Showing posts with label soul searching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label soul searching. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 14, 2026

Lost Cat: Cats from space? (Sumerian)


Can a big monkey find li'l kitty for rare hottie?
"How terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise" is a beautiful saying. A few adjustments made it poetic but ruined its original meaning. What it really means, in plain English, is: "It feels horrible to know something when the person who finds out can't do anything about it."

Pasadena is part of Los Angeles, which is part of a giant mountainous forest called the Angeles National Forest, which is probably why it is full of coyotes (and bears, deer, rams, and man-eating lions). "Them coyot's is some wily varmints," the common wisdom goes around town. They'll pick a cat right off the street or out of a yard. It's like cats-and-dogs outside because, after all, these are felines and canines, wild or feral.

Skulking loners and organized packs of canines lope around the streets, particularly in the foothills of Altadena and other communities, coming down in search of water, bowls of dogfood in yards, and anything on four legs wandering around at night. Coyotes will grab a human baby as quickly as a dingo would if no one is watching.

Bad Kitties worse than Good Boys?
(Cat Dog Diary) Imagine a freaked-out rescued kitten meets a fluffy puppy

Can you help me find my kitty?
When my beautiful neighbor asked me what I thought happened to her Fitzgerald, I diverted: "It's not important what I think. What's important is how we're going to find him before it's too late."

"So you'll help me search by walking around the block for hours, calling out, 'Here, kitty-kitty"?

"No, I won't do that. It hasn't worked for you, and Fitz loves you. I was thinking we go divine."

"Go 'divine'? Kill ourselves and look for Fitzy in heaven?"

"No, of course not! Cats don't go to heaven. Everyone knows that. That's a place for dogs."

"Where do they go then?"

"Well, that's what I intend to find out through some urban shamanic divination procedures. They'll tell us were to look or reveal the whereabouts of all that remains of frisky Fitzy the coyote's Pemican."

"Coyote chow?"

"Possibly. Do you really want to know?"

"Yes, I must have closure!"

"Well, if that's all you need, Dr. Deborah King told me we can do it ourselves. We can cut the dysfunctional energetic ties that bind and give ourselves relief."

"Just find my cat...or else."

She wasn't having it -- skeptic, doubter, distruster, faithless -- so she pushed me to do the only thing I could, which was to go behind her back to meet with a pet detective, a psychic familiar with these sorts of cases.

I only asked the psychic as a favor. She offered her services, saying she had a knack for dealing with beloved pets. I showed her some photos then we took a walk around the block to see if Fitz would run out of wherever it was hiding and come to the psychic like a magnet. That's what she claimed happened before in the rescue of both a pet cat and a tortoise.

"How does anyone lose a tortoise?"

"It was stuck under the fence, which I moved in my search, and it ran to me," she explained.

Not exactly magic, but I would gladly take it in this case.

Closure came for me quickly, and I wasn't even looking. The psychic said pictures and walking were no longer even necessary. She already had a clear story to tell. Coyotes were not to blame, except to the extent that they may have scared, startled, panicked, chased, terrified, or injured Fitz, but not killed and consumed it. This 9-year-old fur baby was driving her human caretaker to distraction, and she was near insanity. But she wouldn't listen.

It was going to be a tough case because I put limits on the remote viewing protocol and told the psychic to stuff her preconceived telepathy and start answering a series of commonsense questions.

She said, "You're being too rigid."

And I said, "Yes, I am, and I want you to narrow your impressions, visions, and telepathic communications with the cat to just answering what I ask. Force yourself to only reveal a tiny slice of all that you know, none of which is being helpful. If you can find it in yourself to answer, just find it physically without answering or saying anything. Just go straight to it or, better yet, just get the cat to run out and throw itself at you like you claim the tortoise did."

She could not, so we started with a flood of potentially useable intel, which sent us across the boulevard to a cul de sac then a yard then a yard then a shack. Wouldn't you know? We poked around...and she wasn't there. She may have been there before, hiding out under the shed, but we didn't find her or any tangible proof she had been there. Now the messages began to come in more strongly. The psychic was saying the cat was alive.

How'd cat cave-dwelling pets begin?

Maybe magic and devis can locate this cat
Personally, I took it for a goner, a tuft of colorful hair in a lump of coyote scat. But we found no such lump. I had already asked 80 people at a nearby church meeting; not one of them had seen the cat.

