Comment to 'No Permanent Self'
  • The proof is certainly hard to come by. What the monk Jayasara states may seem brash or sarcastic but it is representative of the Buddhas teachings throughout the Pali Canon. Unenlightened simply means to be unawake. Specifically it means to not have attained the first path attainment of stream entry (sotapanna). But I can understand how his phrasing would be taken as derogatory. The insight into anatta is really significant because without it, one cannot get the stream entry. Thanks for all the comments.smile

    • Perhaps inSelf Yoga’s approach to this may be explained using the buddhist vocabulary like this:

      Far from being the solid center of experience, a sense of self is created moment by moment, by means of an instinctive identification with aspects of experience — our body, feelings, perceptions, thoughts, emotions, sense-consciousness. But that flickering sense of self surrounds a transcendent center of experience which itself radiates a constant stream of neutral awareness-consciousness, and which senses the presented moment to moment sense of self.