No self? Buddhism makes no sense until...

(ECHOES OF LOST KNOWLEDGE) Ego is not ready for this video: ego death | Zen Wisdom

(Tao Temple) Buddhism makes no sense until you understand this

Even Zen can see it's not self.

Two things are true. 1. There is no self. In other words, all things are marked by the characteristic of being impersonal ("empty"). 2. Whatever arises arises dependent on causes and conditions, which is known as Dependent Origination.

Only by comprehending both will someone avoid confusion and an apparent paradox. Of course, there are two "truths," the conventional everyday truth (honesty) and the ultimate truth (reality). That there is, ultimately speaking, no ongoing persisting surviving transmigrating self is of the latter variety.

How could that possibly be true if all that we have is ourselves and our experiences, our conscious awareness and this body?

It is completely counterintuitive, but it can be known-and-seen directly, which results in enlightenment (awakening) if penetrated as it really is. Before that, it can be comprehended intellectually.

German Theravada Buddhist scholar-monk Venerable Nyanatiloka (born Anton Walther Florus Gueth) in his Buddhist Dictionary: Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines:

• This is a very advanced teaching for dedicated meditators and monastics, not easily understood by them until they develop direct insight into the Truth. Therefore, how is any ordinary, uninstructed person ever to figure it out? They will not. But anyone can receive intellectual instruction to understand it without being liberated by the Truth. For liberation, practice of direct-seeing and insight (vipassana) into the true nature of existence is necessary:
• Not-self (anatta) is the central doctrine in Buddhism, without understanding which a real knowledge of Buddhism is altogether impossible.

There has to be a self, there just has to be!

Buddhist Dictionary (Ven. Nyanatiloka)

"NOT SELF" (anattā) means "non-ego," "egolessness, "impersonal," "empty." It is the third of the Three Universal Characteristics of Existence (ti-lakkhana).

This uniquely Buddhist anattā doctrine teaches that there is neither within the body or mind -- the bodily or mental phenomena of existence -- nor outside of them can there be found anything that in the ultimate sense could be regarded as a "self" (a real self-existing ego-entity, soul, or any other abiding substance.

This is the pivotal central doctrine of Buddhism, that which without comprehending, no real understanding of Buddhism (i.e., the historical Buddha's Dharma) is possible.

This strange doctrine is the only really specific Buddhist teaching, with which the entire structure of the Buddha Dharma stands or falls.

All other Buddhist doctrines might, more or less, be found in other philosophical systems or religions, but the anattā-doctrine (that ultimately ALL things are impersonal) has been clearly and unreservedly taught only by a buddha, which is why the Buddha was known in his day as the Anattā-vādi or "Teacher that all is Impersonal."

Whoever has not yet penetrated the impersonal nature of all existence, who does not comprehend that in reality there exists only this continually self-consuming process of arising and passing bodily and mental phenomena (called the Five Aggregates CLUNG to as self), and that there is no separate soul, self, or ego-entity within or without this impersonal process, such a person will not be able to understand Buddhism, that is, the teaching of the Four Ennobling Truths (sacca) the fourth of which is the Ennobling Eightfold Path, in the correct light.

One will necessarily assume (wrongly think)

• that it is one's self, soul (atta, atman), ego, or personality that chooses and performs skillful and unskillful karma (intentional actions),
• that experiences suffering, neutral feelings, and happiness as a result (phala, vipaka, the fruition and resultants of previous actions),
• that will be reborn according to that karma (those former deeds),
• that will enter or fail to enter nirvana (nibbāna, the quenching and cooling of the threefold fire of greed, hatred/fear, and delusion),
• that walks or fails to walk the Eightfold Path to awakening.

So it is said in The Path of Purification (Vis.M. XVI)

"Mere suffering exists, no 'sufferer' is to be found;

Deeds are, but no 'doer' of deeds is really there;

Nirvana is, but not any 'person' who 'enters' it;

The Path is but no 'traveler' on it is to be seen."

"Whoever is unclear with regard to conditionally arisen phenomena and fails to comprehend that ALL actions are conditioned through ignorance and so on [through the 12 causal links of Dependent Origination], that person [necessarily assumes] thinks that it is one's soul, self, ego, or personality that understands or fails to understand, that acts or causes to act, that comes to existence at rebirth and passes out of existence at death...that has sense-impressions, feels, desires, becomes attached, continues, and at rebirth reappears or enters a new existence" (Vis.M. XVII. 117).

• [The Three Universal Characteristics of Existence are that all things are radically impermanent, unable to fulfill (ultimately unsatisfactory, disappointing, liable to suffering), and impersonal.]

While in the case of the first two characteristics, it is stated that all "formations" (sabbe sankhārā) are impermanent and subject to suffering, the corresponding text for the third characteristic states that "all things are not-self" (sabbe dhammā anattā, MN 35, Dhp. 279).

