The Coarse False “Me” of the Non-Buddhist Indian Systems

If we look at the so-called Hinayana tenet systems, they are teaching methods for attaining liberation. That is the primary goal. There are two topics of unawareness when we talk about unawareness. We’re not talking about general unawareness – not knowing how to drive a car correctly because of knowing it incorrectly and being closed to the idea of learning how to drive correctly. We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about two specific topics: 

• We’re unaware of behavioral cause and effect – that destructive behavior is self-destructive and leads to our own suffering. 
• Unawareness of reality, which causes us to act in compulsive karmic ways, which generates rebirth, uncontrollably recurring rebirth.

Within unawareness of reality, we can just speak in terms of the unawareness of how persons exist – ourselves and others – or all phenomena exist. In the Hinayana systems as studied by the Nalanda tradition, we have Vaibhashika and Sautrantika. They are actually subdivisions of Sarvastivada, which is one of the 18 so-called Hinayana schools. Theravada is one of the other 18, and that was not studied – well, I don’t know whether it was actually studied or not in Nalanda, but at least the Tibetan tradition doesn’t carry on any study of Theravada. It’s just these two sub-schools of Sarvastivada. Those were schools whose texts were written in Sanskrit. The Theravada schools, their scriptures are written in Pali – a slightly different language. These two Hinayana schools, Vaibhashika and Sautrantika, assert that in order to attain liberation, which was the only thing they were really describing in full how to do, we need to get rid of the unawareness of how persons exist. Vaibhashika asserts only one level; Sautrantika asserts two levels of what is the impossible “me,” an impossible way in which persons exist. 

Then in the Mahayana schools, which are Chittamatra and Madhyamaka, they teach more detailed methods for attaining not only liberation but also enlightenment. Within Madhyamaka, the Tibetans have made a division of Svatantrika and Prasangika. It was not so clearly delineated in India. We will just follow the Gelugpa presentation of this. Various other Tibetan traditions will subdivide within Madhyamaka in a whole variety of ways.

Now, within these Mahayana schools, we find that Chittamatra and Svatantrika – we’ll just say Svatantrika rather than Svatantrika-Madhyamaka – Chittamatra and Svatantrika assert that in order to attain liberation, we just need to understand and get rid of our unawareness of how persons exist. Thus, we have to understand two levels of what’s impossible about how persons exist. To attain enlightenment, we have to understand how all phenomena exist and get rid of the unawareness about how all phenomena exist. All phenomena will include persons; this is yet a further level of what is an impossible way of existing. However, we don’t need to understand that in order to gain liberation, just refuting those first two levels of impossible “me” is enough.

Prasangika – remember, we’re talking about Gelug Prasangika – says, “No, in order to attain liberation, you have to get rid of the unawareness about how all phenomena exist.” It’s the same for attaining both liberation and enlightenment, our understanding. If we speak about three levels of what we need to refute, the two levels of what’s an impossible “me,” as asserted by everybody other than the Prasangikas, as being the only thing that we need to get rid of to attain liberation, Prasangika says that just refuting those two levels is not enough; we have to refute the third level, the more subtle level, as well, about persons and about all phenomena in order to attain liberation or enlightenment. 

The only difference in terms of the mind that we use for gaining that understanding of the voidness and absence of these impossible ways of existing corresponding to reality is the strength of the mind. The strength of the mind is going to give the amount of force that will cut through the obscurations that are preventing us from attaining liberation or enlightenment. For the understanding of voidness to cut through these two levels of obscuration – the emotional that prevents liberation, and the cognitive that prevents enlightenment – the understanding is the same. It’s just a matter of how much energy, how much force, is behind it. This is dependent on whether the motivation, the force behind it, is the determination to be free (renunciation), as that’s what we would need for gaining liberation, or in addition, bodhichitta, and that would be what we need for attaining enlightenment. Nevertheless, the understanding is the same.

With that motivation – renunciation or bodhichitta – we’re doing positive things, whether we are just meditating or we are also actively helping others. Even if we’re meditating to attain liberation, we need to meditate on love and compassion – the four immeasurable attitudes: love, compassion, joy and equanimity. We’re building up positive force, so-called “merit,” so that we can understand. In the sutra teachings, it says that we have to build up three zillion eons of positive force, merit, in order to attain enlightenment. To attain non-conceptual cognition of voidness, that requires the first zillion eons of positive force, a tremendous amount. The second zillion will get us to liberation. The third zillion will get us to enlightenment. If we have just the determination to be free, we can build up the first and second zillion eons of positive force, but we won’t have enough energy to build up the third zillion eons. For that, we need bodhichitta. We can understand the difference between the determination to be free and bodhichitta in terms of this presentation of the three zillion eons. It helps us to understand. A zillion, by the way, is the largest number in the presentation of the number system in Indian mathematics. That’s why I use zillion. 

