Practice Library

Not-self (anatta)

8 teachings in the library are about this.

• Guided Meditation - Looking for the Inherently Existing I David Oromith · 22 minutes · recorded June 11, 2024

  The sense of I is picked out first: not the hands and not the thoughts, but the one who feels happy when praised and offended when insulted, central, fixed, standing apart. If it exists it should be findable, so the body is checked part by part, arm, leg, head, then the whole, then the mind, thought, feeling, memory, all of it changing. What turns up is only parts, causes and labels. It closes resting in whatever calm comes of that.

• Guided Meditation - Open Presence, Approached Through the Buddha's Words to Bahiya Lama Alan · 25 minutes

  Lama Alan Wallace leads you through the Buddha's instruction to Bahiya, taking first the visual field, then sounds, then tactile sensations, then the movements of the mind, and in each one letting the seen be just the seen. You observe appearances arising in space with no outside, no inside and no owner. Like a bale of hay whose cord is cut, your awareness then unravels in all directions into open presence, sustained in silence.

• Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness for a Loved One, Asking What They Long For Lama Alan · 25 minutes

  Lama Alan asks you to bring to mind one person you hold dear and to attend closely to what they long for: what obstructs their happiness, and how they picture it. With each out breath you send the breath of loving kindness, wishing them free of every encumbrance and imagining them realising their heart's desire. The session then closes resting within the field of your own body, present to sensation without grasping.

• Guided Meditation - Open Awareness of the Six Senses, Noting Patterns of Causality Lama Alan · 22 minutes

  You open your awareness to all six sense fields and rest there without distraction or grasping. Rather than simply noting what arises, Lama Alan invites a wider view, watching how one appearance gives rise to another, a thought to an emotion, a sensation to a thought. There is no mechanism to find, only patterns of dependence. You let the will stay passive, taking no ownership, and the session continues in silence.

• Guided Meditation - Mindfulness of Feeling Tone Across the Five Senses Lama Alan · 23 minutes

  Lama Alan opens your awareness to the five physical senses, sight, sound, smell, taste and touch, resting in bare attention with the mental domain set aside. The practice then moves to the second application of mindfulness: not the sensations but the feeling tone that comes with them, pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. When an urge to move arises you stay still and study the discomfort behind it. You end by asking whether these feelings are in any way yours.

• Guided Meditation - The Three Marks of Existence, from Recollection to Direct Inquiry Lama Alan · 13 minutes

  Lama Alan begins with a review of your own past: times you held something fleeting as though it were durable, took a person or place to be the true source of your happiness, or grasped what is not yours as I and mine. You then turn to the space of the mind and put the same three questions to experience. Is anything here unchanging? Is any appearance a real well of happiness or suffering? Does anything carry the mark of I?

• Guided Meditation - Vipashyana, Searching the Mind for Shape, Size and Location Lama Alan · 24 minutes

  With the body settled and your eyes partly open, Lama Alan asks you to place your mind in the space before you, then look for whatever it was you placed. Is there a single entity that thinks, remembers and perceives? Is it the same from moment to moment? The inquiry narrows to one question: if the mind exists it must have characteristics, so does it have shape, size or location? It ends with you still searching, in silence.

• Guided Meditation - Vipashyana, Searching for the Mind That Observes Lama Alan · 24 minutes

  Lama Alan turns awareness back on itself and asks what the mind actually is. Having directed attention to the space of the body, you invert it and inspect whatever was doing the directing. Does the mind have a shape, a size, a colour, a location? Set it in motion when it is too still to see. You watch states of mind arise and dissolve, and close on the question: who or what are you?

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