But one church woman was sure she could imitate its voice, and this allowed me to ask the cat questions about why it left. It answered, vaguely: "I was being smothered." That made sense, but was it any reason to leave? My neighbor says their love was mutual. Seems the cat didn't think so.

The owner of the shed wasn't home, so we could only look around the yard and come back to go through the shed, empty it, just as soon as we could get permission. I returned alone (because the psychic claimed not to be feeling well) at 10:00 pm. The owner still wasn't home, and his sympathetic neighbor couldn't grant permission for a search of it. I wandered up and down the alley, calling out, "Here kitty-kitty" like a darn fool, ending up doing what I told her was pointless. I tried reasoning with the cat, sending out my own intuitive feelers for the slightest hint.

Everything Everywhere All at Once
Meanwhile, my nagging neighbor was on the phone, who promised a big reward she never really intended to pay out. She was doubting and demanding answers. The psychic started texting, sending new messages, saying the injured, hungry, thirst, confused cat had moved on. Work needed me to drive to the other side of the county for an important assignment. Isn't it just like the universe to all coincide and bombard us with nonsense from all directions (i.e., Everything Everywhere All at Once)?

The three were unrelenting, pulling me in all direction. All I could do was lope and skulk very suspiciously in an alley and around the property for an hour like a cat burglar casing a joint and hoping to catch video of the cat alive to at least have a reason to hope and continue the search. It would have been better to meet with the Council of Coyotes and ask it if any member had made off with a pretty angora calico Afghan tabby furball.

The Buddhist cats of ancient Japan
"How terrible is human attachment, tenacious clinginess, and our utter inability to let go. Such is the plight of humans on this vast plane of existence, the Buddha realized and proclaimed. But how can we let go?

The Buddha answered that. "Cultivate mentally-purifying calm the develop insight. When we see the true nature of things, the heart/mind, seeing the true nature of existence, automatically lets go with no effort on our part to separate. Let me repeat, we do not need to make any extra effort to relinquish. Seeing reality as it is is enough to discard and abandon everything we are consciously and unconsciously clinging to that is bringing about our suffering (dukkha).

E. Hicks
Abraham-Hicks (a council of 12 entities as channeled by Esther Hicks with the help of her very supportive husband Jerry) says that everything we want is downstream. Let go to get it. Stop fighting the way upstream. We are not salmon.


She called and texted me, demanding to know if it was the coyotes who tore and devoured her precious kitty. I didn't have the heart to tell her that the truth was worse than that.

The psychic said the scared cat had been found, wandering and drained, by someone who took it in and loved it better, kept it safer, and gave it so much love that it didn't even want to return "home" now. "Home is where the heart is," everyone knows that. She pushed and pushed me, and all I could say was, "You say you don't want it, this reality we're in [where the cat is dead], but you don't, you don't really mean it. You say you won't stand for it, this circus we're in, but you don't, don't really mean it. What if the truth is worse than that?"


"Coyotes?"

"No, that's what you already think happened. You want 'closure' to accept that. What if it's worse? What if Fitz doesn't want to come back?"

"Impossible! Fitzgerald needs me, can't live without me..."

"Well, I don't know about that. Wouldn't it be worse to find out that Fitz is fine but not coming back, alive and happy but not with you?"

"What the h*ll are you talking about?! I'll break Fitz out! Who has my cat?! Who's keeping him hostage and away from me?!"

"Why are you asking me? You don't believe in cat psychics, remember? Who cares what she said? You ask me for the 'truth,' but you don't, you don't really mean it."

"Spark"
[My neighbor] she's addicted to nicotine patches
She's afraid of a light in the dark
It's 6:58 are you sure where my Spark is?
Here, here, here

She's convinced she could roll back a glacier
But she couldn't keep fluffy alive
Doubting if there's a woman in there somewhere
Here, here, here

CHORUS: You say you don't want it
(this reality we're in), again and again
But you don't, don't really mean it!
You say you don't want it, the circus we're in
But you don't, don't really mean it
You don't, don't really mean it!