We have three levels of impossible ways of how “me,” or persons, exist. The Hinayana systems and the Chittamatra and Svatantrika only refute the first two in order to gain liberation; Prasangika refutes all three levels in order to attain liberation. The mistake that many people make when they are studying at Dharma centers is that they learn the Prasangika system, usually quite prematurely, and they only learn the refutation of this third level – that there’s no findable “me,” to put it in very simplistic terms. They do not refute the two grosser levels of what’s impossible concerning “me.” Because they skip those first two steps, then the third level – that there’s no findable “me” – becomes trivialized. To put it in childish language, “Where is the self? Well, I’m not up my nose, I’m not under my arm, so there’s no me.” Then, the conclusion is, so what? Of course, “me” is not up our nose or in our stomach. It gets trivialized, this understanding, and the fault is that we have not worked progressively in the stages of refutation in order to understand how subtle that Prasangika refutation is. It’s not just saying that there’s no findable “me.” We need to follow a graded path refuting the gross level, subtle level and then an even subtler level of what is impossible concerning a way of existing of “me.” 

It’s very important to refute the impossible way of existing of “me” first, before all phenomena. That is the way that it is presented in the classic fashion and that is very significant. Why? Let’s say we have a problem with anger. If we are just focusing on refuting impossible ways of existing of phenomena, then we are focusing on the object of our anger. “I’m angry with this person because they said this and that to me and acted like this and that to me.” We need to deconstruct, “Well, they’re acting like that because of causes and conditions, and maybe it was something that I did,” and so on. We deconstruct it and ask, “What is it that I’m getting angry at? Who is it that I’m getting angry at?” So, very nice, and we feel, “Well, now I’m not angry anymore.”

However, we’re going to get angry again. Why? Because we have not refuted the impossible “me” who is getting angry. That’s what we have to refute first. “Who am I that I have to get this away from me in order to feel that the ‘me’ is secure?” We ignore refuting the impossible “me,” basically misunderstanding, “Oh, well, I’m Prasangika, I’m Mahayana; I’m going to just refute all phenomena.” We skip the refutation of the “me”; it’s easier to deconstruct the object of our anger rather than, “Ooh, ‘me,’ I don’t want to deconstruct ‘me.’” This is what we have to focus on first, the deconstruction of the “me,” the self, and then all phenomena.

Now, when we have meditated and become very familiar with both of these – the refutation of “me” first and then all phenomena – then the order gets reversed but not to start with. We refute the impossible way of existing of the aggregates, of what we’re experiencing and then the “me” who is experiencing that. However, that is the second level of meditation, and this is the problem: people skip the initial levels, just as in the lam-rim, they skip over the initial and intermediate levels and think, “That’s not so important, let’s just get to the advanced one because I’m such a special person, I’m so advanced.” It is really, really important if we’re taking our spiritual development seriously, to do it in the stages, the way that it has been outlined. It has been outlined in these progressive stages that build one upon the next. This is how it works.

We saw that we need to understand the relationship between the self and what we are experiencing, and what we are experiencing in each moment is made up of five aggregates. The aggregates are just a conceptual framework for organizing all the various components of each moment of our experience. They don’t exist in some boxes somewhere; these are just conceptual categories. The five aggregates scheme is only talking about the nonstatic phenomena, things that change that make up each moment of our experience. In each moment, there’s going to be at least one if not more members of each of these five sets. They’re like a set, a mathematical set; however, don’t think that they are sitting somewhere in the head in five different compartments, and then one is going to come out and then go back in, so they’re just sitting there and waiting. It’s not like that.

We have forms of physical phenomena: sights, sounds, smells, tastes, physical sensations, subtle forms that only appear to mental consciousness like in dreams or visualizations; we have the sensors, the photosensitive cells of the eyes, sound-sensitive cells of the ear and so on. If we change the traditional order of presentation to make it a little bit easier, then there is a consciousness, primary consciousness, which is just aware of the essential nature of what something is, that it is a sight or a sound or a smell. 