This is for emphasizing that the wrong view of assuming, believing, holding that it is an abiding self or substance is neither applicable to any "formation" or conditioned phenomenon, nor to nirvana (the "unconditioned element" (asankhatā dhātu)

The "Discourse on the Characteristic of Not-Self" (Anattā-Lakkhana Sutta) was the second discourse delivered by the historical Buddha after his great awakening, enlightenment (maha-bodhi) to his first five disciples, who after hearing it attained to the same awakening (arhatship).

The contemplation of not-self (anattā-anupassanā) leads to the freedom of the "emptiness liberation" (suññatā-vimokkha).

Here the faculty of wisdom (pañña-indriya) is predominant, and one who attains the path of stream-entry this way is called a "Dharma-devotee" (dhammānusāri).

At the next two stages of enlightenment, one becomes a "vision-attainer" (ditthippatta or "right view reacher"), and at the ultimate stage of "full awakening" (arhatship), one is called "liberated by wisdom" (paññā-vimutti). More

• Tao Temple (video); Ven. Nyanatiloka (Buddhist Dictionary) edited and clarified by Dhr. Seven and Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly, summer 2026

Ram's advice to quiet the Monkey Mind

The Great Seer's gained samadhi

(One Timeless Witness) Ramana Maharshi ("Great Seer" Ramana) was asked a question by a spiritual seeker trying to "meditate" (reach samadhi, stillness, unification of mind, coherence). Ramana answered him.

The mind may never stop thinking [except deep in the eight Buddhist meditative absorptions, in samadhi], but if we turn our attention to what or who [the Witness, the Watcher] is listening, suddenly the inner voice may pause or stop.

The method to follow, the practice

The voice doesn't bother me. I need stimulation!

"Bhagavan," he asked, "how do I remain as this Witness? The voice remains the moment I stop trying." The seeker expected a method, something to follow, something to practice.

Ramana's voice was gentle but firm, "You cannot remain as the Witness. You are already the Witness. The question itself comes from the mind. The seeker's face tightened, "I do not understand."

Overthinking: Why am I even alive?

(Keepswim) I don't understand what we're living for

More stimulation, more stimulation, more!!!

"The mind wants a method, it wants a practice, it wants a way to achieve 'witnessing.' This is the trap. The mind cannot witness itself into existence. I can only dissolve.

"The practice is simply to notice. When the voice speaks, what hears it? Do not fight the voice. This creates more noise: 'I should not be thinking this, I am failing at meditation, I must try harder!' More voices, more struggle."

A thought arose in the seeker right then, "This is too difficult." Instead of believing it or fighting it, he asked, 'What is aware of this thought?" The question itself dissolved the thought. For a moment, there was only silence, only presence.

So the method is not a method, not a practice?

"Do not try to become the witness," Ramana continued. "This creates a false 'doer.' 'I am witnessing now, I am doing it correctly, I am making progress.' This is still the mind wearing a spiritual mask. Simply rest in the question, 'Who is aware of this thought?'...

"In your relationships," Ramana said, "the voice says, 'They do not love you anymore.' Ask, 'Who is unloved?' The answer? 'I am.' Then ask, 'Who is this "I" that can be loved or unloved?' The story collapses."

He paused. "And [of] that shame, the sense that you have not progressed, that others have arrived somewhere you cannot reach, ask, 'Who is the one who has failed?' The answer? 'I am.'

"Then ask, 'Who is this "I" that can succeed or fail at [meditation] practice?' Its owner cannot be found. The shame does not to be argued away; it simply has no ground to stand on.

But "I am that I am," right?

(Buddhism Podcast) "I am nobody" - what it really means in Buddhism

Don't Feed the Monkey Mind

"The witness is not cultivated," Ramana said, "it is uncovered. Every time you [mindfully] notice the voice, you are already the witness. You just have not recognized it yet."

The seeker sat with this. It was so SIMPLE, it felt impossible. He had spent years trying to improve his mind, control his thoughts, become a better meditator.

And now Ramana was saying, "Just notice what is already aware [mindful]. Every example leads to the same place. The voice has an owner that cannot be found. And what remains when the owner [ego, atta, atman] disappears, that is what you are."

"Bhavagan," he said quietly, "what is the purpose of the question, 'Who am I?' if it cannot be answered?"

Ramana smiled. "The question, 'Who am I?' is not meant to be answered by the mind. It is meant to DISSOLVE the mind.

The seeker closed his eyes. The voice had nothing left to say.... He no longer needed the voice to stop.

(One Timeless Witness) Stop trying to silence the mind or stop thoughts

• Sage (philosophy)
• Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety (Daniel Smith)
• Ashtanga (The Eight Limbs of Yoga)

How shall "I" become Nobody?

(Flowing Void) Why being nobody is the ultimate power of the Tao

Did Zen folk, being Taoists, get it?

