What Does "Non-self" Mean in Buddhism?
A Hopefully Accessible Explainer
Explained Conceptually
To explain non-self, one must do so with the proper context. Let’s start with my paraphrased version of the Buddha’s first teaching:
All beings are conditioned to suffer.
The root cause of suffering is clinging.
We can end our suffering by letting go of clinging.
The way to let go of clinging is by following the Eightfold Path.
These points above are known as the Four Noble Truths (I will gloss over the Eightfold Path for now as it deserves its own blog post). So as the Buddha stated, the key to ending our suffering is by letting go of clinging. So what is clinging? Clinging refers to the felt sense of wanting to get the things we currently do not have and wanting to keep the things we currently do have.
We must also explain the idea of self. When the Buddha talked about the self, he usually talked about it in the context of “I-making” and “my-making.” These refer to the mental process of us defining all things through this dualistic lens either being me/mine or not being me/mine. For example, we may notice thoughts like “I am my body, I am an American, this my family, this is my property,” etc.
In this context, we can think of non-self as the process of gradually feeling less clinging to the things that we previously, maybe very strongly, identified with. And as we loosen this clinging, we can gradually reduce our suffering as well.
Explained Experientially
As I have gradually deepened my understanding of non-self, I have noticed my mind incline towards less suffering in the following ways. Please note that I am still fairly new to the path (only around a year in), so I still have a long way to go in cultivating a more comprehensive understanding of non-self.
Less Identification
I now feel far less identified with things that I used to very strongly identify with. For example, as a 5’ 5” man based in New York City, I used to feel very insecure about my height. For context, the average height of men in NYC is 5’10”. I would regularly be stressed about how all the cards were stacked against me, especially in a dating context, because women, on average, seem to prefer taller men. I remember also frequenting the r/short subreddit, where I would commiserate with my fellow short humans.
What really drove the nail in the coffin was sometimes seeing people on the subreddit who were a few inches taller than me still complaining about how short they were. If even they don’t have a chance, then what hope do I have? I strongly believed that because I was short, I was doomed to be single forever, and if I couldn’t get a girlfriend, then I was doomed to die alone, so I would never be truly happy. These were the kinds of stories I would tell myself and fully believe.
It feels so fascinating to reminisce about some of the mental states that used to be present in my mind. Regardless, I am grateful to say that now, around a year later, I rarely, if ever, think about my height at all. After making some progress on the path, I have come to more clearly see that happiness is something that does come from within and that while things like our height, weight, wealth, job, love life, etc., can be things that pull our attention away from this inner happiness, they can never extinguish it.
Less Value Judgements
Another way non-self has helped reduce my suffering is by allowing me to feel like events in my life are not inherently good or bad. The channel Pursuit of Wonder has a great six-minute YouTube video explaining this concept. I encourage you to watch it:
In essence, this is tied to this other idea known as emptiness. Emptiness states that no thing is inherently anything. This is best exemplified by sayings like one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, or that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I was very grateful to have an embodied understanding of this concept when I was let go from my job earlier this month. Admittedly, the news was not so surprising as I was on a performance improvement plan (PIP) for two months prior (for those of you unaware, PIPs are sometimes used as a formality before letting someone go as opposed to being a plan of action to help an employee improve their performance). Regardless, I did feel quite devastated. While I cannot say I was deeply passionate about my last job, I can say it was a rather good job that I was very grateful to have had.
Anyway, it felt beautiful to notice how, despite this troubling news, I have felt mostly peaceful. There have even been times when I have felt quite optimistic about the future. I think about how this challenging life event has the potential to be looked back upon as a turning point that led to greater things.
I will not deny that there have been times when I have felt some stress about the uncertainty of the future. But overall, I would say that I see this event as largely neutral. I think I’ll need to wait a few years to see how my life unfolds to get a true sense of whether this event resulted in my life going in a more skillful or less skillful direction. Admittedly, even at that point, I cannot know for sure.
Less Separation
Let’s say we take this idea of emptiness a step further. As I mentioned earlier, no thing is inherently anything; this applies not only to objects and events but also to living beings. Furthermore, this not only applies in terms of value judgments (pleasant, neutral, unpleasant) but also concepts generally. What do I mean by this?
Let’s take a dog, for example. What exactly is a dog? A dog is just a label that we have given to a certain group of animals that fit a certain set of criteria. If there were no humans, there would be no concept of dogs. Obviously, the subset of animals that the label dog refers to would still exist, but the concept itself would not. The concept only exists in our minds.
Now let’s take this another step further: Humans. The idea of emptiness can be used to understand ourselves as well. These labels we give ourselves of Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jew, and Muslim are all concepts that exist only in our minds. While these labels can be a great source of community, belonging, and identity, they also, by definition, are a source of separation. And it is with this foundation of separation that we can fuel narratives of “us” vs. “them” and justify inflicting large amounts of suffering to our fellow humans.
While I have previously heard these ideas of “everything is connected” and “we’re all one,” I just viewed them as something a hippie would say while they’re high. I never realized that this could be a more accurate picture of reality.
