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Last time, we delved deeply into the anatomy of the self. We examined its internal structure. We talked about normal, ordinary human experience, the entire spectrum that makes up what a human being experiences.

When we started looking more closely at what human experience usually involves, we began talking about the skandhas as the component parts of this spectrum of experience. Then, we talked in considerable detail about each skandha individually: what they include, what they refer to, and how they are connected.

We discussed the five skandhas:

• Form (the body)
• Feelings/sensations
• Perception
• Mental formations, volitions, or habitual tendencies
• Consciousness

However, it got quite complicated when we reached the fourth skandha (samskara), and when talked about consciousness. These realms aren’t that easy to navigate.

A Quick Summary of the Five Skandhas

So, let’s briefly summarize. The body, feelings, and perception are the “simple” skandhas, if I may put it that way. However, the volition or samskara skandha is very complex. We said it consists of useful, unhelpful, and neutral mental events, as well as those present in every moment of consciousness and those that arise only with specific objects of consciousness. These five types of events can be further broken down. We then talked about why some are positive (i.e., useful) and some are unhelpful or neutral.

Then we moved on to consciousness. We said that Buddhism usually speaks of eight consciousnesses. Not because there are literally eight different consciousnesses, but because there are eight functions or modes in which consciousness expresses itself, eight ways it operates. We then talked about the six senses, six sense objects, and their six corresponding consciousnesses. These make up the eighteen dhatus or “elements.”

The first five consciousnesses are the consciousnesses of what the senses present to us, and the sixth consciousness is the mental consciousness. Through it, we come into contact with thoughts, ideas, and all events of a mental nature. We then mentioned that there is also a seventh, or “ego-consciousness,” and an eighth, or “storehouse consciousness.”

A Dynamic, Not Static, Picture

All of this we’ve listed so far is essential if we want to understand the way the mind functions. It’s necessary to analyze your own experience from this perspective. But you should understand that everything I’ve talked about is just a cross-section of human experience and how it arises. The picture of experience it gives is a static one.

Whenever we face a static picture, there’s a danger of not understanding what’s really going on and failing to grasp the dynamic process of what we’re discussing. So, we must be careful not to fall into the false thinking that the skandhas compartmentalize experience into separate drawers.

Buddhism presents us with an incredibly dynamic picture of the human mind and the way it perceives reality. There is nothing static in our experience. It is incredibly dynamic. We can pause the movement for a moment and say, “Aha, this is about the form skandha, this is about the feeling skandha, this is about the mental formations skandha,” and so on. However, everything is in constant motion.

Our senses are constantly open. With our eyes we see shapes and colors, with our ears we hear sounds, with our body we touch, with our nose we smell, with our tongue we taste. The senses are always active. They are constantly in contact with their objects, and the consequence of this contact is that consciousness continuously arises. One moment it’s consciousness of the heard, the next of the tasted, then of the touched, then of the seen, and so on. Simultaneously, we are aware of our mental contents, thoughts, and feelings. We remember events from the past, we plan for the future. We think about what we have just seen, heard, and touched. Our body and mind find themselves from moment to moment in an incredibly dynamic situation.

The Organizing Principle: The “I”

If we try to understand what is happening and how, we can divide the entire spectrum of experience can into certain parts.

Separating experience in this way, we arrive at five skandhas, which are composite, not entities, not unchanging components of the spectrum. That’s why they are called ‘heaps’ or aggregates of events. We said these parts are, first, the body and all the physicality we witness. Then, feelings that arise due to the interaction that occurs – pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral feeling. Then, of course, we perceive. By perceiving, we recognise what we are perceiving. Furthermore, from this, certain volitions arise. And we are aware of all of this.

And throughout it all, it seems to us that there is a bearer of all these experiences. We think: “This is my body, these are my feelings, these are my observations, these are my volitions, my decisions, my plans, my consciousness. I am aware of all this. I witness all of this.”

This “I,” this reference point of our experience, is the result of the seventh consciousness. The sixth consciousness categorizes, names, and places things, and the seventh consciousness appropriates it all, making us find a bearer in all our experiences. This is the consciousness that evaluates, judges, decides whether it likes something or not. All impressions gained from the entire experience are stored in the storehouse consciousness. The storehouse consciousness is like a current flowing beneath what we call the conscious part of our personality and is in constant—as the word “current” itself suggests—change. All the seeds or impressions are stored within it.

