Contemporary Buddhism, 2017

VOL. 18, NO. 1, 21–36

https://doi.org/10.1080/14639947.2017.1297344

THE SELF-EFFACING BUDDHIST: NO(T)-SELF

IN EARLY BUDDHISM AND CONTEMPLATIVE
NEUROSCIENCE
Paul Verhaeghen 
School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

ABSTRACT
One of the core teachings of Buddhism is the doctrine of anattā. I argue that
there is good evidence that anattā as understood in early Buddhism should be
viewed less as a doctrine and a metaphysical pronouncement (‘no-Self’) than as
a soteriological claim (‘not-self’) – an appeal and a method to achieve, or move
progressively closer to, liberation. This view opens up anattā to empirical scrutiny
– does un-selfing, as an act, lead to liberation? Neuroimaging data collected on
Buddhist or Buddhism-inspired meditators show interesting correspondences with
this view of not-self as a possibly soteriological strategy. First, meditation leads to
a quieting of the narrative self. Second, this quieting of the narrative self seems
to lead to at least momentary increases in well-being. Third, this process can be
learned, and seems to be already underway after a mere 40 hours of experience.
Finally, very highly accomplished meditators seem to be able to tune down even
the core self and truly experience anattā, including an apparent subduing of
reflexive awareness.

One of the core teachings of Buddhism is the doctrine of anattā, variably trans-
lated as ‘no-self’, ‘not-self’, or even ‘no-soul’. Anattā, together with dukkha (suffer-
ing, unsatisfactoriness) and anicca (impermanence) is one of the three hallmarks
of existence, and the opposing view, that there is a self or Self (attā, or ātman
in Sanskrit; I reserve the capital-S Self for the notion that this self is substantial
and independent of the person1) is one of the fetters abandoned at stream
entry (e.g. Harvey 2013).
This element of the teachings has recently received a lot of attention within
philosophical circles – in the past decade alone, at least four books have
appeared that focused on the question of self and/or no-self with a heavy or
exclusive emphasis on Buddhism (Albahari 2006; Ganeri 2012b; Kuznetsova,
Ganeri, and Ram-Prasad 2012; Siderits, Thompson, and Zahavi 2011). Strikingly,

CONTACT  Paul Verhaeghen  Verhaeghen@gatech.edu

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
22   P. VERHAEGHEN

much of the debate within these tomes focuses on the metaphysics of the ques-
tion. There are two reasons why this is striking.
First, and grossly oversimplifying, the consensus in Western philosophy (for
an overview, see, e.g. Schlicht forthcoming) seems to be that the view on the
Self as an independent, immaterial, thinking thing was put to rest almost right
after Descartes posited it. What has come after, especially within the phenom-
enological and analytical traditions, has been an account of the sense of self,
and to what extent the self gleaned from the sense of self can be extended into
ontology; the texts speak of lower case selves that are thicker or thinner, pearly,
minimal, narrative-only and so forth. The favoured strategy appears to be, as
Zahavi puts it, to ‘spell out what a self is, and after having defined it … then
proceed to deny its existence’ (2011, 66). In other words, within the Western
(secular) philosophical tradition, the idea that there is no substantial Self (the
idea that the Buddha assumedly rejected, see below) has a long history and
virtually no detractors.
Second, the Buddha, as a philosopher, was not particularly metaphysically
inclined. Would he recognise himself and his teachings in the ongoing discus-
sions? In this essay, I will be looking at the concept of anattā by staying close
to the roots of the tradition: What exactly is this Self that the Buddha (and early
Buddhism) denied existence, and on what grounds did he expel it from polite
(or at least dhamma-oriented) conversation? My conclusion (leaning heavily
on Albahari 2002, 2006; and Thanissaro 2012) will be – contra the amount of
attention that has been devoted to metaphysics in this field – that, with regard
to the Self, the Buddha seemed more interested in soteriology than metaphysics.
I will argue that this emphasis opens the door to empirical inquiry, and so I will
end – unusual for the field – by tracing some of this soteriological work as it has
been examined in the recent neuroscientific/neurophenomenological literature.

