It has to because there’s nothing sustaining it to renew it in each moment. Therefore, based on that line of reasoning, we conclude that our body is nonstatic.

Then, we try to observe that in the body with “investigation,” which means to just look at it roughly, to see it in a rough way, and then to observe it with “discerning,” which is the same word as “analytical.” We discern it in detail, very specifically. That’s a very active type of mind. The energy is slightly going outwards. 

Then, we have stabilizing meditation, in which the energy is a little bit more withdrawn so that we’re not actively discerning these details; we’re just staying focused on the fact that that’s the way that the body is and it is suffering. If that becomes weak – that way in which we’re holding that object, that this is true suffering because of its nonstaticness – then we have to either go through that line of reasoning again if we don’t remember it, or if we do remember it, just discern it in that way. 

We have to know:

• The object that we’re focusing on – the body and that we are focusing on it through the category “my body” and a mental hologram representing that category.
• The distinguishing characteristic that we’re focusing on – the body’s nonstaticness.
• The way in which our attention is engaging with it – with the understanding that this is true suffering, and it really prevents us from always being able to be at our best to be able to help others. 

That’s how we meditate. As I said, before we do any particular phase of the meditation, we quiet down by focusing on the breath to get the mind into a more neutral state so that then we can generate a more constructive state.

[Meditation]

Next, we try to recognize the “me” to be refuted. In relation to this body that’s changing all the time and has its limitations, do we think that we are always the same “me”? Do we think, “This body is changing, but I don’t change. It’s always “me,” and I’m somehow trapped inside this body, which has all these limitations, and somehow, I have to use it, but I really wish I could get out of it and not have to be bothered with some sort of body. It’s such a drag.” Do we think like that? 

Try to identify if you feel like that. I think that most of us do. As I said, the classic example that’s very good for this is when we have a cold, how do we relate to how our body feels when we have a cold? Our nose is running, and we’re coughing, and all this horrible junk that’s going on with the body. “That’s not ‘me.’ I don’t want to be like that.” Our concept of “me” is healthy – always healthy, always great. “This isn’t ‘me,’ and I don’t want this,” as if that body and that “me” with a cold were somebody else and that the healthy “me” could jump out of that bad scenario. Try to recognize the object to be refuted.

[Meditation]

Having identified this false “me” – this static “me” that can exist all by itself and just wants to get out, be free – then we have to think of the two possibilities: it is either identical to the body or it’s completely separate from the body. Or, in the more technical way, like we were discussing before, if we think of two sets: the set of existent phenomena being divided into the dichotomy of two subsets – multiple items and non-multiple items – then, this false me is in either one or the other of these subsets if it is included in the set of existent phenomena.

• If it’s identical to the body – in other words, it is in the subset of non-multiple items – then the body couldn’t change. The body would always be the same; it would always feel the same, but it doesn’t. This doesn’t make any sense. 
• If it were totally separate from the body – in other words, in the subset of multiple items – then how could we feel anything from the body? “I feel hungry,” or “I feel sick.” How could it really be connected to the body at all? That doesn’t make any sense.

We go through that type of line of reasoning and understand that both these possibilities are ridiculous; they don’t make any sense. 

• The conclusion that we draw is that there’s no such thing as the existence of a “me” that is established as a static entity separable from a body. The false “me” is not in the set of existent phenomena.
• Then, we just cut off completely imagining that, and we just focus on “no such thing.” 

Remember, for this meditation on a non-implicative negation, we must be careful not to focus on an implicative negation. An implicative negation would be: 

• The set of existent impossible “me’s” that is devoid of any members.
• An individual impossible “me” that doesn’t exist.
• An impossible “me” as a member of the set of nonexistent phenomena. 

Further, although when we meditate our eyes are open, just looking at the floor in the Mahayana manner, we’re not paying attention to the floor. When they say, “Nothing appears when focused on voidness,” obviously, our eyes still see the floor, but we’re not focused on that at all; we’re just totally absorbed in “no such thing.” Eventually, we don’t pay any attention to what we see in front of us. It’s like, for instance, there is the physical sensation of the clothes on our body, but we haven’t been paying attention to that. If we wanted to pay attention to it, we could; however, as we’ve been sitting here, we haven’t been paying attention to that. It’s the same thing, we don’t pay attention to what our eyes see on the floor in front of us.

[Meditation]

Let me point out a few more things in the last minutes that we have together. To meditate successfully on voidness here, we had to have understood the location of what’s to be negated, which was the nonstatic body. The basis for negation was the conventional self. What we were refuting was this impossible way of existing – existence as a static “me” that can exist by itself and get out of the body and be in some paradise.

Now, when we are focusing on voidness, what’s very difficult, of course, is to focus on “no such thing.” Nothing appears, but we understand that it’s an absence of this impossible type of existing. We need to train ourselves to be able to have that type of understanding without saying in our heads, “No impossible me,” or whatever. We can look at the table – no dog on the table or no chocolate in the refrigerator – to try to get that way of perceiving an absence as being an absence of something specific. Otherwise, we just space out, and we’re just focusing on nothing with no understanding. 

We have to be quite careful here not to make it an implicative negation, and the example for that would be like we’re in the swimming pool, and we have jumped into the water, but we’re still holding on to the side. It’s not that we first affirm, “Well, yes, there is a ‘me,’ but I don’t exist that way, in this crazy way,” and then we are holding onto “but there is a ‘me.’” When we’re holding on to the side of the pool, we’re focusing on “but I don’t exist in this crazy way.” We don’t need to hold on to the side of the pool. We’re not starting with the self existing like this and like that, but it’s not like that. Do you see the difference? It’s quite a difference in the meditation. It’s simply “no such thing.”

For further meditation then, we need to work with:

• The feelings as the true cause of suffering, referring to happiness or unhappiness. Feelings are the true cause of suffering because we thirst for them: “I don’t want to be parted from that happiness.” “I want to be parted from that unhappiness.” We desire for that object that we were feeling happy about, and we reject that object that we felt unhappy about. Then, we grasp for this impossible “me,” “I don’t want to be unhappy,” “I don’t want to lose my happiness.” Our whole attitude toward happiness and unhappiness, that’s the cause of our suffering, the true cause of our suffering.
• Then, the relationship of the “me” that’s experiencing that: who is the “me” that wants to be happy, that doesn’t want to be unhappy and has all these attitudes towards it? 
• Next, we meditate in terms of the mind and its natural purity – that’s true stopping. 
• Then, the relationship of “me” and the mind.
• Then, discriminating awareness – our correct understanding of voidness and the relationship of “me” with that. 
• Then, we work through each of the three levels of the impossible “me” in relation to each of these four. We go through all four with one level of impossible “me,” then all four with the next level, and all four with the next level. Obviously, that’s far too much to do in one session, so we accustom ourselves to each little piece, one at a time.

This is a basic introduction to how we meditate on the voidness of the self in relation to the four noble truths.