The Consequences of a Dualistic View

Our entire experience is organized around the “I,” the supposed bearer of experience. This results in a dualistic experience of reality, which we divide into “me” and “what is not me.”

There is no consistency in experiencing reality this way – very often I am opposed to myself in thousands of different ways. It’s not just that what is outside of me is something that is not me. Very often, what is in me is also something that is not me. While experiencing something, we very often set ourselves against that very same experience, complicating it in countless ways. That’s the situation, for instance, when there are conflicting desires. You simultaneously want and don’t want something. So, who is who here?

The human mind is incredibly complex. So, don’t be too surprised by the analysis or interpretation of human experience we’ve presented here. In the end, you can always forget all of it and just sit in meditation and surrender to the method. However, it’s good to know both. This knowledge can be like a guide, a compass, a map that helps us navigate better in the wilderness of the mind and mental formations.

The Importance of Conditioned Arising

Furthermore, all parts of the spectrum that make up experience are connected by direct, mutual relationships. What does that mean? It means that conditioned by the contact of senses and their objects, consciousness arises, and then feelings. Conditioned by feelings are volitions. Conditioned by volitions is action. Conditioned by actions are the consequences of actions, etc.

Our entire experience is conditioned. In other words, it is not independent, not self-sufficient, existing by itself. It is of “conditioned origin,” as it’s said.

Since it is conditioned in its arising, it does not exist independently. It is important to understand the conditioned nature of experience in order to understand that our views, our actions, our thinking are biased. They are the result of the specific perspective from which we look. I haven’t said anything new here, but we tend to believe the exact opposite. Hence the firm stance, the view that we are right, that what we think and believe is the truth, the objective truth. Even the absolute truth!

However, if we know that our experience arises in a conditioned way, and that it is conditioned by countless previous experiences, we can hardly speak of impartiality, let alone objectivity and truth. In the end, all experiences have a reference point, the “I” or ego. All are filtered through the ego, which is the filter of self-interest. Looking through the prism of self-interest shapes ego-perspective.

Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously

In other words, if you want your life to be easier, you shouldn’t take yourself too seriously. This doesn’t mean we should discard our power of understanding and drawing correct conclusions. That would be an extreme. However, when seriously considering something, wanting to reach the conclusion and the truth, we need to consider the point of you from which we are looking at things. To anticipate ego’s filter and to perceive things in the light of the interests that others can bring us closer to the truth.

To establish that an experience does not exist independently, that it does not exist by itself, is to establish that that there is no “I” because the “I,” by definition, exists independently. The “I” is the subject. The “I” represents an entity, something that is indivisible, that has its core, that is unchanging, that lasts, that does not change. Perceiving our experience as conditioned from its very arising – meaning under the influence of many other things – we can see that in that experience, there is no “I.” That experience simply is not the “I.” It cannot be the “I.”

Seeing Through the Illusion in Everyday Life

We all have the experience of our body. We consider this body our body. It is us. We are this body and everything it includes. For example, this includes a hairstyle. However, when you go to the hairdresser and they cut your hair, are you the hair that is cut?

We all identify with our feelings. But you know well that feelings change often. Various moods can alternate in a single day. Which feeling should we identify with? Which of these feelings are we? Are we the one when we are sad, or are we the one when we are happy, or when we are angry? Who is the “I” in that case? Often, these are completely opposite feelings.

The same is true, of course, with volitions. Our volitions are like this and like that. They can be completely opposite, but that doesn’t stop us from identifying with them. If we return to the body, not only does it change with a haircut, but our appearance changes as a result of living and aging. Yet, the whole time we consider the body to be ourselves. We consider it our own and real. Medicine and other sciences tell us that after seven years, there isn’t a single same cell left in the body. This process goes on all the time, but after seven years there isn’t a single cell left that was there before – but was “I” that whole time?

It is important to recognize that the experience we have, the experience that happens from one moment to the next, is conditioned, and given that it is conditioned, it is not necessary. It cannot be the “I.” It is important to understand that the “I” is something we always add on. Something we append to the experience.

The Root of the Problem: Ignorance

Before we deal with non-self (anātman), it’s important to understand the cause-and-effect relationship between the self and our human experience, primarily the experience of suffering and dissatisfaction.

In Buddhism, when one speaks of the self, it is a kind of “inside-out” situation, to put it that way. The self is a consequence of wrong views that are deeply embedded in the mind. In other word, a consequence of the fundamental ignorance about the nature of life, about what life is, what experience is, and what the mind is.

