The big task or goal of Buddhism is letting go.
There is a chapter in the excellent book Living Dharma by Jack Kornfield. The chapter is about half a page. It makes a simple point. Quoting from the book:
Nothing is worth holding on to.
If you let go of everything … Objects, Concepts, Teachers, Buddha, Self, Senses, Memories, Life, Death, Freedom.
Let go of everything and all suffering will cease. The world will appear in its pristine self-existing nature and you will experience the freedom of the Buddha.
The rest that follows in this book are useful approaches and techniques for learning to let go.
This book is excellent. Link is below. If you are at all interested in Buddhist meditation get a copy. There is a chapter on SN Goenka’s Vipassana also so if you are thinking of doing a Vipassana course this book will be useful.
Living Dharma: Teachings of Twelve Buddhist Masters : Jack Kornfield: Amazon.in: Books
What follows in this article is an approach or a way of looking at yourself and the world that is very helpful in letting go. It is quite advanced level stuff and flies in the face of intuition and common sense. The main concept is something that you might have trouble in accepting – The self does not exist. Or in other words, you do not exist.
I told you it was advanced level stuff.
How will the concept of No-Self (Anatta in Buddhism) make it easier to let go? Well I have described a little of what happens further down this page. But you have to try it out and experience the magic to be really convinced.
If you are happy with some very powerful basic concepts of Advaita Vedanta then stick to my blog below. Ninety percent or more of your problems can be dealt with by following that blog. Link is below:
Anyway I was talking about letting go by changing the way you regard the world and yourself.
How exactly should you look at the world that makes it so easy to let go? And what exactly is meant when I say that the self (or you) do not exist?
I mean that all of us think of ourselves as an entity. Actually it would be truer to think of ourselves as a bundle of activities.
It is like an app on a phone. It seems to exist and it does various things but it is only a bundle of functions that it is programmed to do. Take away these functions or activities and where is the app? It does not exist.
How does this change of perspective help to let go?
Well if I do not exist then how can anyone harm me? Or insult me? How can I die? How can the I (which does not exist) suffer from any misfortune or tragedy?
I have found the practice of telling myself that the self does not exist is particularly useful in letting go of veiled insults that everyone is subject to in society. Also in freeing yourself of the ego (required in Spirituality) it is very useful to tell yourself that the ego is only an appearance. It does not really exist.
What really happens when I identify myself with the ego is that I take a particular mental arising which has manifested and which says or gives me the intuitive impression that I am Nikhil Gangoli doing such and such activity. I take that mental arising to be myself. That mistake caused by a subtle misunderstanding leads to all the suffering that I endure.
Because if I am the ego and the Body-Mind-Sense complex then I am subject to all the misfortunes that the flesh is heir to. Decay and disintegration. Old age, sickness and death. And so on. I can save myself from the delusion that it is happening to me (and it really is not) by not identifying with a mental arising.
I have to just let go of the mental arising that says I am Nikhil Gangoli.
There is much more that can be said and you may be completely confused by this blog but I will end here. If you have any questions or comments just ask.
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