Like many practitioners, I have always found the teachings about anatta—or
selflessness—hard to fathom. And the experience of anatta has always seemed
elusive to me. (If there’s no self, then who’s writing this sentence?)
So last fall, when I saw that Narayan Liebenson Grady’s “old yogis”
practice group at CIMC was about to take on the subject, I was intrigued.
The group, which has been meeting since 1994, is for people who have been practicing for three years or more, and who have some retreat experience along with a daily practice. Each weekly meeting includes meditation practice and discussion, either with the entire group or in small groups. And the discussion is usually about the previous week’s “homework.” These homework assignments are a key component of the curriculum.
Under Narayan’s guidance, the group has examined a variety of Buddhist teachings, including the Ten Paramis, the Noble Eight-Fold Path, the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, and the Four Brahma Viharas. And as a more-or-less regular attendee, I’ve benefited from most of them. But what about anatta? Unlike these other topics, there’s no list associated with anatta Ð no built-in structure. Where would Narayan go with it? How could we spend a whole year on it? I was eager to find out.
What I came to see during the course of the year was that anatta is not quite as mysterious as I had imagined it to be. Narayan’s talks and homework assignments encouraged us to experience self/selflessness in practical terms, in the context of our daily lives—not as a lofty, esoteric teaching reserved for the meditation hall. For example, one assignment was to notice how often we compare ourselves to others, especially at work and in our families. Doing this exercise let me see how my sense of self is constantly shifting. First I’d be “better than,” then “worse than,” then “equal to.” Then back to “worse than.” But if the self were really so solid, how could I hold such differing and often contradictory views of it? Another related assignment was to be aware of the many ways we think of ourselves—“I am an anxious person,” “I am an angry person,” “I am a good person,” “I am a bad person,”—and to see how these thoughts and self-images change from day to day, or even from moment to moment.
By bringing these assignments to mind at least from time to time during the day, I was able to get a clearer sense of how fluid the self is. In the process, I also realized that anatta is really nothing special, that our various “selves” are continuously arising and passing away, and that in any given day, we have moments of anatta and moments of “selfing.” At the same time, I could feel the burden of self, and see how clinging to any sense of self —even a highly positive one—leads only to suffering. Of course, whatever insights I may have had were reinforced by sharing them with the group and by listening to others’ experiences—as well as to Narayan’s comments and feedback.
So do I fully understand anatta? Not by a long shot. But it does seem more
accessible than it did a year ago. In fact, participating in the class has helped
me see that it’s not something to be attained in the distant future. It’s
right here, all the time. And fortunately, the topic has proven to be such a
rich one that the “old yogis,” along with Narayan, will be exploring
it for another year.