Comment to 'Anatta: The Heart of Buddhism'
  • Its interesting how they use the alternate western concept of ego so easily.

    Definitely much common ground and so telling it is that Buddhism really is 'form' of yoga, yet how much it changed with the insertion of essential atheism. 

    Also, its an interesting perspective. The idea that meditators who are aware of the spiritual self are viewed as not being able to 'accept' no self.

    I think its quite difficult to accept someone else's experience as one's own - when that is not the reality of what's happening in one's own personal experience.  For one who knows oneself as the spiritual self would have to imagine, or pretend, to experience a no self situation. 

    Like a person who's never seen the ocean and then they do. 

    Once they see it they know its there and cannot dismiss it any longer as hearsay that it exists. But sure, one could close their eyes and imagine the world without the ocean, even though its still there. 

    Juxtaposed to this I will contradict myself by thinking that on the other hand, a person with no feeling of the self (no experience of the ocean) should benefit from imagining it. It's just an opinion. But I don't hold the opinion that a person who knows the self should imagine its non existence. I don't think that's the direction toward enlightenment. Again, my opinion. 

     

    • Erinn Earth commented:

       For one who knows oneself as the spiritual self would have to imagine, or pretend, to experience a no self situation.

      Juxtaposed to this I will contradict myself by thinking that on the other hand, a person with no feeling of the self (no experience of the ocean) should benefit from imagining it. 

       When I reach emptiness and knowing, there really is no option to imagine a self or try to feel out a self.  It would be a pretense for me as well.  Perhaps one's sense of identity, however it evolved, determines which spiritual path one will follow with confidence, resolve and success. Good luck!