There is distinguishing, which is usually called “recognition,” but that is not precise. It’s distinguishing; we distinguish some sort of characteristic feature within a whole sense field, for instance, so that we can focus on this particular object in that sense field as distinguished from everything else in the sense field. Otherwise, for sight, it’s just either pixels or colored shapes. Without distinguishing, we wouldn’t be able to cognize any objects.

Then, there is feeling. Feeling is a level of happiness, of how we experience that object – some level of happiness or unhappiness on a big spectrum. It is one of the primary ways or forms in which karma ripens in terms of how we experience objects, some level of happiness or unhappiness.

Then, there are other affecting variables, which includes everything else that is going to contribute to the mechanical processing of how we are aware of something – attention, concentration, all these sorts of things, and then all the emotions, both positive and negative.

We’re talking about the relationship of the “me” (which is also in that aggregate of other affecting variables) with the rest of the aggregates. The way in which we do this meditation is focusing on the body – that’s the aggregate of forms – with the understanding that it is true suffering – the first noble truth. Then, we focus on the feelings – the aggregate of feelings – with the understanding of it being the true origin of sufferings. Then, we focus on the mind – that’s the aggregate of consciousness – and we understand that represents the true stopping of suffering. 

Next, we focus on discriminating awareness. The definition of discriminating awareness is that it adds certainty to distinguishing. Distinguishing is “it’s this and not that.” Discriminating awareness adds certainty: “It definitely is this and not that.” This is the aggregate of distinguishing and the aggregate of other affecting variables because discriminating awareness is one of the affecting variables. 

We focus on this discriminating awareness as representing the true pathway leading to a true stopping. 

We have shuffled together the five aggregates, the four noble truths and the four placements of close mindfulness. That is the meditation, and in that meditation what we’re focusing on are four members of our aggregates, one by one, and each as exemplifying one of the four noble truths and as having four characteristics. So, conventionally, what each aggregate is. “It’s this noble truth and has this and that characteristic,” because the noble truths each have four characteristics of what it is, four distinguishing features that we can distinguish; and four that aren’t there, because when we know what something definitely is, then we also know what it is not. For instance, this is a dog; it’s not a cat. Now let’s take a look at what are the actual distinguishing characteristics and what they are not. 

We can focus on each aggregate merely in terms of which noble truth it exemplifies and what characteristic features it has – that’s just the simple placement of close mindfulness. In addition, we can focus on some aspects of the voidness of this aggregate and the noble truth. First, the voidness of the self who is experiencing it, and that would be in terms of these three levels about the self, the impossible ways of existing. Then, we would go on to understanding and analyzing the voidness of the aggregates or the noble truth, or the combination of aggregate understood as the noble truth. That’s done through the four gateways to liberation. It’s important to know all of this so that we have some idea of what we actually need to do.

First is the voidness of the aggregate or the noble truth – each aggregate is made of parts and is not some sort of solid existing thing. Then, it’s the voidness in terms of cause. In cause and effect, we have true suffering and the true cause of suffering. It’s not that the cause is sitting inside the result waiting to pop out, or in the true stopping – the purity of the mind – that enlightenment is already sitting there, or the cause – that understanding – is already sitting there, and it just has to pop out, or that it will happen from no cause. We have to understand the voidness of causality. 

Then, the voidness in terms of result. The results – liberation or enlightenment – don’t first exist as a nothing and then become a something. How can a nothing become a something? It’s not already existing as something; then, it doesn’t have to come about. The result can’t already be existing before it happens; otherwise, how could it happen? It’s already happened. We understand the voidness in terms of result, in terms of the four noble truths.

Next, the voidness of the three spheres involved: the self who is attaining this, what it is that we are understanding or attaining, and the whole process of how it happens. We can focus, then, in this meditation, just on what the aggregates and noble truths are, or the voidness of the self that is experiencing them in terms of the three levels, or the voidness of the object here in terms of the four gateways to liberation. Having already analyzed and understood this, then we can focus on it with just shamatha, a stilled and settled state of mind, or a combination of shamatha and vipashyana – vipashyana is an exceptionally perceptive state of mind. That is what we do to start with, with unlabored determination to be free, or in addition, unlabored bodhichitta that is behind the mind that is meditating on this with either shamatha or working to attain shamatha and working to combine it with vipashyana. 