Arguing anattā: no self

The doctrine of no-self/not-self – anattā – is argued in quite a few places in the
Pāli Canon. Perhaps the clearest passage is in the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta (SN
22.59), traditionally considered to be the Buddha’s second discourse (the first
expounds the Four Noble Truths), and by that virtue occupying a central place
in the tradition.
In this sutta the Buddha unfolds two arguments, both espousing a mereolog-
ical (i.e. part-whole) view. The main question the Buddha seems to answer – or is
concerned with – in this sutta is ‘Where is this so-called Self located?’ His answer
is: Clearly not in the kandhas (i.e. the five ‘aggregates’ that make up a person).
The Buddha states two reasons why the kandhas cannot be a/the Self. The first
is that none of the kandhas can be said to be in control over itself (Collins 1982;
formulation) or – more broadly – that each of the kandhas is denied agency
(Albahari 2006; reading; see Dennett 1991; Flanagan 1992; Strawson 1997, for
 CONTEMPORARY BUDDHISM   23

contemporary readings on agency and/or control as aspects of the purported

Self ):
Bhikkhus, [consciousness] is not self. Were [consciousness]2 self, then this [con-
sciousness] would not lead to affliction, and one could have it of [consciousness]:
‘Let my [consciousness] be thus, let my [consciousness] be not thus.’ And since
[consciousness] is not-self, so it leads to affliction, and none can have it of [con-
sciousness]: ‘Let my [consciousness] be thus, let my [consciousness] be not thus.’
The second argument holds that none of kandhas is permanent or enduring; in
the Buddhist tradition, this argument is typically considered the more important
of the two, because it is repeated more often throughout the Canon (Wynne
2009a; endurance or permanence over time as a hallmark of the Self has a
long history in Western thought; e.g. Hume 1739; James 1890; Locke 1690).
The Buddha also adds a secondary argument: The kandhas, because of their
impermanence, are dukkha3; by this move, he unites all three hallmarks of exist-
ence in this teaching:
‘Is consciousness permanent or impermanent?’ – ‘Impermanent, venerable sir.’ –
‘Now is what is impermanent pleasant or painful?’ – ‘Painful, venerable sir.’ – ‘Now
is what is impermanent, what is painful since subject to change, fit to be regarded
thus: ‘This is mine, this is I, this is my self?’ – ‘No, venerable sir.’
Both of the Buddha’s arguments are fundamentally reductionist – the Self is
reduced to the kandhas; these clearly cannot carry the weight, and thus cause
the Self to collapse.4
Much has been made of the resemblance between the Buddha’s second
argument and David Hume’s deconstruction of the Self, a few millennia later5
(e.g. Gethin 1998; Rāhula 1996; Varela Thompson, and Rosch 1991). Hume uses
the term ‘bundle’ to designate the Self; hence his theory – and in the mind of
many the Buddha’s as well – has been labelled a bundle theory): The self is noth-
ing more than a bundle of fleeting mental phenomena (thoughts, emotions,
sense impressions, …) whose interactions give the impression that there is a
unified perspective that observes them. The Self is, in other words, ontologically
speaking a post hoc fabrication (Dreyfus 2011), a fiction (ibidem), or an illusion
(Albahari 2006), created ‘to account for the complexity and continuity of imper-
sonal and anonymous elements’ (Dreyfus, 133).
The Buddha’s reductionist stance is taken further by the author(s) of the
Milindapañha (part of the Burmese, but not the Thai or Sri Lankan Pāli Canon).
In this text, the monk Nāgasena instructs King Milinda on the teaching of anattā.
Nāgasena asked, ‘How did you come here – on foot, or in a vehicle?’ ‘In a chariot.’
‘Then tell me, what is the chariot6? Is the pole the chariot?’ ‘No,’ replied the King.
‘Or the axle, wheels, frame, reins, yoke, spokes, or whip?’ ‘None of these things is
the chariot,’ the King replied. ‘Taking the separate parts all together and laying
them down on the ground, side by side – is this the chariot?’ ‘No again,’ said the
King. ‘Then is the chariot something separate from all its parts?’ ‘No, your rever-
ence.’‘Then for all my asking,’ concluded Nāgasena, ‘I can find no chariot. The word
‘chariot’ is a mere sound.7
24   P. VERHAEGHEN