If the divine Master Plan is perfection [by rebirth]
Maybe next I'll give Jewish a try
Trusting my Soul to the Ice Cream Assassin
Here, here, here

[CHORUS]

How many Fates turn around in the overtime?
Ballerinas have fins that you'll never find
You thought that you were the bomb
Yes, well so did I

[CHORUS]

She's addicted to nicotine patches
She's afraid of a light in the dark
6:58 are you sure where my Spark is?
Here, here, here
  •  Eds., Wisdom Quarterly, July 4, 2026 (a true story with details changed to protect the guilty and innocent, a learning experience about human nature beset by clinging and ignorance)

Thursday, July 9, 2026

The Buddhist Dark Night of the 'Soul'

(Buddha's Wisdom) Breakdown or breakthrough.
Dark Night of the Soul
The Dark Night of the Soul
(Spanish La noche oscura del alma) is a phase of passive purification in the mystical development of an individual's spirit, according to the 16th-century Spanish mystic and Catholic poet St. John of the Cross.

St. John describes the concept in his treatise Dark Night (Noche Oscura), commenting on his poem of the same name.

John of the Cross, 1656
It follows after the second phase, the illumination in which God's presence is felt, but this presence is not yet stable.

The author himself did not give any title to his poem, which together with this commentary and the Ascent of Mount Carmel (Subida del Monte Carmelo) forms a treatise on the active and passive purification of the senses and the spirit, leading to mystical union [1] or "yoga" through samadhi.

El Greco "View of Toledo" (Google Art Project)
In modern times, the phrase "dark night of the soul" has become a popular phrase to describe a crisis of faith or a difficult and painful period in one's life.

The poem
Dating and subject: The poem of St. John of the Cross, in eight stanzas of five lines each, narrates the journey of the individual (soul, personality, persona, ego, self, spirit) to mystical union with God or the Godhead (Brahman). More

The Dark Night of the Soul
By St. John of the Cross

I. In a dark night,
With anxious love inflamed,
O, happy lot!
Forth unobserved I went,
My house being now at rest.

II. In darkness and in safety,
By the secret ladder, disguised,
O, happy lot!
In darkness and concealment,
My house being now at rest.

III. In that happy night,
In secret, seen of none,
Seeing nought myself,
Without other light or guide
Save that which in my heart was burning.

IV. That light guided me
More surely than the noonday sun
To the place where He was waiting for me,
Whom I knew well,
And where none appeared.

V. O, guiding night;
O, night more lovely than the dawn;
O, night that hast united
The lover with His beloved,
And changed her into her love.

VI. On my flowery bosom,
Kept whole for Him alone,
There He reposed and slept;
And I cherished Him, and the waving
Of the cedars fanned Him.

VII. As His hair floated in the breeze
That from the turret blew,
He struck me on the neck
With His gentle hand,
And all sensation left me.

VIII. I continued in oblivion lost,
My head was resting on my love;
Lost to all things and myself,
And, amid the lilies forgotten,
Threw all my cares away. Source

Friday, June 19, 2026

How to sell your soul: The Led Zep way

BEAVIS AND BUTT HEAD REVIEW "DEVIL'S JOHNSON" BY ETHYL MEATPLOW

The demon Mephistopheles
Mephistopheles (German /MEF-ist-OF-il-eez/) is a demon in German folklore who is also known as Mephostophilis [1] and Mephisto [2].

He originated as the chief devil in the Faust legend (Faustian bargain) [3]. This demon has since become a stock character appearing in other works of arts and popular culture.

Mephistopheles never became an integral part of traditional magic [4]. More
The process explained in animation

What did Led Zep know and when?
Who invented "hard rock"?

Sunday, May 24, 2026

Ke$ha makes a comeback? (NPR)




I'm Ayesha from Durham, SC
NPR's [National Jewish Public Radio's] super Southern voice Ayesha Rascoe speaks with the pop star Kesha (Ke$ha) about her life, her afterlife, her music, and her new world tour: "The Freedom Tour." More

Interviewer Ayesha Rascoe is the host of Weekend Edition Sunday and the weekend host of Up First. As host of the morning news magazine show, she interviews nuts, newsmakers, entertainers, politicians, and others about the stories that everyone is talking about or that everyone should be talking about. More

Friday, January 2, 2026

Dalai Lama, how do we find our dharma?