Whenever we introduce an “I” into experience, the pattern of aversion and clinging necessarily enters the experience, as well. So, whenever there is an “I,” there is clinging. Whenever there is clinging, there is suffering. There is a very clear and direct connection – clinging equals suffering. And the whole of samsara is there – what in Buddhism is called the endless cycle of birth and death, the cycle in which suffering continuously continues.

What is called samsara consists of the self, clinging, and suffering. The constant centralization of experience and that tremendous fear that constantly drives us to prove our existence, to affirm it, defend it, protect it, causes an enormous amount of dissatisfaction, frustration, misery, and suffering. It represents the axis around which the entire samsara revolves.

The Self Isn’t All Bad

The self also has its positive characteristics. It is not necessarily evil, it shouldn’t be viewed that way. It is simply our human situation, an integral part of our human situation. In our evolution, at one point we became self-aware beings that have the ability for self-observation and reasoning. That brought us to the place we occupy today. Self-awareness is responsible for the development of all human potentials. However, it is simultaneously a great obstacle to spiritual development.

We can say that humans are the most intelligent beings on this world. Their abilities to understand themselves, the world, and the environment, and to influence their environment, to manipulate it, are much greater than the abilities of other beings with whom we share this planet.

The Problem of an Anthropocentric Worldview

However, intelligence and ability are not necessarily positive. We could say that the anthropocentric stance that prevails today – in the sense that humans are at the center of things and are the most important beings – is responsible for where Western civilization has brought us today. Religions like Christianity, but also others, support such a stance. It’s not just a stance; it’s also a dogma: “God gave humans, as the most perfect beings He created, all earthly riches and all other beings to manage. All other beings are in a completely subordinate position in relation to humans. They are here only to serve humans. They don’t even have a soul, so we treat them like things. Thus, we have the meat industry, just like the shoe industry. There is no difference. You produce shoes, you produce meat, you produce clothing, it’s all more or less the same. It serves us humans, to satisfy our needs.”

Such a distorted stance causes unscrupulous, greedy human beings who, for the sake of profit and their own interests, are capable of doing many bad things, resting on false assumption that human existence is independent. Humans exist as something created by God, and the Earth as something given to them to dispose of, so it seems as if their life does not depend so much on the Earth. Such a view doesn’t necessarily, but can lead to the ecological disasters we are witnessing today.

Perhaps you’ve heard, a recent report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), established the primary cause of global warming – the meat industry. It sounds incredible, but the meat industry, percentage-wise, pollutes the air and environment much more than all transport on the globe. More than cars, planes, more than any vehicle you can think of. More than heavy industry! Why? Because a large amount of methane is released into the air. This gas is much more harmful than those emitted by cars or those produced by other manufacturing processes. This is terribly interesting. It’s interesting that the hardest blow comes from the very sphere towards which we show the least compassion. Actually, from the sphere where human insensitivity is most visible.

Small Self, Big Self

In contrast to such an anthropocentric stance, in the East – regardless of the religion, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism – humans do not have such a role and such a place in the world.

The “I” is definitely the most stubborn “thing” in our universe. The hardest, the most solid, the only one that survives death. Not even death can destroy the “I.” And after death, the “I” continues its story in another life. People sometimes think they can solve their suffering by suicide. They kill themselves when the amount of suffering becomes unbearable. However, the “I” “cheerfully” continues on its way, causing even greater suffering in the next life.

So, the most resilient thing in this universe is the self. Its area of operation is incredibly wide. It extends, we said, to the entire samsara. From the perspective of human experience, what a human can experience, we can speak of different types of self or ego. We can say there is a small self, insecure, scattered, and unprotected. Then there is something larger, a solid and firm self. And there is a great self, a great ego, a great “I.”

What would that mean? What are these three types of self?
The small self is the most common. It represents the usual human situation, which is filled with a large number of uncertainties, fears, and worries about oneself.

In contrast, we have the great self, and let’s say the middle self is some transitional stage. The great self is a self that does not refer only to “I, me,” but includes others and therefore has a much, much greater scope, so it can even include the entire universe.

The “I” doesn’t always have to be a small, petty, selfish ego, concerned only for itself. It can expand, it can adopt positive principles, it can encompass everything that surrounds it, and consider everything it encompasses as itself and act positively in relation to it all.

The Role of the Self on the Spiritual Path

On the other hand, by practicing meditation we can also come to a different way of experiencing ourselves and the world. In other words, meditative practice takes us out of the usual scope of experience and introduces us to a completely different experience of self and the world.