Here, the reductionist sweep verges – at first blush – on the absurd: Through
a logical sleight of hand, Nāgasena has made the King’s chariot (parked right
outside and perfectly visible through the window) to simply disappear. This is an
important twist: While the position of the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta is still a realist
position (i.e. everything is what it seems, we are just mistaken about the deeper
implications of what composites are and therefore of what we are), starting with
the Milindapañha an anti-realist streak sets in: Things are no longer what they
seem, and everything (including the Self ) can ultimately be reduced to basic
entities (dhammas) and thereby ontologically dissolved. The Self now becomes
subsumed under the Abhidharma doctrine of two truths: Conventional truth
(where one might speak of a self/person, although – according to the Buddha –
not of a permanent Self that is in control), and ultimate truth (where neither a
Self or a self/person can be found). One immediate implication of this position
is that the teaching of anattā loses its special status – the Self is ultimately just
as unreal as anything else.
Later developments in Buddhism, notably the Yogācāra philosophy as exem-
plified by Asaṅga and Vasubandhu (fourth and fifth century CE), put some of
the realism back into the question of the self. The problem with early Buddhist
bundle theories is that they are ‘blind to the facts which are constitutive of
selfhood’ (Ganeri 2012a, 71) – there are individual perceptions, but there is no
accounting for what it means for a subject to ‘have’ (i.e. own) a perception.
Phenomenologically speaking, there is a sense of self (of an owner, a perceiver, a
witness, a ‘me’) present within each experience, and it is this presence that makes
the experience ‘mine’.8 Vasubandhu (among others) accounts for this sense of
self by positing the existence of a reflexive mode of consciousness (manas):
Each experiential state also, automatically and always, includes the experience
of ‘me’ experiencing.9 This is where the trouble starts: The rendering (Ganeri’s
term) of this primitive mode of being reflexively aware in turn makes it plausible
(and according to the Yogācāra, inescapable) to assign a psychological state to
‘myself’. Through this mechanism of ‘transformation’ (again Ganeri’s term), the
manas ‘infest […] experience with a sense of self-hood’ (Lusthaus 2004, 919).
The Yogācāra view that awareness or consciousness has a reflexive streak
which leads to, or is at least accompanied by a sense of Self is echoed in much
Self-preoccupied Western philosophy: Nagel’s (1974) concept of what-it-is-like
(having [insert your name here] experiences implies experiencing what-it-is-
like to be [insert your name here]), Sartre’s non-thetic consciousness (1956),
Strawson’s ‘thin subject’ (‘an inner thing of some sort that does not and cannot
exist at any given time unless it is having experience at that time’; 2008, 156),
or Zahavi’s experiential core self (experiencing ‘a multitude of changing expe-
riences from a ubiquitous dimension of first-person givenness’; 2006, 59, 60).
Within contemporary Buddhist philosophy, the notion of reflexive awareness
is perhaps stressed most by Albahari in her concept of witness-consciousness,
which includes a close approximation of Vasubandhu’s notion of transformation,
 CONTEMPORARY BUDDHISM   25

as posited by Ganeri: ‘[T]he witnessing subject makes the (deeply mistaken)

assumption of being a self through its very act of assuming various khandhas –
including those that help lend it a psycho-physical perspective – to be “me”
(hence integrated with its existence) or “mine” (hence belonging to it)’ (Albahari
2006, 51, 52). Albahari considers this concept to be central to explain Nibbāna:
‘[W]e cannot supply a satisfactory explanation of how one can attain Nibbāna,
qua cessation of suffering, if that person is exhaustively analysed as five con-
ditioned khandhas within Saṃsāra, the cycle of dependent origination’ (2002,
15). In other words, she is arguing that witness-consciousness may be central
to liberation, by transcendental necessity. Here, then, is a first clear brush with
soteriology.

What is the attā the Buddha argued against?