  • dharma is a multivalent term with at least a dozen distinct meanings. In India, dharma usually means "social duty or obligation," and Dharma (capitalized) customarily refers to the Buddha's Dharma or Doctrine, the Teachings of the historical figure Siddhartha Gautama. The word can loosely be construed to mean "religion," but religion did not mean religion in pre-British invasion India (Maha Bharat), so equating the terms is incorrect.

Monday, October 27, 2025

Halloween is here (Last Week Tonight)


There were more giants back then (B. Foerster).
At such a festive time in Asia with Kathina (end of the Rains Retreat celebration, Buddhism's Carnivale/Easter) and Diwali (Festival of Lights), the Occident settles in for the foggy time of mystery, the cooling months of irritated monsters (who seem to dwell in the massive cave U.S. systems that correspond to many unsolved missing persons cases) and hungry ghouls (yakkhas, rakshasas, ogres, some Sasquatches, jinn, giants, nagas, petas, shapeshifters), the strengthening and fattening time before the frost kills off the weak.

We're sicker and poorer with Medicare Advantage (fake Medicare)

Medicare Advantage: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Medicare Advantage in the afterlife: death.
(LastWeekTonight) Oct. 26, 2025: John Oliver details what "Medicare Advantage" is (it's not Medicare), why it basically has all the pitfalls of private insurance and few of the benefits, and the economic significance of novelty slippers. You’ll see. Subscribe to the #lastweektonight YouTube channel for more almost news as it almost happens (lastweektonight) or find on favorite social media platforms the show may or may not have discussed at length: #lastweektonight

Elvira: How burned girl became sexy Mistress of the Dark

Monday, August 11, 2025

How to find 'God' (Edgar Cayce)

In Gnosticism, this is Yaldabaoth, not Jesus' "God," not the great Sophia (Wisdom)

Is Greek Hey Zeus the God or is it his Son?
Edgar Cayce (1877–1945) was an American channeler and clairvoyant who diagnosed diseases and recommended treatments for ailments while in trance [1].

During thousands of transcribed sessions while seemingly asleep, Cayce could answer questions on many subjects such as physical healing, scars of the soul, past lives, karma, reincarnation, dreams, the afterlife, past lives, nutrition, Atlantis, engineering, high finance, the stock market, and future events.

Cayce described himself as a devout Christian and denied being a Spiritualist or communicating with spirits. Cayce is regarded as a founder and a principal source of many characteristic beliefs of today's New Age movement [2]. More


How to Know God: Patanjali's Yoga Aphorisms
How to Know God (Patajali)
Author Patanjali and translators Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood have 4.7 out of 5 stars with 567 ratings. This is a major work on the practice of yoga and meditation. Through these ancient aphorisms by the sage Patanjali, readers will learn how to control the mind and achieve inner peace. Although these methods were taught over 2,000 years ago, they are as alive and effective as they have ever been. This 1953 translation draws from the inspired commentary of both Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood. Part of: Routledge Library Editions: Yoga (10 books). More

Monday, June 2, 2025

Born on time: Hippie Fest 2025, Sum of Luv

  • JUNE 7-8, 2025 TRUFANT, MICH
  • AUGUST 9-10, 2025 HOCKING HILLS, OHIO
  • SEPT. 27-28, 2025 TIPTON, INDI
  • OCT. 25-26, 2025 SALISBURY, NC
  • Details at hippiefest.org

Hippie Fest is a family-friendly music & arts festival for all ages. Featuring hippie tribute bands, acres of bohemian vendor booths, vintage hippie car show, delicious munchies, drum circles, DIY tie-dye, far-out sideshow performers, and more. It's groovy baby!

Hippie Fest 2023: Summer of Love
(Hippie Fest) July 5, 2021: No one will ever forget a trip to Hippie Fest! 😊✌🌻 Check out tour dates below and reserve tickets while they last at HippieFest.org. It's groovy, Baby! The 2021 Hippie Fest Tour dates were from August 7-8 in Hocking Hills, Ohio, because you know what they ask about Ohio? What's round on the ends and high in the middle? O-hi-O!

