THE SELF & NOT-SELF STRATEGIES

THE SELF & NOT-SELF STRATEGIES

Sometimes you hear people treating your sense of self as an obvious fallacy that causes nothing but harm and stress. If that were the case, it wouldn't take much to let go of it, seeing how obviously harmful it is. But hey, it's part of your strategy for happiness. It has its gratifications. You've got to admit its good side.

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Still, there comes a point where you have to look at its drawbacks, its limitations. Even your most skillful strategies for happiness at some point have to get dropped. So the Buddha gives you the positive teachings on nibbana to encourage you to let go of those things, even those skillful strategies, when the time comes. 

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At the same time, he refuses to say whether there's going to be 'you" in there, or no 'you" in there. He wants you to develop the attitude that, at this stage, your sense of self is irrelevant to whether you're going to be happy. But he's not saying that you don't exist.

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When asked point blank if there was a self or there was no self, he refused to answer, saying that if you hold to the idea that there is a self you get stuck in eternalism, which blocks the practice: You hold on to certain things as being the eternal you and you'll never be able to let them go. If you develop the idea that there is no self, that's annihilationism, which blocks the practice as well: Either you fear being annihilated or you have a neurotic desire to want to be annihilated, neither of which is helpful.

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So there comes a point where you have to put issues of self and not-self aside, and just look at where there's stress, and what activities are causing the stress, and how to stop them. That's why the teachings on the four noble truths trump every other teaching. It's how the teachings on developing a skillful self are strategies, and the teachings on not-self are strategies as well. 

The teachings on nibbana are strategies, too. Nibbana won't get you to nibbana, but the desire to get there will.

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So learn to use these strategies to overcome your most blatant and harmful addictions, and then your more subtle ones, until you finally reach what the Buddha called the ultimate happiness--nibbanam paramam sukham--where you can put all your addictions, all your strategies, aside..."

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Excerpt from "Levels of Addiction"

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Read the full article here:

http://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writings/CrossIndexed/Published/Meditation4/061111(LF)%20Levels%20of%20Addiction.doc

19th November, 2022