To sum up, that’s what we’re doing on the first of these five paths. It is quite a package, isn’t it? Nonetheless, what we’re doing now is trying to gather the pieces that need to be put together here and all the things that we need to understand in order to even develop this determination to be free, like the twelve links of dependent arising; we have to really understand that, not only intellectually to be able to put all the pieces of this puzzle together, but also in our experience of practice, of meditation, repeating over and over again so that it really becomes familiar and part of us. We need to be able to actually put it together in experience. 

What is so important is to overcome the type of laziness, which is the laziness of saying, “I can’t do it. It’s too much.” For that, we need the far-reaching attitude (paramita, perfection) of virya. This is a difficult word to translate. It is usually called “joyous effort” or “enthusiasm”; there are so many different ways of translating it.

Let’s analyze the Sanskrit word. Virya comes from the same word which we have in Latin – we also have it in many languages – virile. Vir means man. In Sanskrit, vira is a hero. It means very heroic, masculine – not in a macho type of way, but a strong, masculine, heroic, courageous type of attitude, “I’m going to do it, and I don’t care how difficult it is and how long it’s going to take to do it, I’m going to do it.” Then, we just do it. We get ourselves under control and just do it with a realistic idea of how it can be done, with the strong intention that “That’s what I’m going to do.” That’s very important. Obviously, we need to have a motivation for why, but this is the far-reaching attitude that we need to develop very much to attain liberation or enlightenment. We have these paramitas – these far-reaching attitudes – in Hinayana as well as Mahayana. The only difference is whether it is the determination to be free as the energy behind it or bodhichitta as well. 

Why don’t we take a moment to digest a little bit of what I said before I started, what I actually intended to start with today. If we really have the strong motivation and some understanding of how we can do it and that, “I’m capable of this on the basis of the Buddha-nature factors, these two networks,” then we do it with positive force and deep awareness.

How do we know that we have positive force, the so-called collection of merit? We look at the definition; everything depends on definitions, and we have to learn the definitions. What is positive force or merit? It’s something that comes from constructive behavior and ripens into a feeling of happiness. If we have ever in our lives experienced even one moment of happiness, that demonstrates that we have a network of positive force. If we’ve ever understood how to do anything, including tying our shoes or going to the toilet, we have a network of deep awareness. We have the two networks; we’re able to learn, to be stimulated and to grow. Basically, we have the working materials and a precious human rebirth, so we just do it because it has to be done, because of all the suffering that either we have or everybody has.

We decide, “I’m going to try to build up all the different pieces so that I can put them together. I understand that all the different aspects of the Dharma teachings are like the pieces of the puzzle, and they all do go together. They go together in many different ways. It’s difficult, it’s an adventure, and it is fun, in a sense.” It is like going to a fitness club doing physical training, which I do. The workouts are very strong, strenuous and difficult; however, they’re fun. They’re very enjoyable despite the fact that they’re difficult and our muscles hurt at the end, because we see that we are getting stronger, we are getting more fit. It’s the exact same thing with Dharma training. That’s one aspect of this virya, that it is joyful. As we understand from the analogy of physical training, I think we can appreciate that it’s not contradictory that a lot of hard work and courage in doing something difficult can actually be fun, despite the fact that our muscles or legs hurt or whatever. 

Now, the four-point analysis; not a simple topic to get into, not at all simple. How are we going to refute this impossible way of existing of “me,” who’s experiencing the four noble truths? I know that some of you have been studying the four-point analysis, so what I’d like to do is go into more depth. We need to identify the object to be refuted – that’s the first point. Then, we need to be convinced of the logic to refute it. What we’re talking about is the relationship between the self and the aggregates. We saw the context of how we focus on the aggregates in terms of the four noble truths and the four placements of close mindfulness. 

Either that impossible “me” and the aggregates are the same thing, or they’re two different things. We refute that they’re the same thing, and we refute that they’re two totally different things. By understanding set theory and logic, we come to the conclusion that there’s no such thing; that’s the conclusion of the four-point analysis. We really need to understand each of these points.

First Point: Recognizing the Object to Be Refuted

The first thing that we need – and this is always emphasized as what we have to put the most work into (Tsongkhapa emphasizes this) – is to recognize the object to be refuted. For this Tsongkhapa uses a referent from Shantideva’s Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior, which is paraphrased as saying, “If you can’t see the target, you won’t be able to hit it with the arrow.” Also, we can understand the necessity for understanding and recognizing the object to be refuted from the definition of a negation phenomenon.