  • Hippie Fest - Aug. 21
  • Hippie Fest - Ionia, MI Aug 28-29
  • Hippie Fest - Omaha, NE Sept. 18 and 19 - Hippie Fest - Missouri Sept. 25 - Hippie Fest - Indiana (SOLD OUT) Oct. 9 - Hippie Fest - Mears, Michigan, Oct 23 and 24 - Hippie Fest - Columbia, SC NOTE: Due to crowd size and parking limitations, tickets must be reserved online in advance. LIMITED TICKETS REMAINING. Reserve tickets while they last at HippieFest.org
Did the US War on Vietnam start the hippies? - Right wing Charlie Kirk has a lot of ideas.

Saturday, May 17, 2025

Summer of Love + Road to Kathmandu (travel)



Road to Kathmandu, 1977 (full version)
(mtdd1948) June 15, 2017: India's famed Taj Mahal is an entirely Islamic architectural masterpiece created by Muslims in a land of rock-cut Buddhist marvels and countless Hindu temples? Let's take an overland "magic bus" trip from stuffy London, England, to wild Kathmandu, Nepal.

1967: The Summer of Love

(Free Documentary - History) April 19, 2024: In 1967 an expressive, colorful musical force painted a backdrop of love, social change, fashion, turmoil, and war.

Son, drop your gun and come back home to us!
The world remembers the "Summer of Love" in 1967 [which we always thought took place in '69] as one of those moments when a unique and creative explosion of rock music and popular culture arrived in the UK and US.

This documentary is driven by the soundtrack of the time, which kept the imperial American troops company as they massacred millions of Buddhists in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, powered the American Anti-War and Civil Rights movements, which opened the hearts and minds of Baby Boomers who had matured into hope-filled teens.

This special celebrates 1967 as a famous year full of music and change.  “Stick a flower in your hair [or a soldier's rifle at Kent State] and remember that you are Us not Them.”
Subscribe Free Documentary - History Channel for free: https://bit.ly/2FjRPgV Facebook: https://bit.ly/2QfRxbG Twitter: https://bit.ly/2QlwRiI. #FreeDocumentary #Documentary #History

ABOUT: Free Documentary - History is dedicated to bringing high-class documentaries to a large audience on YouTube for free. See fascinating animations showing the past from a new perspective and explanations by renowned historians that make history come alive. Enjoy stories about people and events that formed the world we live in.

Friday, May 9, 2025

Did the Buddha say there's no SELF?


There has to be a "self" -- and here he is!
Imagined debate between ordinary person and one who sees what the Buddha meant by "no-self"

Imagine a Mini Me driving this body to act.
Okay, if the Buddha himself said "there is no self," he himself must be cr*zy! How could there be no self? Anyone (any self) who thinks there's no self ought to have his (or her) head examined. The SOUL (Pali atta, Sanskrit atman, Spanish alma) is right here, in the chest, standing next to the heart with his arms crossed, a little homunculus who sometimes takes the backstairs of the spinal column into the cranium and looks out through the eyes of the head while manipulating levers and switches, which is how we live.

Driver's seat, where he steers the body
Who's inside of that guy?

Beg your pardon?

Who is driving the homunculus?

Well, um, there's an even smaller "mini me" homunculus driving that one.

And that one?

And that one what?

Who or what is driving that one?

And so on, ad infinitum! There's always a smaller one until we get down to the level of the cell, which has a mitochondria seat where the mini-mini-mini me homunculus sits to drive the cell.

And what's smaller than a cell?

An atom, of course.

Each with its own homunculus, I suppose.

Now you're catching on!

I'll knock the homunculus out of you, mofo
Well, it sure feels that way, that a homunculus is driving the human body, but have you ever known a guy to get punched in the head so hard, like a Pantera album cover (Vulgar Display of Power), that his homunculus gets knocked out of his seat and flies out of his ear and now doesn't have a big homme (Hummer) to drive?

Well, no, of course not. He would die.

And his body would disappear?

No, of course, not. Why would it disappear?

Because we don't find homunculi during autopsies.

Well, that's because they disappear, yes, disappear right out of existence once the car is undrivable, dead as it were, stuck with the levers and switches not working...

In a coma or vegatative state?

Vegatative state, yes, no longer functional and then, vamoose, homunculus goes to Heaven or the great beyond where all the homunculi gather and have parties by drinking and singing and dancing in circles until they're reborn into another body.

No hell?

Well, of course there's a hell, but, I mean, the homunculus has had to have gotten up to some pretty high hijinks to go there. Class dismissed!

Just one more question: You KNOW this to be true?

Just one more answer: I FEEL this to be true...