The arguments from the Pāli Canon give us insights not just on what the Buddha
argued for (his view of anattā) but also what he argued against, that is, what
sort of target attā he had in mind. Many commentators (e.g. Bronkhorst 2007;
Gethin 1998; Gombrich 2009; Harvey 2013; MacKenzie 2010) have argued that
the Buddha’s main target was the surrounding cultural context, in casu the Vedic
Ātman10 and/or the Jain concept of jīva – an ‘unconditioned, permanent, totally
happy “I”, which is self-aware, in total control of itself, a truly autonomous agent,
with an inherent substantial essence’ (Harvey 1995, 51). It is not hard to see
opposition to this view in the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta, which emphasises imper-
manence in its second argument, and both dukkha and lack of control in its
first, and, in its totality, rejects the idea of an independent substantial essence.
Doubts about this position have, however, been raised. First, Albahari (2006,
50) argues against this reading from the very psychology of the teaching:
[G]iven that losing the sense of self has been correlated with ditching taṇhā on the
road to nibbāna’, [the self ] needs to be something that is easily discovered, some-
thing that one might realistically (i.e. from observation) assume to be – nothing
as ‘grandiose’ as a Vedic Ātman.
Note that this argument fits well with Vasubandhu’s views – he also sees one’s
concept of Self as arising naturally and without metaphysical instruction from
one’s own sense of self. Albahari’s reading of the Pāli Canon – I cannot go into
her arguments in detail here – leads her to define the Buddha’s target idea of
Self as more something akin to ‘a bounded, happiness-seeking/dukkha-avoiding
(witnessing) subject that is a personal owner and controlling agent, and which
is unified and unconstructed, with unbroken and invariable presence from one
moment to the next, as well as with longer-term endurance and invariability’ (73).
One key difference with Harvey’s definition is that Albahari’s Self is not bliss, but
looking for bliss. This definition opens up the possibility of phenomenology: It
is easier to observe myself yearning for sukha and shirking away from dukkha
than it is to assert that, in my deepest Self, I am happy – the latter requires an
26   P. VERHAEGHEN

ontological jump. There is also a key difference with at least some of the tradi-
tional readings of the Vedic Ātman, which ultimately identify the Ātman with
brahman, the life principle, which is by definition infinite and unbound (e.g.
Gombrich 2009). Albahari’s reading of the Buddha’s concept of Self as being
bound, again, allows a move towards phenomenology and away from ontology.11
Second, Thanissaro (2012) argues that the Buddha’s criticisms have a much
broader target than merely the Vedic Ātman. Specifically, in the Mahānidāna
Sutta (DN 15), the Buddha takes aim at four possible positions on the Self: (a) The
Self has a form and is finite (the materialist position); (b) the Self has a form and
is infinite (e.g. the view that the Self equals the cosmos); (c) the Self is formless
and finite (like the Christian concept of the soul); and (d) the Self is formless and
infinite (the position often identified with the Vedic Ātman). The Buddha rejects
each of those four Selves in three modes (i.e. the idea that the Self is already that
way; that it naturally changes to be that way; or that it is changeable by will into
that state), thus rejecting 12 positions on the Self. As Thanissaro states, it looks
like ‘[t]his means that his not-self teaching is not just negating specific types
of self – such as a cosmic self, a permanent self, or an ordinary individual self.
It negates every imaginable way of defining the self’ (14). Why is the Buddha
doing this? The Mahānidāna Sutta’s refrain, after each of the rejections, is: ‘This
being the case, it is proper to say that a fixed view of a self [possessed of form
and finite] obsesses him’. In other words, the Buddha sees each and every one
of these 12 views and, by extension, all views on the Self as a source of clinging.
This brings us to the Cula-Malunkyovada Sutta (MN 63), which tends to be
underplayed in the metaphysical discussions about Self in a Buddhist context. In
this sutta, the Buddha likens he who wants to know the answers to metaphysical
questions (including questions about the Self ) to a man shot by a poisoned
arrow who refuses treatment until all his questions about the arrow and its
origin have been exhaustively answered. The Buddha clearly indicates why he
won’t entertain such questions: ‘Because they are not connected with the goal,
are not fundamental to the holy life. They do not lead to disenchantment, to
dispassion, to cessation, to calm, to direct knowledge, to self- awakening, to
unbinding (nibbāna).’
These criticisms set up the next point: What is the function of the Buddha’s
teachings of Self?