• Avenged Sevenfold "Nobody" (official video)
• I went to a Buddhist retreat needing something to happen; nothing happened.
• My friend, a regular American woman into yoga, also went but not expecting anything, hoping for anything, "needing" anything; something happened.
• I asked, "How?! How is this happening? What did you do differently?"
• She claims she didn't "do" anything. She just sat. She just attended to the present moment with bare awareness, almost like that R.E.M. song, "Stand in the Place Where You Are." She didn't say that. She mentioned thinking about the song "Just Breathe" for inspiration sometimes.
• I asked, "You're thinking about music?"
• She answered, "No, but intrusive thoughts come and go. Sometimes by habit I engage them before mindfully-remembering and then letting them go, letting them cross like clouds in a vast open sky." And she mentioned visualizing the in-and-out breath as steam in a steam room or a small whirligig (windspinner) at her nose turning as the breath moved.
• I asked, "You spend your time visualizing?"
• She answered, "No, but sometimes to focus, I imagine some indicator of the breath just to help get focused."
  
• I asked, "How do you stay energized and focused for so many hours of the retreat schedule day?"
  
• She surprised by answering that she used a little peppermint under her nose.
• I asked, "You spend your time huffing essential oils?"
• She answered, "No but it's a nice pick me up in the morning, and it's good to feel a chill on the spot above the lip where I place my calm attention."
  