But that...

No more questions! Class dismissed! Get out, get out!

The Buddha never said, "There is no self"?

O, poor little homunculus self
It seems to us the Buddha did say such a thing, not to everyone. Nearly no one can understand this liberating truth. Even fewer can accept it. The entire practice is to bring about insight (clear seeing) so that we can see what is and is not true in order that the Truth set us free.

Liberation from all suffering takes insight, and long before insight arises, one needs calm, stillness, silence, serenity, samadhi (superconsciousness deriving from mental purification by "concentration" in the form of meditative absorptions called jhanas (dhyanas, zens, chans) -- overcoming the Five Hindrances and attaining equipoise, composure, equanimity, balance, brightened faculties now that everything has become coherent and gone online without hindrance and obstruction, a temporary state that serves as the foundation for the arising of insight (vipassana).

Insight cuts off the mental defilements at their roots and results in awakening, the experience of enlightenment (bodhi), which results in ultimate liberation known as a glimpse of nirvana (complete peace or ultimate bliss, the highest happiness), a thing so different it cannot rightly be called a "thing" at all because it is unlike all we have ever known in this world of things called samsara (the Cycle, the Wheel of Life and Death) or this simulation we have been endlessly cycling through due to karma (deeds) and delusion, i.e., ignorance of Dependent Origination).

Does the Buddha say there's a self? Yes but only because he is speaking conventionally. How does he define this "self"? He does so by the Five Aggregates clung to as "self." This is when he is speaking in conventional terms. However, when he is speaking in ULTIMATE terms (in terms of what is ultimately true), he points at what insight will reveal to anyone who develops it: There is, ultimately speaking, no self.

(The question "Is there a self?" is wrong because it is full of assumptions. We assume we have a self -- that is to say and speaking more correctly, the impersonal aggregates cling to the misunderstanding that a self is present -- even from the standpoint of asking the question. Form forms (the body bodies), feelings feel, perception perceives, mental formations will and intend, consciousness is conscious so that it seems as if Self is the Asker, the Thinker, the Doer, the Worrier, the Watcher (the Atman or Immortal Soul), the One who practices and will or will not be enlightened/awakened).
  • There is an "Immortal Soul" in a way. That is to say, there is something mistaken for a soul, ego, essence, heart, personality, individuality, a "self," who persists through time unchanged as its perfect self, the Doer, the Knower, the Experiencer, but it is not what it seems. This is what the Buddha is pointing out. We are certainly more than we know, but all those things we cling to will ultimate frustrate, disappoint, and prove mistaken. Even if we (or these aggregates) cling to the exalted notion, "I am the ALL," "I am Brahman," or "I am that I am," TattvaTat Tvam Asi, all of these exalted Vedic, Brahmanical, Hindu, and later Judeo-Christian ideas,
There is a better way to ask and find an answer: "What is there?" There is Dependent Origination (the 12-link chain of causality, its elements each giving rise to the other in a causal chain), which is how all "things" come to be, how "self," that is, the illusion/delusion of self, arises and originates and seems to exist.

Some wrongly say, "There is no separate self." This is true, but some are wrong because they misunderstand "separate," imagining as Hinduism does, that there is unity (of Atman and Brahman), Union with Brahma or Brahman, a raindrop returning to the sea, plunging into its home again after a roundabout journey, now merged and losing itself into the ALL, the Whole, the Ultimate Reality)

The Five Aggregates clung to as self

IN BRIEFAll of reality, in this dimension and universe or any other, is marked by three universal characteristics: All "things" are (1) impermanent, (2) unsatisfactory, and (3) impersonal. These are the Three Marks of Existence. Nirvana is the only non-thing (non-composite), for it is not dependently originated, whereas everything else is. Therefore, the Path to Freedom the Buddha taught leads to nirvana, complete freedom.

SUTRA: "Discourse on the Not-Self Characteristic"
Ven. Ñanamoli Thera (trans), Anatta-Lakkhana Sutta (SN 22.59 PTS: S iii 66 CDB i 901) © 1993 edited by Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

Thus have I heard. On one occasion the Blessed One (the Buddha) was living at Benares (Varanasi), in the Deer Park at Isipatana (the Resort of Seers). There he addressed the wandering ascetics known as the group of five:

"Meditators."

