People Seek No-Self Because They Do Not Understand It
Among people who say they study or practice Buddhism, some seek a “state of no-self.” They imagine a separate mental state in which the self has completely disappeared, with neither ego nor greed, anger, and ignorance, and with no disturbance under any circumstances. They think this is the state attained by a Buddha. Yet I want to make one thing clear from the outset: if you understood no-self, you would not desire such a no-self. Trying to become no-self shows that you do not understand what Buddhism means by the term.
Two different things that sound the same have been mixed together here. One is the no-self that Buddhism explains through dependent arising and impermanence. The other is a flawless mental state fabricated in people’s imagination. They are written with the same word, but they mean entirely different things. Unless we make this distinction, we will claim to explain no-self while continuing to pursue its exact opposite.
I am already without an independent self and already dependently arisen. Yet because I imagine no-self as a special state, I try to become no-self all over again.
The Imagination Created by Turning Nirvana into an Unknowable State
We say that the Buddha was liberated and entered nirvana. Nirvana is explained as a fire going out or becoming quiet. The problem begins when people hear this and start speculating about what kind of “state” it must have been. Speculation is conjecture and imagination. When that imagination is repeatedly passed on without checking whether it is true, it becomes a delusion.
After the Buddha’s death, people portrayed liberation as perfect immovability: a state in which the ego had vanished completely and not the slightest trace of greed, anger, or ignorance remained. By continually elevating the Buddha into something divine, they transformed him into an ideal being beyond humanity. Such imaginings accumulated in scriptures, the sayings of patriarchs, and the interpretations of later Buddhists, hardening over 2,600 years. Each generation added its own picture of what a Buddha “must be.”
I am not speaking only about devotional believers who ask the Buddha for blessings. Even people who practice in order to become Buddhas first construct an image of the Buddha in their minds. They imagine someone utterly unmoved by life and death, someone who would cut off an arm without attachment if asked. But this is their imagination, combined with the imaginations inherited from earlier generations of Buddhists.
Taking perfect immovability to be Buddhahood is not the result of understanding the Buddha. It is the result of filling what we do not know with our own imagination.
Impermanence Follows from Dependent Arising, and No-Self Becomes Visible Through Impermanence
To understand what Buddhism actually means by no-self, we must begin with dependent arising. Nothing in this world suddenly appears without causes or relations. Nor does something vanish without any connection to anything else. Everything appears through conditions, disappears through conditions, and changes within countless relations.
Consider a rock. It receives wind, waves, and sunlight; it is brushed by people and struck by hammers. Within all these conditions it wears away and breaks apart. It becomes powder and sand, then changes into something else. If it received no outside influence and had no relation to anything, perhaps it would last forever. But no such rock exists. Everything changes because everything gives and receives influences. This is impermanence.
Dependent arising and impermanence are not two separate truths. They name the same reality from different sides: because things arise and vanish within relations, they cannot remain forever. No-self appears at precisely this point, because no independent and unchanging “thing” exists apart from everything else.
Because something arises through conditions, it does not remain forever; because it does not remain forever, there is no independent and unchanging self to be found in it.
The “Self” in No-Self Is Not Limited to the Human Ego
People often understand the “self” in no-self only as the ego inside a person’s mind. But here “self” applies not only to the human “I,” but also to this thing called a rock, this thing called a pen, and this thing called a finger. The question is whether there is an independent, unchanging substance that exists alone, receives no influence, and remains the same over time.
Looking at the rock before us, we recognize it as “a rock.” In reality, however, we have arbitrarily cut one portion out of an ongoing process within a network of temporal and spatial relations and given it that name. We have not perceived its total reality. The same is true of a pen. We isolate a portion of space and time and recognize it as one object, while the actual pen keeps changing and remains connected to other things. The person we recognize as “I” is no different.
Dependent arising, impermanence, and no-self therefore do not refer to three separate worlds. We call flowing reality dependent arising when we focus on how it arises within relations, impermanence when we focus on how it never remains constant, and no-self when we focus on the absence of an independent and unchanging thing. They are three faces of the same reality.
No-self is not a command to “erase yourself.” It explains that our perception, which cuts people and objects into independent, unchanging things, is not their total reality.
Why Try to Become Dependently Arisen When You Already Are?
I am already dependently arisen, impermanent, and without an independent self. If I nevertheless try to become no-self, the very statement is contradictory. The contradiction appears because I see only the written term and imagine a mental state in which the self and ego have vanished, a transcendent state reached by a Buddha. No-self is another name for a dependently arisen world, not a special condition acquired at the end of practice.
