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Examples

  • But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self.

    Where's the show? John Myles Aavedal 2010

  • It employs the Three Characteristics — of inconstancy, stress, and not-self — not as abstract statements about existence, but as inducement for mastering those skills and as guidelines for measuring your progress along the way.

    All About Change by Thanissaro Bhikkhu William Harryman 2009

  • By carefully examining them in light of their Three Characteristics — to see exactly how they're inconstant, stressful, and not-self — you become less inclined to keep on producing and consuming them.

    All About Change by Thanissaro Bhikkhu William Harryman 2009

  • Inevitably, then, his way of expressing the dharma was a blend of the truly new for example, the teachings about anatta, or "not-self," and paticca-samuppada, or "dependent origination" and the conventional religious thought of his time.

    David Loy - Rethinking Karma William Harryman 2009

  • Their original logic — "Whatever is inconstant is stressful; whatever is stressful is not-self" — leaves open the possibility that whatever is constant could be (1) easeful and (2) self.

    All About Change by Thanissaro Bhikkhu William Harryman 2009

  • When we add the Buddhist teaching about not-self—in contemporary terms, that one's sense of self is a mental construct—we can see that karma is not something the self has; rather, karma is what the sense of self is, and what the sense of self is changes according to one's conscious choices.

    David Loy - Rethinking Karma William Harryman 2009

  • I don't think this interpretation is wrong, but I think the poem (also) is deeper and more literal than that, reflecting what Buddhists call anatta, "not-self," the discovery that the personal self that we usually call "me" has no more substantial existence than the moon reflected on the surface of a lake.

    Dean Sluyter: Emily Dickinson and the Buddha vs. the WWF 2009

  • And because all mind-objects are abandoned in this happiness, questions of constant or inconstant, stress or ease, self or not-self are no longer an issue.

    All About Change by Thanissaro Bhikkhu William Harryman 2009

  • As the early texts state repeatedly, if something is anicca then the other two characteristics automatically follow: it's dukkha (stressful) and anatta (not-self), i.e., not worthy to be claimed as me or mine.

    All About Change by Thanissaro Bhikkhu William Harryman 2009

  • To go beyond space and time, you have to go beyond fabricating the producing and consuming self, which is why the concluding insight of the path is: "All dhammas" — constant or not — "are not-self."

    All About Change by Thanissaro Bhikkhu William Harryman 2009

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