#type/zk/zettel #a/maturity/seed # [[Why the notion of non-self is so important]] I recently had a discussion with a friend about the notion of non-self. The notion that there is nothing you can call "self" that's separate from everything else. The notion that everything inter-is with everything else. #todo(link to an in depth explanation of non-self) After some back and forth, my friend was kind of seeing my point and even seemed almost ready to accept it. But then he said something along the lines of: but why do we need to care about this, doesn't it make life just seem impersonal and cold, why put so much emphasis on something that seems like a trivial nitpick of how we use language, why take away our individuality, the one thing that makes us human? Those are all very important questions. Understanding and practicing non-self and interbeing are actually very important, and it doesn't make us any less human. So I'll try to address the "why" in this note. If we want to distinguish between self and other (inside and outside, [[Dumb universe, intelligent people|people and universe]], etc. #todo(just mark this as a footnote for yourself)), we have to draw the line somewhere: what counts as "self" and what counts as "other". Drawing this line in the wrong place has consequences for our morals, system of justice, how we treat each other, the ways we solve problems, politics, the environment, and much more. Say there are two people that committed mass shootings. One of them used to be a totally "normal" person, until one day they went out with their guns and committed this horrendous crime. Upon their own death, autopsy revealed that there was a malicious tumor in their brain that was causing the sudden killing impulses and suppressing the part of their brain responsible for empathy. For this person, most modern people would accept that the tumor was (at least partly) responsible for what happened, so that the killer didn't bear the full responsibility themselves. For another shooter, no such anomalies were found in their brain, so the killings were their own volitional actions. Perhaps it was because of their upbringing in a terrible environment that they came to be a mass shooter, perhaps it was their DNA, perhaps their deprived soul, or perhaps a combination. Depending on the where we draw the line between self and other, the resulting judgement of these two people can vary extremely. If we say the tumor is also part of the first shooter's "self", they would take all the blame. If we include the tumor in "other", this person is exempt from moral blame. For the other person, if we say they are responsible for their soul, DNA, and circumstances, they take full responsibility for the shooting. And likely, we would just put them in jail or execute them, and that's the end of the story. If we say the circumstances that caused this person to become a serial killer are not their sole responsibility, we start looking at what else may have gone wrong. If it's only the DNA, there might not be much we can do, but at least we can feel pity for them to be born with such DNA and treat them with compassion even when they are locked up in prison. But it is much more likely that other circumstances were also partly to blame: we see different numbers of mass shootings in different countries and regions. If that's the case, we need to investigate what we can do to improve these circumstances so that we don't keep creating new people that resort to mass shooting. This is an extreme example, but it goes for everything where we assign blame. If we draw the line between self and other in the wrong place, we feel resentment and take actions that don't solve the problem. If we tackle drug abuse by treating addicts as criminals, we fail to see what caused the addiction in the first place, and people will always find other ways to dull their pains. And in the end, nobody is happy: neither the people that give the blame, nor the people that receive it. In reality, there is no line between self and other. Self and other are one and the same thing. This is the notion of non-self and interbeing. Drug addicts and serial killers arise out of unfavorable circumstances. In favorable circumstances, people with the same DNA may have grown up to be exemplary role models, so the drug addicts wouldn't "exist". People and their circumstances inter-are. Without the circumstances the people can't exist, and without the people the circumstances can't exist. If my heart stops working, that's the end of my life. If the sun stops working, that's also the end of my life. When we see that the sun is also our heart and that the world is also our body, we realize that we should take care of the world just as we would take care of our bodies. If our left hand is bleeding, the right hand takes cares of the wound. If part of our society is struggling with addiction, we take care of the wound and try our best not to create more wounds. The right hand doesn't get angry at the left hand for being wounded. In the same way, we should feel compassion for those in unfavorable circumstances, be it their upbringing in a broken household, their twisted DNA, or even their deprived soul. The Buddha once said something among these lines: if you are being hacked into pieces by someone, and you feel even the slightest bit of resentment towards this person, you are not a student of my teachings. If you draw the line somewhere, you might feel resentment for a good friend that wronged you. And in turn, you might treat your friend coldly. After a while, you find out that your friend was going through a very difficult time, and you understand why they treated you the way they did. Suddenly your resentment transforms into compassion, and regret for the way you behaved. This is one reason why understanding is so important. If you don’t draw the line at all, however, you don’t even need to understand your friend’s situation in order to feel compassion for them when they treat you unkindly. Because you have the overarching understanding that there are always circumstances that gave rise to their negative actions. We all have the same basic mind: we just want to live and be happy (or satisfied). What it is that makes us happy may differ for everyone, but at the core we’re all the same. Based on this understanding, we never need to feel resentment, and we can prevent the regret for our own negative actions that would have arisen out of this resentment. If we could base our individual actions, or even better the actions of our whole society in this truth of interbeing and non-self, how much better would that make the world we live in. Living like this does not make us any *less* human. If anything, it makes us more compassionate and more in touch with all the positive attributes we associate with humanity. That's the importance of realizing and embodying this truth. --- Sowed on:: [[2024-11-15|2024-11-15]] Sources:: See also:: Related references:: Additional keywords:: Further reading:: Thich Nhat Hanh flame video, Tim Ferriss Podcast episode with Dr Gabor Mate (298)