At the beginning of meditative practice, we have a small self, which then consolidates, strengthens, and grows into a great self. In Chan, when speaking of meditative experience, several stages are usually mentioned. The first stage of the small self would be our usual, scattered mind. A mind that is scattered, now here, now there, restless, insecure, oriented more or less towards itself. That is our situation when we begin meditative practice.

By practicing, we succeed in giving that “something” – which we can’t even fully call an ego due to internal contradictions, scatteredness, and everything else – a definite form and establishing a calm and firm ego. This might seem contradictory to what Buddhism says about non-self. Indeed – that is the case. However, the spiritual path and spiritual practice require a certain centralization, but one established on positive, useful principles.

For moving on the spiritual path, a lot of will, a lot of determination, a lot of firmness, and perseverance are needed. Such a path cannot be traversed with a scattered mind and an undefined ego. It is important to gather oneself, to establish one’s life on positive principles and to motivate oneself in the right direction. It is important to have self-confidence, and self-confidence is a characteristic of a strong ego. First, you have to create an ego so that you can later on the path seriously engage with its nature.

The State of One Mind

A strong ego can be twofold: it can be useful and it can be useless. It is important to create, for a start, a strong ego based on positive principles, of benefit to us and others. This is actually the only way to even set out on the spiritual path.

The consequence of this consolidation is a state of one mind. In meditation, we achieve it through the practice of concentration, and it allows for the opening of the mind. The state of one mind is a state of an open mind, a mind that encompasses much more than the small self or small ego can encompass. One mind can be represented in different ways, but in any case, in it, the boundaries between “inner and outer” are erased. You become one with everything that surrounds you.

On the emotional level, it brings great changes. First of all, the feelings that arise are feelings of joy and love because you see yourself in everything. Whatever you see and perceive, that is you. Such an experience changes viewpoints, the relationship towards everything that surrounds us, the relationship towards other people. This is the great ego, the ego that is all-encompassing, the ego that spreads to everything and encompasses the entire universe.

But from the perspective of Buddhism, this is still an ego, and as long as there is a self, there is suffering.

The Eight Worldly Winds

While you are in such a state in meditation, you feel divine. That’s the right expression. You feel incredibly relaxed and light, satisfied and happy, you feel bliss. When you come out of it, the feeling lasts for a certain time, but it melts away and disappears because the usual experience of self and the world emerges again.

Something else should be mentioned about the conflicted nature of the self. In early Buddhism, one speaks of the self and of experience, and something called the eight worldly winds is often mentioned—worldly in the sense of states in which the self is present, in the sense of samsara or the cycle of birth and death.

What are these eight worldly winds? Whenever there is a self, then you are drawn into a situation governed by eight states, or four pairs of opposites. What do all people want? People want to be famous. Not everyone’s goal, but many people like to be famous. Furthermore, people like to be praised, they love to hear words of praise. Then they like to be rich, to be satisfied, to enjoy. Pleasure can be physical and mental.

Now, of course, there are some people who strive more for fame, some more for praise, some for wealth, wanting to be rich, wanting to have a lot of money, and some are simply oriented towards pleasure, towards physical-type satisfactions.

Then there are states represent their opposites. Opposite fame is repute. Opposite praise is blame. Opposite gain is loss. Opposite pleasure is pain.

Whenever there is a self, these four pairs of opposites exist. The more you strive for fame, the more ill repute affects you. The more you strive for praise, the more blame affects you. The more you strive for wealth and gain, the more loss affects you. The more you strive for pleasure, the more pain affects you.

We have a difficult situation here, don’t we? This is a consequence of the ego, of believing in separate, isolated existence, believing in “I.” These states are a consequence of clinging. When there is clinging, there is suffering. The more we cling to the desired categories, the more these others affect us.

And this “positive” and “negative” is also the perspective of the self. Why can’t we always have these first four states and avoid these others? Because the world we live in is changeable. Because everything is constantly changing, and if you fixate something in this changing world—and the “I” is such a fixation—and then you try to fixate the conditions that maximally suit this “I,” then you have actually undertaken two impossible missions, that is, two things that are simply impossible, unsustainable, and have as a consequence an enormous amount of suffering, dissatisfaction, and unhappiness.

In the Chinese tradition, these winds indicate the dynamic nature of experience. Winds point to changeability. Okay? We’ll stop here.

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This text is based on the third lecture from the four-part series “Who Am I?” by teacher Žarko Andričević, held in Zagreb on February 25, 2007.