The Swinging Door of Self

Three Marks of Existence: Not-Self Characteristic

In 2006, I took this photo in an abbey ruin in Ireland. It’s a threshold to everything and nothing.

“What we call ‘I’ is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and exhale. It just moves, that is all.” — Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

Who am I? These three little words have been contemplated for millennia by prominent philosophers and psychologists, spiritual teachers, and by us (extra)ordinary folk. It’s a perennial question with innumerable responses. Siddartha’s spiritual quest to investigate and end human suffering resulted in his awakening to the profoundly liberating experience of “not-self.”

The prevailing Hindu belief during the Axial Age when Buddha lived was that Atman existed within each person. This Sanskrit word is akin to the Christian belief in a “soul.” Atman’s a substratum of being that is eternal and is the “agent of actions, possessor of mind and body, and passes from lifetime to lifetime.”¹ Atman is the who that’s pondering this existential question. IMHO, the Buddha’s teaching of the “not-self characteristic” or anatman in Sanskrit (anatta in Pali) was probably one of his most radical teachings then and now. And it’s not such an easy teaching to understand so bear with me as I attempt to clarify as much as I am able to.

Of course we exist! There’s an “I” who’s writing these words and there’s a “you” who’s reading these words. It’s not that there’s no-self as in there’s no person writing this or no person reading these words. It’s just that we don’t exist in the way that we usually perceive ourselves: that is, as separate and unchanging. As Suzuki Roshi so poetically puts it, who we are each moment is a “swinging door” that moves with each inhalation and exhalation.

One way that was helpful for me to more fully understand the “swinging door” I refer to as “Heather” is to replace the noun of “self” with the verb of “selfing.” So I guess I should call myself “Heather-ing” ;>) Although words and phrases often miss the mark, perhaps using “selfing” will remind us that we flash into existence moment, after precious moment. And of course, this is true for all of life whether we’re able to perceive this through our ever-changing sense organs or not.

While we’re switching things up grammatically, let’s replace the interrogative pronoun who in the sentence with its less personal cousin what. Who implies there’s a substantive person asking the question. When I looked up anatman in the Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, one line stood out:

“The Buddha is rigorously against any analysis of phenomena that imputes the reality of a person: when a questioner asks him, ‘Who senses?,’ for example, the Buddha rejects the question as wrongly conceived and reframes it in terms of conditionality, i.e., ‘With what as condition does sensation occur?’ ” [The answer is “sensory contact,” BTW.]

So, with the question what am I? in mind, let’s look at how the Buddha explains this profound teaching in “The Discourse on the Not-self Characteristic” (Anatta-lakkhana Sutta). In this sutra, the Buddha leads five ascetic monks through a series of questions about their bodies and minds. He does this by introducing another profound teaching that breaks down sensory experience into its constituent parts, what the Buddha calls the five skandhas (aggregates or heaps).

Below is a succinct definition of each, however if you want to take a deeper dive, check out the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies list.

1. Form: This is the physical or bodily component of experience.

2. Sensations: This doesn’t refer to emotions, per se, but rather the affective tone of an experience, i.e., whether it’s pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.

3. Perceptions: This heap refers to the continuous process of perception and the identification or naming of things (conceptualization).

4. Mental fabrications: This refers to thoughts and images. There are 52 mental factors that involve volition, choice, and intention. This aggregate is largely responsible for our psycho-emotional personality.

5. Mind Consciousness: This aggregate cannot function without the other aggregates, especially form because it needs a sensate body.

What the ascetics come to realize through Buddha’s skillful questioning is that these aggregates are inconstant, not-self, and subject to decay and stress; that is they realize The Three Marks of Existence. They also come to understand that they are not the owners of the aggregates and therefore not in control of their bodies and minds. The Buddha summarizes the teaching of the Three Marks of Existence in the last paragraph of the sutra:

"Thus, monks, any form (feeling, perception, fabrications, consciousness whatsoever) that is past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near: every form (feeling, perception, fabrications, consciousness whatsoever) is to be seen as it actually is with right discernment as: 'This is not mine. This is not my self. This is not what I am.'

I bolded the last sentence because this is the "right" or "beneficial" view the Buddha instructs us to take toward the five aggregates. This view helps us cultivate dispassion and non-identification with what's arising in the sense doors to alleviate suffering.

Although these aggregates are sometimes referred to in the Pali canon as “self-clinging,” they are inherently free from clinging. As the Buddha discovered through many years of concentrated effort, these aggregates are AFFECTED by clinging. “Clinging” is defined in the Pali canon as “desire and lust” in relation to the aggregates. If we think about it, how could the body itself cling to any arising sensory experience? ²

However, there’s an aspect of human consciousness that grasps onto arising phenomena and creates the story of “me.” Because it takes a tremendously stable, concentrated body-mind to perceive discrete flashes of consciousness, most of us are unable to experience this process of becoming a self-ing. And, this is always why it’s helpful to maintain a daily meditation routine to begin to “open the hand of thought.”³

Phenomena arise based on unfathomable causes and conditions over which we have no control—though we often think we do. When we impute a solid sense of "I" onto transient, impersonal, psycho-physical functions, then suffering arises. For me it’s helpful to remember: selfing=suffering. The more intense the suffering, the deeper the identification or story of “me” is. When grasping (identification) falls away, what remains is just the bare aggregates experiencing arising phenomena, which persist in flux and fade away.

“As long as we have an idea of self, karma has an object to work on, so the best way, is to make karma work on the voidness of space. If we have no idea of self, karma doesn’t know what to do — ‘Ohhh, where is my partner, where is my friend?’ ” Suzuki Roshi, Not Always So

Practicing meditation and studying the teachings of the ancestors can assist us in having an embodied and liberating experiences of the “swinging door” of self.

1. Buswell Jr., Robert E. and Lopez Jr., Donald S. The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism. Princeton & Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2014.

2. Bhikku Anālayo. Excursions into the Thought-World of the Pāli Discourses. Onalaska, WA, Pariyatti Publishing, 2012.

3. Uchiyma, Kōshō. Opening the Hand of Thought. Boston, Wisdom Publications, 2004.