This past year was likely one of the most difficult years of my life in terms of my mental health. During this time, I was quite desperate in searching for and trying out a variety of healing modalities. One of the methods I tried was a silent meditation retreat.
During a retreat, one alternates between sitting and walking meditation all day. The main breaks from meditation are meals and a daily lecture about Buddhist teachings. Also, the entire retreat is in silence, meaning there is no talking outside of asking teachers questions. They also firmly recommend not reading, writing, using electronics, or even looking at others. Retreats can be as short as half a day or as long as months or years. So far, the longest retreat I have done is a week, though I hope to someday do a three-month retreat.
I found my retreats very helpful, and during one of them, I specifically went in with the intention of gaining a deeper understanding of non-self. During that retreat, I had this peculiar yet powerful insight of seeing all of life as if it were one of those facial cleanser bottles with those exfoliating beads.
Just as a bottle of facial cleanser with beads has them suspended in these somewhat random clusters, some relatively dense while others rather sparse, so too is all of existence. I have come to see that the whole universe is in many ways a large collection of particles that happens to be more densely clustered in certain patterns in some areas and more loosely clustered in different patterns in other areas. These patterns and clusters, by themselves, are completely neutral without any concepts. It is we humans, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse, who decide to add labels to these patterns. And it is when we take these concepts too seriously and identify with them too strongly that we suffer.
It feels beautiful to have a deeper, more embodied sense of the interconnectedness of all existence. I think it has made me a kinder person than before, and I hope that as I deepen my understanding of this idea, my mind’s inclination toward kindness will also continue to deepen. It’s also pretty cool how the most mundane things can teach us fundamental features of the universe.
Knowledge vs. Wisdom
And—thus is my thought, oh exalted one,—nobody will obtain salvation by means of teachings! You will not be able to convey and say to anybody, oh venerable one, in words and through teachings what has happened to you in the hour of enlightenment! The teachings of the enlightened Buddha contain much, it teaches many to live righteously, to avoid evil. But there is one thing which these so clear, these so venerable teachings do not contain: they do not contain the mystery of what the exalted one has experienced for himself, he alone among hundreds of thousands.
Now that I have finished sharing my thoughts on non-self, I would like to distinguish between knowledge and wisdom. The excerpt above is from the amazing novel Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. In this moment, our protagonist, Siddhartha, is having a conversation with the Buddha named Gotama. By the way, “Buddha” is a title meaning “the awakened one.”
Side note: Some of you may know that the real-life Buddha’s name was Siddhartha Gautama, so this may be somewhat confusing. To clarify, in the novel, the novel version of Siddhartha is merely someone completely unrelated to the novel version or real-life Buddha while the novel version of the Buddha is based on the real-life Buddha.
In this quote, Siddhartha is in essence saying that while he fully agrees with the Buddha’s teachings, he does not wish to become his follower. This is because no matter how amazing the teachings may be, they are, at the end of the day, just that, teachings, i.e., knowledge. What Siddhartha says he really wants is the direct experience that those teachings spring from, i.e., wisdom.
To further drive the point home, imagine you want to learn a new skill, let’s say, how to successfully run a business. To learn this new skill, one can watch YouTube tutorials, read books, hire a coach, or even go to business school. All of these things can be quite valuable, but can only impart knowledge. Only through the direct experience of starting a business and trying to run it can one accrue the wisdom of how to run a business successfully.
So where am I going with all this? I believe you should see this post and anything outside your direct experience as “knowledge.” To understand non-self (or anything else in life) more deeply, I encourage you to consider testing the idea for yourself. In the context of Buddhist ideas like non-self, the best lab would be meditation (in particular, a silent retreat!). The Buddha himself said not to take anything he or others say at face value and instead determine for yourself through your own contemplation what is and is not true1.
Conclusion and an Invitation
Thank you for reading my blog! Feel free to let me know any comments, questions, or feedback you have! I am very new to blogging, so any input you have would be greatly appreciated 😊.
Although I mentioned earlier that direct experience is best, that does not mean knowledge does not help! With that in mind, I invite you to schedule a free meditation teaching session with me on Calendly! 😄 To be clear, I am not currently a teacher! As mentioned before, I am fairly new to the path, with only around a year of focused practice. Regardless, I can provide helpful guidance for people who consider themselves absolute beginners.
Also, as I would like to become a proper teacher someday, I see these sessions as an opportunity for me to learn how to teach. As such, these sessions will be free for the foreseeable future. I want to ensure that I have much more experience before switching to a donation-based (Dana) or sliding-scale model later on.
Of course, if you are looking for a more experienced teacher, I encourage you to do that! I personally had a teacher I met with once a week for about a year to help guide me through my practice, and I can say I found it immensely beneficial.
Anyway, thank you again for reading my blog and considering my invitation! Sending metta ❤️.
From the Kalama Sutta of the Pali Canon: “Now, Kalamas, don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, ‘This contemplative is our teacher.’ When you know for yourselves that, ‘These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness’ — then you should enter & remain in them.”