Nevertheless, many Buddhists imagine an absolute state with no greed, anger, or ignorance, utterly quiet like a completely extinguished fire and unaffected by any condition. They believe that reaching it is Buddhism. Yet that goal is the exact opposite of dependent arising and impermanence. How can it be consistent with dependent arising to wish for a mind that receives no influence from the body, environment, or relationships?
When a human being who exists in relationships tries to acquire a mind unrelated to anything, that person is not pursuing no-self but an enduring substance that is its opposite.
We Must Leave Not Only This Shore but the Other Shore
Buddhism tells us to leave both this shore and the other shore. It has also been translated as leaving both this and that, or this world and the other world. We must leave both sides as a snake sheds its skin. If this shore is our ordinary life submerged in desire, ignorance, personal standards, and attachment, the reason to leave it is clear. We must escape the delusion of living without knowing why we suffer while taking the wrong things as joy.
But we must also abandon the search for a flawless state of immovability, wisdom, absolute purity, and silence on the opposite shore. If we become captivated by transcendent desire in the name of escaping worldly desire, we have merely left one skin and crawled into another. Understanding dependent arising frees us both from worldly attachment and from the desire to find a transcendent other shore.
If we discard only the desires of this shore while desiring a flawless other shore, we have not yet shed our skin. Buddhism tells us to leave both.
Absolute Silence and Immovability Are Illusions Made by Language
Some practitioners claim to remain the same even in deep sleep or to have reached a state of no-self. Yet all we can experience and verify are relative quiet and relative steadiness. When we leave a noisy place, somewhere else feels quieter. We know brightness after seeing something darker. Quiet and brightness always appear through comparison.
Absolute brightness, absolute silence, and absolute immovability do not exist in this world. If a human being entered such a condition, we might say that person had become a rock, but even a rock receives countless influences. Noisy and quiet, dirty and clean, good and evil are approximate and relative divisions made by human beings for convenience. If we reify those words and seek absolute purity or flawless nirvana, we turn a linguistic illusion into the goal of practice.
If someone teaches such a state as Buddhahood and torments the people around them, we should get away from that person. Speaking of no-self, sameness in sleep, and sameness in life and death while knowing neither oneself nor one’s wounds is not wisdom. Demanding that others believe in a perfect state is delusion disguised as Buddhism.
A Buddha is not an absolute state. Buddhahood is closer to a way of life that continually breaks one’s delusions through dependent-arising thought.
A Buddha and a Person Becoming a Buddha Do the Same Work
What a Buddha does and what a person trying to become a Buddha must do are in fact the same. Both must examine their actions, thoughts, and minds through dependent arising and break their delusions. The difference is that a Buddha is a little more familiar with this work. Familiarity with impermanence and no-self allows that person to release misplaced attachments and shatter delusions somewhat sooner.
You do not become a Buddha by dreaming of a flawless state, insisting that even a mosquito must never be killed, claiming that the mind must remain the same in life and death, or treating incomprehensible questions and answers as evidence of Buddhahood. When people lack the wisdom to explain anything through dependent arising and do not even know what they themselves know, they simply demand belief from others.
What matters is whether I can turn back and examine my own mind, actions, concepts, standards, and imagination. The experience of one learned view suddenly shattering—the moment I release one attachment and realize, “I was profoundly deluded”—is the first step into the stream of awakening.
The first experience of awakening is not the acquisition of a new mystery. It is the shattering of one delusion that I had held to be truth.
Liberation Is the Continued Breaking of My Own Delusions
We must be able to look back and say, “I am impermanent, yet I tried not to be. I have no independent self, yet I desired to become no-self. I am dependently arisen, yet I tried to become unaffected by anything.” Whether a statement comes from Rajneesh, another mystic, an old patriarch, or a Buddhist text, we must examine for ourselves whether it accords with dependent arising, impermanence, and no-self. Believing something because it is old or authoritative merely makes us inherit someone else’s delusion instead of breaking our own.
Becoming a Buddha is ultimately the experience of shattering my own delusions. Liberation is the moment I step out of a delusion, and a Buddha’s life is one in which that release continues. I must examine through dependent arising everything I think I know, every thought that torments me, every immediate task, and every problem in my life. The experience of breaking one delusion helps me break the next, and that is how I finally enter the stream of awakening.
The standard is not whether other people say something, whether it is written in a book, or whether someone on YouTube explains it at great length. The standard is whether I can think through dependent arising, whether I can see everything about myself through impermanence and no-self, and whether I can ask, “Is that really so?” Without turning back to examine myself and breaking my own imagination and views, I cannot become a Buddha.
Liberation is not arriving at a perfect state. It is the continued process of escaping my delusions through dependent-arising thought in the midst of life.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.