Not-self Is a Value Judgment
October 16, 2015
When the Buddha taught breath meditation to his son Rahula, he prefaced his teachings with some contemplations that provided groundwork for breath meditation. One of the contemplations is not-self, which may seem surprising because we usually think of the not-self teaching as something designed for the last stages of the path. And it is true that when the Buddha taught people to let go of everything, to learn to identify nothing at all as self, he was speaking largely to people who were on the verge of becoming arahants—people who’d followed the path, all the activities of the path, and now were ready to let go of those activities and any sense of self that lingered around them, to reach a state of mind that was beyond activity.