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The Buddha
Know all things to be like this:
A mirage, a cloud castle,
A dream, an apparition,
Without essence, but with qualities that can be seen.
Know all things to be like this:
As the moon in a bright sky
In some clear lake reflected,
Though to that lake the moon has never moved.
Know all things to be like this:
As an echo that derives
From music, sounds, and weeping,
Yet in that echo is no melody.
Know all things to be like this:
As a magician makes illusions
Of horses, oxen, carts and other things,
Nothing is as it appears.
Samadhi Raja Sutra
Though one should conquer a thousand times a thousand men in battle, he who conquers his own self, is the greatest of all conquerers.
Self-conquest is, indeed, far greater than the conquest of all other folks.
Dhammapada v. 103, 104
"Monks, we who look at the whole and not just the part, know that we too are systems of interdependence, of feelings, perceptions, thoughts, and consciousness all interconnected. Investigating in this way, we come to realize that there is no me or mine in any one part, just as a sound does not belong to any one part of the lute."
Samyutta Nikaya, from "Buddha Speaks"
Once there was a layman who came to Ajahn Chah and asked him who Ajahn Chah was. Ajahn Chah, seeing that the spiritual development of the individual was not very advanced, pointed to himself and said, This, this is Ajahn Chah.
Once there was a layman who came to Ajahn Chah and asked him who Ajahn Chah was. Ajahn Chah, seeing that the questioners capacity to understand the Dhamma was higher, Ajahn Chah answered by saying Ajahn Chah? There is NO Ajahn Chah!
A visiting Zen student asked Ajahn Chah, "How old are you? Do you live here all year round?"
"I live nowhere, he replied. There is no place you can find me. I have no age. To have age, you must exist, and to think you exist is already a problem. Don't make problems, then the world has none either. Don't make a self. There's nothing more to say."
Psychologists talk about people who are co-dependent because they don't have a sense of self. What psychologists mean when they say a person has no sense of self is very different from what the Buddha meant by no-self or selflessness. People with psychological problems actually have a very strong sense of self in the Buddhist sense, although they may not in the psychological sense of the word. Psychologically, they don't see themselves as efficacious individuals in the world, but they still have a very strong sense of "I": "I am worthless." When somebody criticizes them, they don't like it. They get into co-dependent relationships to protect or to please this "I." When they fall into self-pity, their sense of an inherently existent "I" is very strong. Thus they still have self-grasping even though they lack a psychologically healthy sense of self.
Buddhism recognizes two kinds of sense of self. There's one sense of self that is healthy and necessary to be efficacious on the path. The object of this sense of self is the conventionally existent "I." The other sense of self grasps at an inherently existent self that never has and never will exist. Within Buddhism, when we talk about realizing emptiness, we're negating the false self, this self that appears inherently existent to us.
Thubten Chodron from Cultivating a Compassionate Heart: The Yoga Method of Chenrezig
Tantric practitioners should also have made progress in meditation on emptiness. Meditation on emptiness is the heart of the Buddhist path in both sutra and tantra. Although compassion is said to be the basis of practice, it is basic in the sense of being one's
motivation; meditation on emptiness is the chief practice of Buddhism because it actualizes one's compassionate intent by removing all obstructions to Buddhahood. All the practices of method, both in sutra and tantra, are done specifically in order to enhance the wisdom consciousness that realizes emptiness, as Santideva's 'Engaging in the Bodhisattva Deeds' says:
"The Subduer said that all these
Branches are for the sake of wisdom."
Daniel Cozort, 'Highest Yoga Tantra'
Surrender means surrendering who you are not, so that who you really are may emerge.
You are not what you think, you are not what you believe, you are not what you like or dislike.
Those are the adopted filters which speak through you.
Yogi Amrit Desai
If one conceives of 'self', then one must also conceive of 'other'. Attachment and aversion arise as a result of these two conceptions-
of self and other. As a result of relationships accompanied by feelings of attachment and aversion, all faults are generated. It should be understood that the root of all those faults is this view- that the transitory aggregation called I and mine has an inherent existence."
Khenchen Konchog Gyaltshen, from the Pramanavarttika, quoted in 'Garland of Mahamudra Practices'
What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.
Thomas Merton