• I started to see the pattern. Everything I asked and conceived was about getting and gaining.
• And everything she answered was about letting go, relaxing, and staying aware without "thinking" (i.e., ruminating, perseverating, proliferating, drifting away on a tide of discursive thinking).
• A Buddhist retreat, like a Christian church service, is not somewhere to go to gain. It is a place to go to lay down the burden and let go a little, release, share, give, abandon, listen, allow with radical acceptance of what is. Imagine only ever going to church (mass, temple, the sabbath ritual) with a laundry list of wishes for the God. How well was that ever going to work? But a person with a purer heart goes just to receive the Word or the Spirit or advice embedded in the sermon to give more donations to the church or whatever nonsense most sermons are on nowadays. Surely that purer person would get more out of the experience than the person with the list treating the God of that church like a restaurant, ATM, or the lap of Saint Santa Claus (Nicholas).
• So let us follow in the example of the woman who "succeeded" in getting what everybody else on that retreat was after. About three other women got it, too, including Buddhist meditation teachers Shaila Catherine (Wisdom Wide and Deep: Jhana and Insight) and Dr. Nikki (The Persian Buddhist: Dr. Nikki).
• Oddly, strangely (coincidentally?), these three women are all from California, but the long retreat was on the east coast at IMS with a rare enlightened master. I do not now recall if there was a male among the very small group of retreatants/meditators who "succeeded" in getting somewhere very deep with their meditation. But it was impossible to overlook the fact that even if there were, it was still 75% women who succeeded. So I asked her about this.
• She answered, "I did notice, and I asked the Teacher, and he explained, 'It's easier for women.'"
• I asked, "Why in the world would it be easier for women? Surely, they have it harder than men in this world, which after all we are told is 'a man's world.'"
• She agreed, and she mentioned that she asked him the same question, and the great master, a successful scholar-practitioner not teaching only from theory but having a great deal of direct practical personal experience with the historical Buddha's Path, answered. He explained that it is how women are (by nature at this time) and how they are treated now (by injustice). Their way, as anyone can see in terms of American sex-role stereotyping and gender asymmetries (that they are treated less than, overlooked, underestimated, ignored, disregarded, and all that) actually gives them an advantage in meditation and spiritual progress.
• I said, "Why? Why would that be?"
• She answered, as it came right back around to slap me in the face and punch me in the gut, that it is because women, generally, are NOT striving, struggling, needing, demanding, insisting, interfering, pushing, muscling, and all the "wrong" (disadvantageous, self-defeating, dysfunctional) things we men generally do.
• I asked, "Well, isn't everyone there -- having paid and taken time off work and putting in all those hours of silence, getting up early, eating only in the morning, detoxing from technology, giving up their cell phones, social media, and email accounts -- doing EXACTLY that?!
• She answered, "Yes, except for the four of us, for some reason. It's not like we knew each other or knew what the others were doing. We were each just minding our business, not socializing, not looking around, not taking walks, not arguing, not demanding, not all of that stuff that everyone else [being American] were in the habit of doing."
• I said, "Oh, I see! It's exactly all that grasping, needing, struggling, striving, and kicking @$$ that is getting in everyone's (well nearly everyone's) way!
• She answered, "It would seem so."
• Then I realized I was pushing her for these answers, and she was kind enough, because we had known each other for so long and been such friends, and because I encouraged her and made sure she got to this retreat, that she tolerated this interrogation of sorts. I was startled by what she was saying, and she was saying precious little unless I pushed. I realized anyone with common sense and common decency would never push like this or ask pointed questions. But this is how I pressed that very teacher to answered and explain things, which he did as he kindly inquired about my practice and how I was doing and why I was so worried or interested in what anybody else was doing. (I didn't have enough sense to trust in him that when I was ready, I would learn all these things directly and not need to be so bullheaded in asking). But because I had not made progress, I'd been left to wonder what I was doing wrong, aside from everything. It was only my luck, my precious good karma, that I had the good fortune of knowing more than one person who had done it right (or was currently doing it "right" in the sense of the eight path factors of "right mindfulness, right effort, and so on) that I could see by comparison where I veered off. I already knew about my veering off. What I needed to know, for myself and Wisdom Quarterly readers was, What's the right road, the right path, the right practice? Now I was getting a dose of it. I had only been "a little" off but that little had grown to a complete derailing and going off the road, as a boat traveling a long distance -- with course correcting along the way -- would end up way off track like a wayward Columbus. I was stressed out in asking all these things.
• She answered without stress, gently smiling at my silliness, manliness, foolishness, and blindness.
• But there is an extraordinary thing I realized/remembered as I was talking to her about these things (Dhamma), these matters so rare in the universe that only someone with a real kalyana-mitta can ever hope to hear, and it came when I formulated a preface to a question like a lawyer would, establishing common ground, being on the same page. I wanted to ask her about her level of attainment and that of the others. But to do so, I needed to establish that she was ahead of all the others on the retreat, or was it the case that the elder and much more experienced meditator and teacher Shaila Catherine was ahead, and where was Nikki Mighafori in the ranking, and for that matter, at what level was the teacher?
• She answered no answer, just a perplexed look, a series of sounds and utterances that gave me to believe we were not sharing common ground and not on the same page.
• I pushed, "Look, regular people are 'uninstructed ordinary worldlings,' right?"
• She answered, "Okay?" as if confused by my very lowest common denominator question.
• And I kept pushing, and any Aryan (any "noble" disciple, any attained person of whatever ever rank, stage, or level) is greater than that, right?
• She answered more perplexed, "Okay??"
• I pushed to the point of breaking, "What? You won't give me that? There are ordinary people and there are attained people, and they're not the same because of a 'change-of-lineage' (gotrabhu), riiiiight? The Buddha said as much! It's foundational to the whole Teaching in this school of Buddhism. This is not hard. This is not a trick question..."
• She responded, "And why are you asking?"
• I, exasperated, kept pushing through, as if I were doing a set of heavy weights at the gym and just needed to get a certain number of reps in even if it hurt, "I'm trying to establish that there's a difference. There are ordinary people there and extraordinary. And among the latter group, there are gradients..."
• She looked puzzled, dismissive, not catching on, "Okay???"
• I barked, "Well, come on! There's that, right? And this is when she blew my mind. Did you, dear reader, know that enlightened people (in the specific Buddhist sense of the word bodhi and not what other traditions, religions, or systems think or mean when they use the exact same word) DO NOT THINK OF THEMSELVES as better than anyone? Sure, you did. Anyone can figure that out. They know there's no ego; they go lording it around over anyone's head. BUT, did you know, enlightened people (of whatever stage or level) DO NOT THINK OF THEMSELVES as worse than anyone? Sure, come on, that can be deduced by anyone who gives it a little thought. "Saints" (Aryans, the noble ones) are nice. Here's the mindblower: Reader, did you know that enlightened people DO NOT THINK OF THEMSELVES as equal to anyone? 🤯 (See the Pali canon sutta "With Khema" AN 6.49: Khema Sutta—translated by Bhikkhu Sujato for suttacentral.net) And this is what was happening here. We were getting snagged and tangled up on the very first presupposition of stages and levels. It's not that she didn't know or had forgotten that there were levels, but what had happened is that she had DIRECTLY REALIZED that in reality she is no better, no worse, and not equal to others. These Aryans just don't think that way. It doesn't occur to them. They don't frame things that way anymore. And they may not even remember ever having done so, or so it would seem as I tried to remind her that this is how the whole world thought, including the Buddha, if we can deduce this from his teaching that there were levels of attainment and therefore it is possible to designate someone as higher, lower, or equal to someone else, anyone else.
• She just looked at, as if remembering, then came back to herself, "And????" leading me to make my point, whatever my point was originally going to be. I didn't remember, and there was no sense in asking if we could not agree on that much for starters. This was a nonstarter.
• "Wow," I thought, the things in the ancient sacred texts are really true: Aryans are this way or that, whether it makes sense to us or not, whether it fits our frames, whether we agree or would have it otherwise. Buddhism (the Buddha Dharma), what the Buddha taught, was not "hammered out by mere reasoning." The Buddha directly saw these things, knew these things, taught a path-and-practice for others to be able to DIRECTLY know and see these things. I bowed to her and left it at that for the moment. There are some things we are not meant to know before we are ready to know it. And all of this, it seems, was none of my business. It would become my business when I directly experienced these things and became one who knows-and-sees. This is a teaching for the wise, after all, not for those sunk in worldliness, distraction, delusion, resentment, aversion, fear, greediness, selfishness, self-centeredness, or all manner of wrong view arising from ignorance, delusion, and holding views.
• And now I realize that one way to talk about all this might be through the Taoist video at the top of this article. Maybe on this path we are becoming what we always were and have been -- nobody. Certainly, nobody special. Not better, not worse, not equal. The worldly mind will completely reject this out of hand. It's preposterous! This is a patriarchy founded on a hierarchy as taught by the oligarchy and a lineage of worldly rulers all the way up to the first heaven. And we must submit to them because that's the way God wants it. 🙄 That's ludicrous and preposterous, but it just might be closer to the truth than the way we've been carrying on here in the world IF "the God" we are talking about is the Monad (the One in Gnosticism, the Brahman not Brahma in Buddhism, possibly even the Tao in Taoism). That GOD doesn't want or not want, doesn't look on needing it to be one way or another. In that sense, there is just being. We can just be (though technically there is no "being," only becoming, this ceaseless impersonal process of radical impermanence as everything falls apart and rebuilds all the time, marked by three universal characteristics the Buddha taught again and again, implicitly and explicitly: All things are radically impermanent, utter unable to ever fulfill us, and impersonal whether we imagine there to be a stable "self" or not. That's reality. Here we are over here never really in touch with what's real due to all the distractions, talking, ruminating, thinking, and everything else coming at us all at once. If we slow down, let things be, allow, accept, welcome experience as it is without needing to change or "improve" it, we can quite possibly make quick progress to the end of all suffering and the arising of liberating-insight, the wisdom that has gone beyond, that which we set as our goal when setting off on a spiritual path. So "be nobody." After all, that's what really are already, and the sooner we get right with it, the happier we are likely to be so we can see things sa they really are and always have been.

The Empty Nature of All Things

(Buddhism Podcast) The empty nature of all things: Buddhist philosophy on reality

The Suñña Sutta [15] ("Discourse on Emptiness"), part of the Pāli canon, relates that the monk Ānanda, the Buddha's attendant, asked:

"Venerable sir, it is said that the world is 'empty,' the world is empty. In what respect is it said that the world is empty?"

The Buddha replied, "In so far as it is empty of a self or of anything that belongs to a self. So it is said, Ānanda, that the world is empty." More

The Matrix: Inception's hidden Buddhism: prison

Hollywood writers on dreaming

(Buddha's Wisdom) Inception's hidden Buddhism: The real prison was never the "dream" (maya).

Inception is an American science fiction action film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, who also produced it with his wife Emma Thomas.

The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a professional thief who steals information by infiltrating the subconscious of targets.

To whom are we still hopelessly attached?

He is offered a chance to have his criminal history erased as payment for the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.

The ensemble cast includes Ellen Page [now living as Elliot Page], Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, Dileep Rao, and Michael Caine. More

• Upādāna: "clinging"
• Maya: the dreaming, the illusion
• Nirvana: release, liberation, freedom, emancipation
• Śūnyatā: emptiness, impersonal, without self
• Mara (demon): the Tempter, Mel, the seduction
• Hungry ghost: the realm of hopeless clinging
• Bardo: limbo, the intermediate state between rebirths
• Let Go: stop being so clingy, detach, be free
• Avidyā (Buddhism): ignorance that keeps us trapped

Buddhism in The Matrix

(Buddha's Wisdom) Buddhism in The Matrix | Red Pill isn't bodhi

(Matrix Explained) The Architect told Neo the truth, nobody noticed

That's the guy from Little Buddha

Buddhism in The Matrix goes deeper than most of us think (other than Wachowski Brothers). The Wachowskis built this film on Buddhist philosophy—but Neo (Keanu Reeves, who played the Buddha in Little Buddha) goes on a journey that reveals something most viewers miss: Taking the red pill isn't enlightenment, it's just the beginning. This video explores what The Matrix gets RIGHT about Buddhism, what Neo gets WRONG about awakening, and why the ending is actually the most Buddhist part of the entire trilogy. More (See The Matrix Trilogy)

HOW do we get out of this prison?

We are trapped in a prison of our own making. Realizing it does NOT free us. Letting go does. But how can we let go? We can't. It isn't an act of willpower. It's by seeing things as they are. Okay, okay, that makes sense! How are they? This is not a belief-system to believe. We must go in and see kalapas and cittas, particles and mind-moments, which means we must first cultivate samadhi (stillness, absorption) to purify and intensify the instrument of seeing (the mind). Then when we really know-and-see what is there, letting go happens by itself free of effort. The mind/heart lets go when it sees all things are marked by Three Universal Characteristics.

If there's no self, whose NDE is it?

(Buddha's Wisdom) NO-SELF vs. NDEs: Buddhism's strangest question about death

• Near-death experience (NDE)
• Dr. Raymond Moody wrote Life After Life: A Groundbreaking Exploration of Near-Death Experiences and the Transformative Insights into the Afterlife, Backed by Scientific Study and Personal Testimonies
• Dr. Ian Stevenson
• Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: stages of human death
• Dr. Helen Wambach does early science in Reliving Past Lives: The Evidence Under Hypnosis
• If there is no permanent "self," what is there then?
• Saṃsāra is not Nirvana, but is to say so helpful?
• What is Liberation (Moksha) but Awakening to the Truth that this was all a Dream (Maya)?
• Death (marana) is death because it is immediately followed by rebirth; there is no space in between, as the Bardo is misunderstood to be, because it will not be another human rebirth next
• At the instant of death, in that submoment, what was a human life is lost, the impersonal process of consciousness relinks and rearises according to karma in a new form. It is neither a new existence nor the same as the one before, and this is confusing. Identity clings. But just as it was impersonal before, it is impersonal still, and the process (patisandhi in samsara) rolls on. Samsara is the "continued wandering on" and its detailed process the Buddha made known in the Abhidhamma, how cittas (mind moments) and impuslions (javanas) produce their results (vipaka and phala), and a "being" (which is really always a becoming) is unaware and just carried on...

Bhikkhu Bodhi: Selfless Dependent Origination

(Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies) Dependent Origination and Selflessness in Pali tradition: Bhikkhu Bodhi

• American Theravada scholar-monk Bhikkhu Bodhi
• Bhikkhu Bodhi, did the Buddha say there's NO self?
• Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies

• 

  Tibetan Vajrayana is a Mahayana school

  Nagarjuna: Nāgārjuna (from Sanskrit Nāga + Arjuna, Chinese Lóngshù 龍樹, Tibetan Klu sgrub); circa 150 – c. 250 CE) was a philosopher and Mahāyāna Buddhist monk from South India. He is considered the founder of the Madhyamaka (Middle Way) school [2, 3]. He is widely considered to be the most important Buddhist philosopher after the Buddha himself [4, 3]. Indeed, at least in Tibetan Buddhism, he is called the "second Buddha" [5]. He was a well-known defender of the new Mahāyāna movement. His treatises (śāstras) are the foundational texts of a school of Buddhist philosophy known as the teaching of emptiness (Śūnyatā-vāda) or Middle Way School of Madhyamaka...
• ABOVE: Nagarjuna statue in Elista, Kalmykia, Europe, Russia: Великий учитель Нагарджуна. Буддийский храм «Золотая обитель Будды Шакьямуни». Элиста

Indian monk and teacher Nagarjuna with 84 mahasiddha (wikipedia)

What is the True Nature of Existence?

Talk 3. The True Nature of Existence | Bhikkhu Bodhi (The Buddha's Teaching: As It is, 1981)

Taoism is NOT Buddhism: 4 differences

(Tao Temple) China's Taoism vs. India's Buddhism explained: 4 differences that really matter

(Tao Temple) ZEN: What happens when Taoism and Buddhism collide?

Reality comes before thought (podcast)

(Buddhism Podcast) Reality before thought: Buddhism on seeing things as they really are

We believe we are experiencing reality. But by the time we notice anything — a sound, a face, a feeling — the mind has already named it, judged it, labelled it, and wrapped it in a story.

The Buddha traced this [nearly automatic] process with extraordinary precision, showing how a single moment of sensory contact explodes into an entire world of speculations, fears, and suffering.

He also showed where the stifling chain can be broken — and what remains when we stop adding to, embellishing, and distorting what is already here.

This teaching changed Bāhiya of the Barkcloth's life in a single breath, as he achieved enlightenment more quickly than anyone in the recorded history of Buddhism, having heard a single stanza from the Buddha.

It might change the way we see our own "reality."

• 00:00 - The question that stops the mind
• 03:47 - The trap: searching for a pure reality behind thought
• 07:27 - So what is actually happening?
• 13:29 - Seeing clearly: the space where freedom lives
• 19:08 - The teaching to Bāhiya: the ultimate answer
• 25:52 - The lesson that changes everything
• Reality Before Thought: Buddhism on Seeing Things as They Are

Zen's Bodhidharma on the ONE method

The ONE practice that contains every spiritual method | Bodhidharma's breakthrough sermon

(ECHOES OF LOST KNOWLEDGE) April 17, 2026: What if one single practice contained every other spiritual method within it?

In this final chapter of the series, the First Zen Patriarch Bodhidharma [from India] reveals the most essential teaching of his entire lineage — and it begins with beholding the mind.

 

This video is a direct transmission of Buddhist Wisdom that cuts through centuries of misunderstanding about what spiritual practice truly means.

Discover why temples, rituals, chanting, and good deeds alone cannot free us — and what actually can.

In this sermon, Bodhidharma teaches

→ The single method that contains all other methods

→ The three hidden poisons (greed, anger, delusion) — and how they silently run our life

→ The six "thieves" operating through our own senses, robbing us of peace every day

→ Why "three asankhya kalpas [aeons of indeterminate length]" of hardship is not what most people think

→ The true meaning of the six perfections (paramitas), the three sets of precepts, and invoking the Buddha

→ How to behold our own mind and free ourselves from suffering — in this very lifetime.

This is not a lecture. This is Buddhist Wisdom spoken directly — clear, unfiltered, and as alive today as it was 1,500 years ago.

📌 THIS SERIES

• Chapter 1 — Blood Stream Sermon (watch first)
• Chapter 2 — Wake-Up Sermon
• Chapter 3 — Breakthrough Sermon (you are here)

🔍 TOPICS COVERED

• Bodhidharma teachings | Breakthrough Sermon | Beholding the mind | Three Poisons in Buddhism | Six Perfections (paramitas) explained | Buddha Nature | Zen Buddhism | Buddhist Wisdom for modern life | First Zen Patriarch | Liberation from suffering | Three sets of precepts | Six thieves of the mind | Enlightenment teachings
• Bodhidharma: between myth and reality (Penglai Martial Arts)

Every week, this channel brings rare Buddhist Wisdom drawn from the original [Mahayana] teachings of the great masters — Bodhidharma, Bankei, Linji Yixuan, and the earliest Zen patriarchs. If the ancient path to liberation is what one are looking for [that person might try Theravada, a back-to-basics Buddhist movement that holds the teachings of the historical Buddha in the highest esteem over subsequent Mahayana interpretations and apocryphal inclusions, distortions, and additions], subscribe and turn on notifications to never miss a teaching.

This video is best experienced in a quiet space, and with full attention. #BuddhistWisdom #Bodhidharma #ZenBuddhism. How this was made: auto-dubbed and audio tracks for some languages were automatically generated.

CIA/ISI's Taliban blew up Bamiyan Buddhas

(The Liberator) They blew up Buddha statues...and proved Buddhism right

• ISI: Inter-Services Intelligence of Pakistan
• CIA: Central Intelligence Agency (multinational, mostly serving Israel while stationed in USA)
• Buddhas of Bamiyan
• Buddhism in Afghanistan
• Buddhism in Central Asia
• The Scythians (or Sakas)

Do all Teachers realize the same thing?

(Finding Meaning Project) They all discovered the same thing?

What are 'zen,' 'Zen,' and 'Nirvana'?

What is "zen" (lowercase)?

This is very easy to answer. In Japanese zen literally means "meditation" in the sense of "absorption" (Pali jhana, Sanskrit dhyana, Chinese chan or channa, Vietnamese thiền, Korean sŏn or seon, and Japanese zen). Absorptions are progressive states of stillness (samadhi), misleadingly translated as "concentration."

The connotation of this rendering is struggle, force, and effort, whereas "absorption" is the result of persistent balanced effort (sādhanā practice) but itself is effortless: It is not accomplished by "muscling" or "over-efforting" but rather by "letting go" and no longer "clinging" to things.

Absorption is a natural state of enhanced awareness because of the purification and intensification of consciousness, which is usually scattered, distracted, and beset by the Five Hindrances.

Through persistent, steady, calm practice these obstructions are replaced by the Five Factors of Absorption (jhana'anga. "limbs of absorption"), detached tranquility, dispassionate observation, and mindful looking on or objective witnessing or simply watching, at first accompanied by a sort of "bliss" (piti, rapture, uplift, joy, enthusiasm, zeal), "happiness" (sukha), and "contentment" (santosha).

What is Zen (uppercase)?

Don't overthink definitions (like Wisdom Quarterly's Dharma editor does), okay?

.

Bodhidharma, South Indian monk in China

"Zen" with a capital Z is a different story, for it may refer to the entire history and set of practices in the Japanese Mahayana Chan School originating in China, having spread to Korea and other parts of Asia and now the world.

Perplexing discussions of "emptiness" (shunyata) and "suchness" (tathātā) are more easily understood in the older texts of the Theravada.

The Wheel of the Dharma (8 spokes)

Thera-vada is the "Teaching of the Elders," who are the enlightened direct disciples of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni, the "Sage of the Sakas" or the Indo-Scythians of ancient Gandhara, one of the Angas.

In this Buddhist school, these terms refer to the "impersonal" (egoless) nature of all phenomena, particularly the Five Aggregates clung to as "Self" in the Heart Sutra, and the Dependent Origination (conditioned co-genesis) of all composite "things" (dhammas, phenomena).

Yin yang, Buddhist or Taoist?

Of course, as much as one Buddhist school might influence or explicate another, Zen (Chan) is part of the Mahayana movement, a later "reformed" rather than a back-to-basics "orthodox" movement like Theravada. Zen is so thoroughly blended and saturated with Taoism (and to a lesser extent Chinese Confucianism and Japanese Shinto) that most of what is pondered and assumed to be "Buddhist" is strictly Taoist in nature. All the fun of Zen is more related to Lao Tzu (and later Hinduism, Tantra, and Vajrayana) than the historical Buddha's Teachings. One need only listen to Alan Watts to realize that.

Nirvana: As It Is (Bhikku Bodhi)

The scholarly evidence presented by American Theravada Bhikkhu Bodhi

 

What is NIRVANA?

 

What are those "things"? They are everything other than the only compact (noncomposite) item, the sole unconditioned element, which is called nirvana (Pali nibbana).

Nirvana, as our habitual logic might compel us to conclude, is not nothingness. Rather, it is the end of:

• all suffering/disappointment (dukkha, pain)
• delusion/ignorance (regarding ultimate things)
• further rebirth (in the "continued wandering on" of miserable samsara).