Existent phenomena, which are phenomena that can be validly known, are divided into affirmation phenomena and negation phenomena. We can know a table – that’s an affirmation phenomenon – and we can also know “not a chair,” “not a dog,” it’s a table. “Not a dog, not a chair,” is a negation phenomenon. There are many, many different varieties of negation phenomena, and voidness is a negation phenomenon. When we speak about voidness, it is an absence of something. It’s an absence of an impossible way of existing. 

When I use the word “voidness,” I am purposely not using the word “emptiness.” Emptiness is maybe okay for the Svatantrika understanding. It’s not okay for the Prasangika understanding. It would be okay for the Chittamatra understanding as well. Empty – a glass is empty. There’s the glass, and the glass is devoid of something that was inside it; we get this idea of something findable, conventionally there, and on a deeper level, it’s empty of something. That is totally to be refuted from the Prasangika point of view. 

It’s not that we have something there, and it is empty of something else. It’s simply “no such thing.” That’s why I call it voidness. It’s the same Sanskrit word as zero, nothing; it’s not that there’s something, and it’s devoid of something else because it doesn’t exist. However, we understand that that nothing is not just nothing; that nothing is the absence of impossible ways of existing. When we see that there is no apple on the table, and there’s no elephant on the table, in both cases, what do we see on the table? We see nothing on the table, but we understand what that nothing is. Here we understand that the nothing is an absence of impossible ways of existing; that is voidness. I make a big difference between emptiness and voidness, and if we use “emptiness” for the Prasangika understanding, even if we don’t think in terms of what the implication of the word “emptiness” is, it implies the Chittamatra or Svatantrika position – that there is something that’s empty of something else. 

Another piece of the puzzle that we really need to add is the understanding of the various tenet systems and what they assert. I think we start to appreciate that the geshes study for 30 years. In any case, a negation phenomenon, there is an extremely complex definition of it. We have to have conceptually cognized what it is that is to be refuted and then precluded, excluded. We have to know “apple” in order to know “not an apple”; we have to know “elephant” to know “not an elephant.” This is the part of the whole learning process of a baby. The baby first thinks that everything can be eaten; it puts everything in its mouth; it has to learn “not edible.” Like that, we have a negation phenomenon. We will get into a more precise understanding of a negation phenomenon later when we deal with the logic, the second point of the analysis.

Refuting the Coarse Impossible “Me”

Let us start with the first level, the grossest level, the coarse level of the impossible “me” that we have to understand conceptually in order to understand “It’s not that, there’s no such thing.”

The coarse impossible “me” is the one which is asserted by the non-Buddhist Indian philosophical systems. Misknowing that or confusion about that is therefore doctrinally based. We had to learn about it from a non-Buddhist teacher. Let’s say somebody teaches us about atman, the way that it is asserted in the various Indian traditions. Atman is the self or the soul – and we need to have believed it, obviously. If we believe that we are this atman, then we could have all sorts of doctrinally based disturbing emotions: “Me,” as this atman, “I want things,” and “I get angry,” and so on. We get these doctrinally based disturbing emotions. These doctrinally based disturbing emotions and attitudes all come from identifying ourselves with an atman that we have learned about. Somebody taught us that; however, the dog doesn’t think like that. 

In our first non-conceptual cognition of voidness, what we’re getting rid of are the doctrinally based unawareness and disturbing emotions. That’s with the seeing pathway mind, the path of seeing. Everybody gets rid of these doctrinally based beliefs first. We can ask, “Well, how can I get rid of that because I never studied it? I don’t believe that garbage.” It’s an interesting question, isn’t it?

Tsongkhapa and his disciples answer that: remember, we have no beginning – no beginning to the mental continuum. There is no beginning to our unawareness; there was no first Buddha from a temporal point of view, and there was no first teaching of these non-Buddhist philosophies either; we have had countless rebirths. At some time, we studied this. It might not be very active in our memories – like in the case of the dog – but everybody has the doctrinally based unawareness and disturbing emotions.

What we want to get rid of is the whole package of assertions of this incorrect view, and of course, there are several variants of that Indian view. Now, though, we know that we have a little bit of it because we have little pieces of that package that manifest in terms of incorrect consideration – doctrinally based incorrect consideration. “Consideration” is another aspect of the mental factor called “attention.” How we pay attention to something is how we consider it, that’s one aspect of it; it could be correct or incorrect.

The body is nonstatic; it’s changing from moment to moment, that would be correct consideration. Incorrect consideration would be to think that it is static, that it never changes – it’s eternally young, for example. We may try to be eternally young and dress young and have a facelift, etc. It’s incorrect consideration of the body. That’s part of the package of this doctrinally based view. Although nobody maybe taught us that, nevertheless, that is an indication of this doctrinally based unawareness because we have a piece of it. We have to really look quite deeply within ourselves to see, “Well, actually do I really think in terms of this type of atman that is asserted by these non-Buddhist schools of India?” It’s very, very interesting to really reflect on that.

This impossible “me” has three characteristics. It’s the whole package. These three characteristics aren’t separate things; they’re interrelated. 

• The first characteristic is that the body is static. Very often, people just translate this word as “permanent,” but that’s a very misleading word, at least in English, because it has two different meanings. One meaning is eternal, and the other meaning is that it never changes. Here we’re only talking about not changing. Buddhism asserts that the self is eternal – no beginning and no end. That’s not the problem. The problem is whether or not it changes from moment to moment. That’s a very important distinction to understand when we hear the word “permanent.” This is the objection – that the self doesn’t change. Our incorrect view is that it’s static.
• The next characteristic is translated by the word “one.” What does one mean? In this context, it means that it is monolithic. Now, we have to understand the philosophical system that this comes from, the Samkhya system. Samkhya asserts that we have primal matter, and primal matter is made up of three constituents. These are called in Sanskrit the triguna; most people know them by the Sanskrit names rajas, sattva and tamas. And so, we have food that is divided into these three, moods that are divided into these three and medicines. It’s very difficult to define these three, but everything is made up of some combination of these. The whole Vedic system and many other later Indian philosophies adopt this. The atman, the self, is totally separate from that and is not made up of these three constituents. The aggregates are made up of all sorts of parts and so on, but the self is not; the body and mind are made up of all sorts of parts, but the self is not. Then, that self is either the size of the universe – this whole later development of atman as Brahma, partless – we’re all one; or in the Nyaya philosophy, it is like a tiny little spark, a monad, partless. That’s the second characteristic: no parts, monolithic.
• The third characteristic, which is really the most important one, is that the “me” can exist separately from the body and mind, that we have to understand correctly. The emphasis is not really that there’s an atman like a soul that flies out of the body and then can go into another body, even if that happens instantaneously. We’re not talking about that. What we’re talking about is the liberated self. What are we aiming for? We are aiming for moksha, liberation, in these non-Buddhist schools. In Buddhism as well, we’re aiming for liberation; there is a self that will exist liberated, free of any body and mind – just by itself – either in some transcendent realm or identical to the whole universe or whatever, but no body and mind; the self can exist by itself. 

This is the doctrinally based coarse impossible “me.” 

A Deluded Outlook Toward a Transitory Network

We have disturbing attitude, which is called – I have a horrible translation for it, but it is, I think, deriving the meaning for the term – a deluded outlook toward a transitory network, or even more precise, toward a perishing network. “Perishing network” is the word that’s used in Tibetan. “Network” is the aggregates, and “perishing” means that the network is perishing in each moment, so which items from the aggregates that comprise the network is constantly changing, each element in it is constantly changing at a different rate, and we have a deluded outlook toward it – we identify them as either being “me” or “mine.” 

The disturbing emotions, we could divide them into disturbing emotions and disturbing attitudes. Even those words in English are not really adequate.

Basically, we have these disturbing factors that are associated with a view or an outlook, which is a way of considering something, and then some disturbing factors that don’t have this association. The ones that don’t have it are:

• desire 
• anger 
• naivety 
• arrogance 
• indecisive wavering about not just what should we have for dinner but about the correct view, basically about cause and effect and about how things exist. 

So, these five. Then, there are five with a view, which means that they have a way of considering the object. The one that is relevant here, with this deluded outlook toward a transitory network, toward our aggregates, is to consider the aggregates: 

• either “me” – so we’re are identical with them; 
• or separate – so they’re “mine.”

In a sense, we conceive of it – just to try to work with it in meditation – as it’s like throwing out the net of “me” and “mine” onto everything that we’re experiencing.

Then, we have grasping for true existence, for instance: 

• I think of this in terms of “mine,” “my camera,” “my notes.” Grasping for true existence interpolates, projects onto it some impossible way of existing conceptually. 
• Unawareness, “I don’t know that that is false” or, “I think it’s true.”

These work together. This deluded outlook is just throwing “me” and “mine” onto things in the aggregates. 

• “Me” is in terms of “me” being identical with the aggregates: “me,” “I’m my body,” and “me,” “I’m my mind.” Or “me” as separate, and “it’s mine.” 
• Either “me” as the controller, so I am in a sense sitting inside here controlling things – controlling the body.
• Or I possess it – I own it, like I have a cow. I possess it; I own it; I can control it. 
• Or I inhabit the body. I live inside here. The atman lives inside “me.” “I’m living inside my head, and – wow, ooh – now I have a body, I have a mind, I have this and that, and I can use it, control it, press the buttons.” It’s like a baby discovering that it has toes and it has this or that, and now it can use them.

These four possibilities: “me,” possessor, controller or inhabitant. Each of these four can be with each of the five aggregates. We get 20 deluded outlooks for the transitory network, and that only occurs with doctrinally based unawareness. This is the first package that we have to refute. It’s quite a package, but something that we need to work with. Actually, it becomes very interesting in terms of “Do I think that there’s some ‘me’ inside my head pushing the buttons that is always staying the same?” Do I think of liberation in terms of “Well, I won’t have the body, I won’t have a mind, I won’t have anything. I’ll be free”?

It’s very interesting, the attitude toward death. Let’s say we don’t believe in rebirth, but we think in terms of “Well, we just go to nothing.” Then, if we really think about it, what is the implication of “I’m dead, now I’m dead. I’m going to be dead forever”? There’s still “me,” isn’t there? This “me” now is a “me” that’s dead, with no body and no mind, to this big frightening nothing. If we analyze, that actually is what is behind this whole thinking that there’s a big nothing after we die and why it’s frightening. If the “me” actually stopped, it wouldn’t be frightening, but we think, “Well then what? Now, I’m dead.” It is not so strange, not so alien to think that there could be a “me” that is separate and continues to exist, static, partless, with no body and no mind. 

We really have to think about it. We can’t refute it unless we actually recognize it, and we can’t recognize it unless we actually look in terms of our own attitudes: do we somehow – maybe not the whole package, but somehow – have this way of regarding ourselves, and on that basis of conceiving ourselves to exist in this way, do we have disturbing emotions, like for instance, now we’re afraid of death because we’re going to be a nothing?

Think about that a little bit, so that we recognize this first level of the object to be refuted. We have to refute that first before we can go onto the next level. To think about it, we have to remind ourselves of the characteristics: 

• Never changing
• Partless
• Can exist by itself without a body and mind when it’s liberated or dead
• “Me” is just coming into this body and mind and either identical with it or possessing it, controlling and using it, and living inside, but it wants to get out. “I want to get out of my body,” like somebody with cancer, “I just want to get out of this suffering body and be dead already.” That is this doctrinally based disturbing emotion, isn’t it?

[Meditation]

When you were speaking about atman, did the term atman itself imply certain constancy and self-existence?

No, not really. I mean the word atman is translated as the word “self,” and Buddhism uses that term for the conventional self – it’s a synonym. The problem isn’t really atman; the problem is the assertion of how that atman exists, and the different Indian systems asserted it differently. Within those three characteristics that I mentioned:

• The Samkhya School says that atman is like a passive consciousness, so when it is liberated, it itself is an awareness without an object, which of course, Buddhism says is impossible. 
• The Nyaya and Vaisheshika Schools say that the atman has no consciousness whatsoever. The self comes in and sort of plugs into a brain and mind and uses that, and when it is liberated, it doesn’t know anything. 

There are variants. Samkhya says the atman is just passive consciousness, but it has to plug into a body and a mind in order to be aware of specific objects; the other one says that it doesn’t have any consciousness, and it still has to plug into a body and mind in order to know things.

These are interesting points of view, actually, to think, “What are the characteristics that I think of ‘me’ and the relationship of ‘me’ and my mind, the brain?” For example, “Use your mind to try and figure it out, use your brain.” Is that a separate “me”? Does that “me” have any consciousness at all? Is it using the brain or the mind as its possession? Is it sitting inside our head, inside our mind, as the inhabitant living there? Interesting, isn’t it?