— "Venerable sir," they replied. The Blessed One then said this [with regard to the Five Aggregates clung to as a "self"]:

"Meditators, form [this body] is not-self. Were form self, then this form would not lead to affliction, and one could will: 'Let my form be thus, and let my form be not thus' [Let my form (body) be this way and not that way]. Since form is not-self, it leads to affliction (pain, distress, disappointment), and no one can will: 'Let my form be thus, and let my form be not thus.'
  • [The body (form), though treated as one thing as if it were singular, is actually four things -- the Four Great Elements or four characteristics of materiality. They are condensed for simplicity into one because they are regarded as less worthy of note than the mind, which is treated in detail as the remaining four aggregates. "Mind" is not one thing but about 50 distinct processes -- feeling, perceiving, determining, and consciousness, all of which are mental formations; the remainder of the 50 are packed into the category of "mental formations" (sankhāra), of which the most important in the category is determination (cetanaintention, volition, impulse, will, motive). The Buddha considered these five the most important to single out for the sake of liberation by wisdom, that is, to gain insight (vipassana = clear seeing) that all we are, all "self" is, are heaps of these impersonal processes, not an actual "self" (soul, atta, atman, essence) that goes on unchanged and immutable through time and experience as philosophers and other religions hold the view. All that we are, all that we cling to as ourselves, is radically impermanent, ultimately disappointing (never able to fulfill us), and most unbelievably impersonal or not-self.]
"Meditators, feeling is not-self...

"Meditators, perception is not-self...

"Meditators, mental formations (determinations) are not-self...

"Meditators, consciousness is not-self. Were consciousness self, then this consciousness would not lead to affliction, and one could will: 'Let my consciousness be thus, and let my consciousness be not thus.' Since consciousness is not-self, it leads to affliction, and no one can will: 'Let my consciousness be thus, and let my consciousness be not thus.'

"Meditators, how do you conceive of it: Is form permanent or impermanent?"

"Impermanent, venerable sir."

"Is what is impermanent painful or pleasant?"

"It is painful, venerable sir."

"Is what is impermanent and painful (since it is subject to change) fit to be regarded this way: 'This is mine, this is me, this is my self'"?

"No, venerable sir."

Did the Buddha teach that there's no self?

"Is feeling permanent or impermanent?...

"Is perception permanent or impermanent?...

"Are mental formations (determinations) permanent or impermanent?...

"Is consciousness permanent or impermanent?"

"It is impermanent, venerable sir."

"Is what is impermanent pleasant or painful?"

"It is painful, venerable sir."

"Is what is impermanent and painful (since it is subject to change) fit to be regarded this way: 'This is mine, this is I, this is my self'"? — "No, venerable sir."

"So, bhikkhus any kind of form whatever, whether past, future or presently arisen, whether gross or subtle, whether in oneself or external, whether inferior or superior, whether far or near, must with right understanding how it is, be regarded this way: 'This is not mine, this is not I, this is not myself.'

"Any kind of feeling whatever...

"Any kind of perception whatever...

"Any kind of determination whatever...

The Middle Path leads to complete freedom
"Any kind of consciousness whatever, whether past, future or presently arisen, whether gross or subtle, whether in oneself or external, whether inferior or superior, whether far or near must, with right understanding how it is, be regarded this way: 'This is not mine, this is not I, this is not my self.'

"Meditators, when a noble [enlightened] follower who has heard (the Truth) sees thus, that person finds estrangement in form, finds estrangement in feeling, finds estrangement in perception, finds estrangement in determinations, finds estrangement in consciousness.

"When one finds estrangement, passion fades away. With the fading of passion, one is liberated. When liberated, knowledge arises that one is liberated. One [intuits] understands: 'Rebirth is exhausted, the supreme life has been lived out, what can be done is done, of this there is no more beyond [to come].'"

That is what the Blessed One said. The meditators were glad, and they approved of his words.

During this utterance, the hearts of the meditators of the group of five were liberated from the taints by letting go and renouncing clinging. Source
  • Buddha Face - Etsy; Bhikkhu Jayasara, Student of the Path, Dhamma Short (anatta); Dr. Doug Smith (Doug's Dharma); Ven. Ñanamoli (trans), Anatta-Lakkhana Sutta (SN 22.59); Dhr. Seven and Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly