Use code SUMMERPRACTICE for a 25% discount on all On Demand Courses through August 31.

Self and Not-Self: Who (What) are You?

With Eugene Cash recorded on October 25, 2020.

Found our teachings useful? Help us continue our work and support your teachers with a donation. Here’s how.

This talk explores classic Buddhist teachings about anatta: self and not-self as well highlighting how other traditions and modalities recognized self and what it means to be free from self. We investigate self and not-self through spiritual, poetic cultural and personal perspectives.

Listen to the audio version below, or click here to download the mp3.

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • A Relational Dhamma Integrates the Arahat and Bodhisattva Visions of the Buddhist Path (and why this matters to our living Dhamma path)

    Gregory writes: “The early Buddhist vision of the arahat ideal is sometimes taken to imply that individual awakening is the sole aim of the Path whereas the later Buddhist vision of the bodhisattva ideal centers on the liberation of all beings. The gap between practice aimed at solitary awakening and practice aimed at liberation of…

    Read More

  • Zohar Lavie

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Zohar Lavie – Week of July 5, 2021

    This week’s theme is: The Power of Compassion.

    Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive. – Dalai Lama

    During this week we will explore how compassion informs and supports meditation practice and the deepening of understanding and wisdom. We will practice and inquire into different aspects of this powerful attitude and intention and taste for ourselves the impact it has on ourselves and the world.

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Milla Gregor – Week of 11 November, 2024

    This week’s theme is: Warm Solitude, Beautiful Nature

    There are many ways to be solitary, whether alone or in company. How might we cultivate a warm, friendly solitude? Nature is beautiful, both ‘out there’ and ‘in here’. How might we appreciate and support nature’s beauty? This week we’ll explore these questions together through practice, reflection and experiment.

    Read More

  • The Conscientious Heart: An exploration of Appamada and the Elephant’s Footprint

    We will explore through practice and teachings the importance of “appamada” or heedfulness, conscientiousness, or what Stephen Batchelor has translated as care. Appamada has been called the path to the deathless. ” Just as the footprints of all living beings with legs can be encompassed by the footprint of the elephant, and the elephant’s footprint is…

    Read More

  • Vimalasara Mason-John

    When did you stop breathing?

    We could say that the Buddha was teaching us to breath again. It’s said that the prince Siddhartha was sitting under a Bodhi tree, practicing the anapanasati (the mindfulness of breathing) when he gained enlightenment and became awake, a Buddha. He was aware of the whole experience of breathing. Through breathing he trained the mind…

    Read More

  • Uncertainty, Stability & Love: Everything Comes With Everything

    Life is never only good or only bad, pleasant or unpleasant, comfortable or uncomfortable, just or unjust. Cultivating a wide spacious perspective within the reality of uncertainty gives rise to a bigger capacity to meet our lives more gently, kindly, and clearly, with more stability and more love. Join us as we explore perspectives and practices to…

    Read More

  • Lisa Ernst

    How to Recharge Your Practice with a Tried and True Inquiry

    Even if you’ve been meditating for years, you probably encounter old patterns that seem impervious to your mindful awareness. Maybe at times these patterns are dormant, but during challenging moments they reappear and perhaps feel intractable. In this session we’ll explore inquiry practices that can help interrupt and disentangle the mind from its habitual “stuck”…

    Read More