Anattā as strategy: not self

A switch has taken place. What seemed, prima facie, to be a doctrinal discussion
about metaphysics (‘Is there a Self?’), is in reality a strategic teaching about
soteriology (‘What good does it do me to live by the idea that I have a Self?’): The
Buddha’s concern was not so much with scoring an ontological point – denying
the reality of a transcendent Vedic Ātman – but with urging his audience on to
liberation. Black (2012) amplifies Thanissaro’s argument by pointing out that
 CONTEMPORARY BUDDHISM   27

although the Buddha engages in the question of Self throughout the Canon
(e.g. DN 9.28; MN 22.26-27; MN 62; MN 72.19-20; MN 144; MN 146; SN 4.10; SN
7.18; SN 22.59), nowhere in those passages is he ‘depicted as making explicitly
negative claims, such as “there is no self” or “no things exist”’ (20). Rather, in most
of these sources, anattā is discussed within the wider context of the three marks,
as one component of a larger teaching, and the main thrust of these teachings
is ‘to explain how personal continuity operates and how one can ultimately
attain liberation’ (ibidem).
From all of this, Thanissaro argues that the teaching of anattā is not meta-
physical, but soteriological – not a teaching of ‘no-Self’, but a teaching of ‘not-
self’. The problem is not that thinking that there is a Self is wrong; it is that it is
wrongheaded. More specifically, Thanissaro argues, the crux of the matter is the
process of ‘I-making’ and ‘my-making’ (ahaṅkāra and mamaṅkāra; arguably the
same process of reification or me-ification that Vasubandhu warned against) and
whether or not that process is skilful, defined as leading ‘to long-term welfare
and happiness’ (MN 135), that is, the realisation of the Third Noble Truth.
The suttas suggest that it is not. For instance, the Taṇhā Sutta (AN 4.199) gives
a list of 36 ‘utterances of craving’, all of which have to do with views on ‘I’ or ‘mine’.
The point of the sutta is to show that, however one defines oneself or one’s self,
it always involves clinging (and hence, inexorably, suffering; Albahari calls these
clingings ‘vested interests’, 2002, 17); the clinging starts with the utterance ‘I
am’.12 Thanissaro points out that ‘[e]ach sense of self is strategic, a means to an
end’ (9), and that we create a sense of Self ‘as a strategy for gaining happiness’
(10; this is the first argument in the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta: We create a sense
of control so we can grasp for sukha). Thanissaro suggests that the Buddha,
compassionately, presents a way out: You have to be able to see ahaṅkāra in
action, as a process, ‘so that you can clearly see what you’re doing and why it’s
causing that suffering’ (15), that is, (in Albahari’s words) truly seeing ‘I-the-doer’
(first argument of the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta) and ‘I am this’ (second argument
of the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta) in action, as ideas of ‘a “self” qua I-permanent-
non-suffering, [projected] upon what is inherently not-self’ (2002, 17). Here, then,
is where Albahari’s (and Vasubandhu’s) concept of witness-consciousness comes
in, offering a potential for liberation outside the five kandhas.
How exactly liberation is to be achieved from seeing into anattā can be and
has been subject to debate. Interestingly, parts of that debate may have left
their traces already in the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta itself. The first argument – the
argument from lack of control – is, in fact, remarkable because it negates a
basic premise of the Buddhist path, namely that consciousness is malleable,
for instance through meditation. Wynne (2009b) argues from multiple textual
sources that that this argument likely carries the remnants of a debate between
two early (i.e. pre-Second Council) schools: A school that advocated intellectual
contemplation of Buddhist doctrine (dhammayogā), vs. a school that advocated
jhāna meditation. Unsurprisingly, Thanissaro and Albahari advocate meditation
28   P. VERHAEGHEN

to look into anattā, and emphasise that liberation is hard-won, and involves the
practices of insight/wisdom (paññā), meditation (samādhi) and virtue (silā).13

