What it is and what it is not
The Not-self doctrine was the second discourse expounded by Gautama the Buddha after his Enlightenment. It is the principle sine qua non that distinguishes Buddhism from other religious doctrines, as well as the most obscure and controversial.
The question is whether there is a real person (being) that exists as the self or whether the self is only an illusion with no abiding individual existence. Here we will see that the problem lies with the determination of the self.
Not-self is the translation of the term anatta from Pali, a language similar to what was spoken by the original Buddha, Siddhartha Gotama. It is related to anatman, a term used by the Mahayana tradition to express Emptiness (or sunyata).
The word atman (meaning breath) comes from Sanskrit (the liturgical language of Hinduism) and refers to the essence of human being which does not change with the aging body or death, like the soul.
The Buddha rejected the idea of a soul (the atman), as an everlasting self, simply because it could not be perceived: it could not be found. Nevertheless, when asked directly, he never confirmed or denied the existence of the self. And that should have been sufficient to make his point.
As a consequence, he expounded the Anatta-lakkhana Sutta (the Discourse on the Not-self Doctrine):
“Bhikkhus, form is not-self. Were form self, then this form would not lead to affliction, and one could have it of form: ‘Let my form be thus, let my form be not thus…
“Bhikkhus, feeling is not-self…
“Bhikkhus, perception is not-self…
“Bhikkhus, determinations are not-self…
“Bhikkhus, consciousness is not self. Were consciousness self, then this consciousness would not lead to affliction, and one could have it of consciousness: ‘Let my consciousness be thus, let my consciousness be not thus… (SN 22.59)
The doctrine has since then been largely interpreted as a No-self doctrine, as a metaphysical argument. This creating much confusion and obscurity as to whether there is any being that suffers or is Enlightened.
That form is not self is not complicated to grasp. Form refers to all that is physical or material, particularly the body, which is ever-changing, impermanent. All forms, physical existence, can be easily identified as objects of the perceiving consciousness.
Feeling refers to the contact with the five senses, and also not too difficult to determine as objects of the mind.
Perceptions are what we mentally identify as objects, or what it is (e.g., an apple, a chair), and determinations are ideas (or what we think about an apple), which include memories and emotions.
Although most persons will strongly identify with their thoughts and emotions, it is not particularly challenging to identify these as objects of consciousness that come and go from the mental field.
The problem is consciousness. Because you need another consciousness to know that a consciousness is impermanent. If you propose that consciousness is not self, or not a self, then there must be another consciousness to know this, and then another, to an infinity of consciousnesses, therefore an absurdity.
In other words, you cannot observe your own consciousness as impermanent.
Consciousness is not-self must refer to the consciousness of things, or contact-consciousness. The Buddha used the same term in his discourse on dependent origination (Paticca-samuppada-vibhanga Sutta):
From the cessation of fabrications comes the cessation of consciousness. From the cessation of consciousness comes the cessation of name-&-form. From the cessation of name-&-form comes the cessation of the six sense media. From the cessation of the six sense media comes the cessation of contact. (SN 12.2)
Here the cessation of consciousness cannot be the end of awareness but the cessation of thought formation.
Most pundits interpreted this doctrine as meaning that there are merely interdependent phenomena, and no real person or being (the self) as the perceiver of the phenomena, or a No-self doctrine. But you need a consciousness to connect these phenomena to have perceptions and thoughts. Otherwise, you have an unconsciousness, or no self-consciousness, like the consciousness of animals.
Here is where Existentialism clarifies the problem.
The philosopher Emmanuel Kant (b.1724, d.1804) was the first to clearly determine that there is an observing consciousness that ties together the series of thoughts, or experiences, that occur in the mind.
Kant explains in his masterwork Critique of Pure Reason:
No knowledge can take place in us, no connection or unity of one item of knowledge with another, without that unity of consciousness which precedes all data…This pure, original and unchangeable consciousness I shall call transcendental apperception (B144, A108)
This knowing consciousness, this awareness of things, cannot be itself an object of its own awareness:
In like manner, the subject in which the representation of time has its original source cannot thereby determine its own existence in time…(A384)
The Not-self doctrine points negatively to an absolute subjective (individual) awareness. An awareness that is not any of its objects of awareness (not form, perception, feelings, or ideas) but cannot know itself.
The philosopher Jean Paul Sartre (b.1905, d.1980) further elaborated on this idea in his master work Being and Nothingness:
Consciousness is not a special kind of knowledge, called “inner sense” or “self-knowledge” . . . consciousness has no “content”. . . Consciousness is a plenum of existence and this determining of itself by itself is an essential characteristic.
That consciousness is not self must necessarily convey that consciousness is not the objective self.
The self the Buddha is referring to as Not-self is the self that we create with our thoughts, emotions, and physical existence, that is impermanent, but that we use to know ourselves as existing as something.
The consciousness, the mind, that creates the mundane self is not anything that we can think of. It is this pure awareness (consciousness of existing) which becomes evident during meditation, when all objects of consciousness are released as not-the-true-Self (capitalize to indicate the individual knowing awareness).
This is discussed in more detail in the blog of the nature of the subjective consciousness.
Now we can understand why the Buddha refused to discuss the knowing being, the awareness, or the existence of a Self. Because, to describe this true Self would at once make it an object of consciousness and eclipse the realization of pure awareness (and any description would be off the mark anyway).
To determine the individual consciousness as a series of interdependent phenomena, as non-existence, or as an illusion, is only possible in theory (a concept), as it can never be experienced or proven. As Kant often points out:
It is experience alone that can impart reality to our concepts; without this, a concept is only an idea without truth. (B 518, 519)
We can never know what our consciousness is (call it Original Mind, or soul) because we can only know the objects of consciousness. Consciousness is awareness, just pure knowing existence.
What you can appreciate in meditation, when all the objects of the mind are released, is your pure consciousness, your pure individual awareness.
The Not-self doctrine was intended by the Buddha as is simply a method for achieving Enlightenment and not a metaphysical proposition about the nature of existence or of the self.
It is the realization of your absolute subjective consciousness that is Enlightenment:
“Consciousness without feature, without end, luminous all around,
does not partake of the solidity of earth, the liquidity of water, the
radiance of fire, the windiness of wind … nor of the divinity of the devas
… of the brahmās … of the Overlord … or of the Allness of the All.”
~ M 49.25 (The Island, pg. 148)