Nirvana is:

• the Deathless (Amata, Amrita, ambrosia)
• the unconditioned element
• the real (not marked by the Three Characteristics of all conditioned states)
• the peaceful, blissful, rest.

For anyone who's convinced that the Buddha never had anything to say about nirvana, there is this lovely description describing the indescribable, almost capturing the ineffable, or seeming to put words to that which is really beyond words.

These words are said as a corrective for everyone making the massive mistake of concluding that nirvana has to mean "annihilation, nothingness, non-existence, or the void," a pernicious wrong view. 

Could anyone ever draw what can't be imagined?

THE BUDDHA: “There is, O meditators, an unborn, unoriginated, uncreated, unformed. Were there not, O meditators, this unborn, unoriginated, uncreated, unformed, there would be no escape from the world of the born, originated, created, formed. But since, O meditators, there is an unborn, unoriginated, uncreated, and unformed, there is an escape from the born, originated, created, formed.”

Anyone not yet convinced that the Deathless is not Eternal Life (but perhaps closer to the Ancient Greek term mistranslated as such, aion, as spoken of by the wise Gnostics) and the Unconditioned is just not like the conditioned (all those composite things utterly dependent on causes and conditions), the Buddha said more:

“Truly, there is a realm, where there is neither solid, nor fluid, neither heat, nor motion, neither this world, nor any other world, neither sun nor moon. This I call neither arising, nor passing away, neither standing still, nor being born, nor dying. There is neither foothold, nor development, nor any basis. This is the end of suffering" (Ud. VIII. 1 - The Immutable).

• Does the Ancient Greek word Aion mean eternity? | Tommy Redmon
• Strong's Greek: 165. αἰών (aión) -- age, eternity, world, forever, everlasting
• How long is an "aeon" or "ion" (kalpa, "age") in India?

The end of all suffering: nirvana

Dhr. Seven (ed.) based on John Ireland (trans), Nibbāna Sutta: Parinibbana (1)

To walk the path of peace brings bliss.

Thus have I heard. At one time the Buddha was staying near Savatthi in Jeta's Grove at Anathapindika's monastery.

On that occasion he was instructing, rousing, inspiring, and gladdening the meditators with a Dhamma talk connected with NIRVANA, and those meditators, being receptive and attentive and gathering their whole mind, were intent on listening to teaching. Then, on realizing the significance, the Buddha delivered this inspired utterance:

What would such a timeless place be like?

"Meditators, there is that base where there is no earth, no water, no fire, no air [the Four Elements]; no base consisting of the infinity of space, no base consisting of the infinity of consciousness, no base consisting of nothingness, no base consisting of neither-perception-nor-non-perception [the Four Immaterial Absorptions]; neither this world nor another world nor both; neither sun nor moon. Here, meditators, I declare, there is no coming, no going, no staying, no ceasing, no rising. Not fixed, not movable, it has no support. Just this is the end of suffering" (Udana 8.1).

This counterintuitive Teaching is for the wise.

What could this sutra mean? It is clearly stating that there is something beyond the beyond -- beyond the "universe" that is the 31 Planes of Existence, which is divided into three spheres (lokas): our sensual sphere, the heavenly fine-material sphere, and the incomprehensible immaterial sphere. They are increasingly subtle until they peter out into an even more sublime situation where there is not even that which was already incomprehensible. It does not matter that it is incomprehensible BECAUSE it is experienceable, personally verifiable, a truth attainable here and now, not in another rebirth (in heaven or otherwise), not in an afterlife, but here and now in this very life. So nirvana should be embraced as practical, excellent, and worthy of knowing-and-seeing directly, and not dismissed as theoretical or unknowable. Let's look at the original Pali canon wording:

Paṭhama-nibbāna-suttaṃ

1. Evaṃ me sutaṃ: ekaṃ samayaṃ bhagavā sāvatthiyaṃ viharati jetavane anāthapiṇḍikassa ārāme. Tena kakho pana samayena bhagavā bhikkū nibbānapaṭisaṃyuttāya dhammiyā kathāya sandasseti samādapeti samuttejeti sampahaṃseti. Te ca bikkū aṭṭhi katvā [1] manasi katvāsabbaṃ cetaso [2] samannāharatvā ohitasotā dhammaṃ suṇanti.

2. Atha kho bhagavā etamattaṃ viditvā tāyaṃ velāyaṃ imaṃ udānaṃ udānesi: - "Atti bhikkave, tadāyatanaṃ, yattha neva paṭhavi, na āpo, na tejo, na vāyo, na ākāsānañcāyatanaṃ, na viññānañcāyatanaṃ, na ākiñcaññāyatanaṃ, na nevasaññānāsaññāyatanaṃ, nāyaṃ loko, na paraloko, na ubho candimasuriyā. Tatrāpāhaṃ bhikkhave, neva āgatiṃ vadāmi, na gatiṃ, na ṭhitiṃ, na cutiṃ, na upapattiṃ. Appatiṭṭhaṃ appavattaṃ anārammaṇamevetaṃ. Esevanto dukkhassā"ti.

• Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly edited by Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly