Apply the logic of dependent origination to analyse the nature of the self.
Discover how a more dynamic understanding of the nature of the self can help you let go of destructive emotions and develop greater sense of happiness and well-being.
1. Introduction
What is the nature of the “self”? Here, we use the logic of Dependent Origination to look at our body and mind and analyse the way perception of our “self” is construed. Using a traditional Buddhist outline, the body-mind complex is divided into five separate factors, or aggregates. The first is the body (or form), while the other four (feeling, discrimination, volition, and consciousness) refer to the different layers of the mind.
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Meditation Outline
Grounding
Sit in your favourite meditation posture, either cross-legged on the floor or sitting on a chair with a straight spine. You can keep your eyes half-open or closed, and your hands in your lap or on your knees.
Focus on your breath for one minute to stabilise the mind, by paying attention to your nostrils or abdomen.
If your mind wanders, bring your attention back to the breath.
Recall a time where you experienced a strong afflictive emotion, for example a sense of injustice arising from being strongly or falsely criticised. Meditate for one minute on how you experienced yourself at that time.
Body form
Bring that sense of the indignant, kind of self-righteous self into the corner of your mind and start to examine and search for that self among the different gross parts of your body, from the feet, legs, kidneys and brain.
Investigate for one minute quietly whether you are your brain or any other gross parts of your body.
Go further, deeper to the cellular level and examine whether you can find a self in any of the cells of your brain and body.
Further down to the atomic level, probe whether there is a self in each atomic particle which make up your body gross parts.
Search for the self among your body parts and ask whether you are any one of them or the collection of all of them?
Mind
Bring that sense of the indignant, kind of self-righteous self into the corner of your mind and start to search for a separate self in the mind.
Probe the various parts of the mind which respond to the sensory and mental phenomena and whether there is a self in any of them. Meditate for one minute.
Feeling
Now start to search for a separate self in each of the feelings which arise.
Further investigate the feelings and analyse whether the feeling arose in response to a sensory or mental event. Investigate whether you are each moment of a feeling or all of them combined.
Watch the feeling grow, sustain and then, disappear. Dissect the sub moments infinitely into smaller moments of a feeling and probe for a self in each of them for one minute.
Perception
Now search for a separate self in the mental factor, perception.
Investigate if there is a self among the labels the mind gives to reality for one minute.
Probe all the sensory experiences associated with the label and see if you are your perception, the mind’s ability to interpret a multitude of different sensory experiences as a single object.
Volition or mental formation
Then focus on other mental experiences, such as the mental formation of jealousy or pride or love or compassion or even democracy or justice.
Give yourself a moment to probe any of your mental experiences and probe if the self can be found in any of them for a few moments
Awareness
Finally, search for a separate self in the consciousness or mental experience which is separate from other mental factors.
Allow your attention move away from the contents of your mental experience to the container of your mental experience. Probe the qualities of your mind, of your consciousness: luminosity, darkness, clarity, and spaciousness, and pay attention to where thoughts and feelings emerge from and where they dissolve back to. Can you divide consciousness down to its fundamental constituents?
Investigate whether you find a self within any of these moments of consciousness.
Causes
Probe all elements that made your body as well as the external elements in the form of intellectual influences from family, friends, and society, for instance.
Trace your body back further and dissect it through the lenses of evolution, the origin of life on earth, and the big bang and investigate the role of the mind and labels in the construction of the self
Release all the complex analysis, concepts and even non conceptual understanding of yourself which transcends the ego, labels and any part of you or the collection of parts. Relax into the experience and feeling of interdependence to know yourself as you truly are. Meditate for one minute.
Concluding
Pull back and zoom back to your meditation posture and the breath.
Make an aspiration to continue seeing yourself this way, as a much more alive, changing and interdependent being.
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