An Ultimately Heraclitan Buddha

Although ultimately a Heraclitan answer, no-self points to the impermanence and transience of all that may be experienced; even the qualia of your sense experience can vary depending on your state of health, or as an effect of taking psycho-active substances; or, for that matter, the impermanence of conciousness itself, which can be turned on or off by accident, as in coma, or by the use of anaesthesia; or can be fractured into the unintelligible kaleidoscope and meaninglessness of dementia.

But it may also get you to dig deeper, to see the whole “you” package as no more than a temporary phase that is to be passed through, perhaps to be replaced by another “you” at some other time or place. It is in part a mind-trick to lend plausibility to the doctrine of re-incarnation; but then, re-incarnation is a doctrine that lends plausibility to the belief in a "self".

Strip away everything until your "Buddha-nature" stands naked – but then know that Buddha-nature is also an illusion and strip that way too. 

No-mind is in itself just as phantasmal as mind: the ultimate deconstruction. 

Self, no-self, no no-self, no "self" at all, no "no-self" at all, just words being stretched over the moment like a very inadequate pair of underpants. Do us all a favour and take them off, or, on second thoughts, keep them on. 

Now, having totally undressed yourself and discovered that you are not your cloths, get dressed again in your being, in your meanings, in your culture.

Something almost tangible

Priestie, well, that is the nickname we have given him, he is an x-catholic priest, now married, divorced, and, who knows, maybe in a relationship again, but all of that is not the point. The point was a conversation we had. He pops in now and again, just for a chat. On this particular occasion the subject turned to death, which as a catholic priest he had to witness quite a number of times - part of the duties of the job, administering the last rites and similar stuff. He did say there was a strange beauty in the moments of death. First the light going out of the eyes, then something slipping downward across the face and on, as if some force was leaving the body, something almost tangible, almost a thing in itself that was shedding the body. He said it gave him hope.

Thought I would share that with you.