The soteriological not-self move in practice: evidence from

contemplative neuroscience
Redefining the concept of anattā as first and foremost a strategy of decon-
struction of (the construction of the) Self as a path to liberation has another
interesting and unexpected corollary: It lifts the concept of anattā out of the
lofty province of philosophy, and opens it up to empirical scrutiny. Especially
the claim that meditation is crucial for anattā’s workings is a claim that can be,
and has been, empirically investigated.
Within current neuroscience, the self is most often modelled as a hierarchy,
perhaps most clearly exemplified in the work of Damasio (2010) and Panksepp
(1998). (Both built their models from a mixture of patient case studies, devel-
opmental neurobiology, functional neuroimaging and informed speculation.)
Damasio’s model has three layers. The first is the protoself – ‘the generation of
primordial feelings, the elementary feelings of existence’ (Damasio 2010, 23); it
is instantiated in nuclei in the brainstem, and extends into the anterior cingulate
and the insular cortex (structures which integrate bodily experiences), and sen-
sorimotor areas. The second layer is the core self, which Damasio describes as the
‘protagonist’, that is, subjectivity; the sense that there is an ‘I’ that ‘I’ experience
and that is distinct from the rest of the world, with a vantage point anchored in
this particular body that ‘I’ recognise as ‘my’ own, and is capable of action (thus
being a plausible implementation of Vasubandhu’s manas and Albahari’s wit-
ness-consciousness; Albahari 2014, 6, 7; appears to agree). Damasio conjectures
that the core self integrates the signals from the protoself within the superior
colliculi and the thalamus. The third layer is the autobiographical or narrative
(Dennett 1991) self, ‘defined in terms of biographical knowledge pertaining
to the past as well as the anticipated future’ (Damasio, 23) – or ‘memory made
conscious’ (210). This self is the weaver of stories about itself and its place in
the world – the I-maker incarnate which arises when the systems involved in
language and memory build their own fictions around the ebbing and flowing
sense of a core self within our experience. The narrative self is associated mostly
with activation in the precuneus, the posterior cingulate and the dorsomedial
prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), structures often collectively labelled as the default
mode network (Raichle et al. 2001).
The available evidence indeed suggests that meditation may strategically
still this I-making.
First, there is some indication that meditation leads to at least a partial relax-
ation of the narrative self-experience. This evidence comes from two recent
meta-analyses (i.e. analyses of existing studies) on functional MRI (fMRI) data
collected during meditation in (mostly) highly experienced practitioners. The
 CONTEMPORARY BUDDHISM   29

first one, by Tomasino et al. (2013) collected 26 studies, totalling 313 participants
with an average meditation experience of 11,552 h; 21% were Buddhist monas-
tics; the second (Fox et al. 2016) collected 31 separate studies involving 527
participants. The overall conclusion is that focused-attention meditation deac-
tivates parts of the network that subserves the narrative self (specifically, the
posterior cingulate and precuneus). Interestingly, focused-attention meditation
also tends to activate (rather than deactivate) another part of the narrative-self
network, namely the DMPFC (more specifically, medial parts of BA 9) and the
ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC, more specifically, medial parts of BA 10).
Tomasino et al. read these results as an indication that meditators reduce
or forego mind wandering and mental time travel (i.e. reliving the past, or pro-
jecting themselves into the future), behaviours which are often associated with
activation in the precuneus and the posterior cingulate, and that they activate
self-referential processing and emotion regulation, which are associated with
DMPFC and VMPFC. Fox et al. interpret the DMPFC and VMPFC findings as an
indication of enhanced monitoring and self-reflection. I would argue for an
alternative interpretation, based on Northoff’s (2013) analysis of self-referential
processing as a potential sequence, moving front to back in the brain – from
VMPFC over DMPFC to posterior cingulate and precuneus. In his analysis, VMPFC
assesses the degree of self-reference of an experience in a perceptual, value-free
and judgement-free process; DMPFC is involved in monitoring and reflecting on
this self-related experience; and the posterior cingulate and precuneus engage
in mental time travel and memory-based associative thinking around this expe-
rience and its interpretation (a process quite akin to what is known in Buddhist
nomenclature as ‘mental proliferation’, papañca). Thus, the meditator focusing
on an object such as the breath notices and perceives this object as ‘mine’ (which
is probably necessary to fruitfully engage in a concentration practice in the first
place) and likely generates some interpretations (both cognitive and affective)
centred around this experience, but is less likely to get engaged or caught up
in the actual self-centred storytelling around it. Thus, focused-attention medi-
tation, as captured in these studies, although not strictly a practice of not-self,
is at least a practice of less-self, or of less self-involved self.
A second – and more convincing – piece of evidence comes from an fMRI
study by Farb et al. (2007) which shows that even beginning meditators are
capable of turning off the narrative self when instructed to do so. Participants
(half of whom were trained in mindfulness meditation through an eight-week
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction programme; the other half were complete
novices) were shown lists of personality traits, half of which were positive (like
‘confident’), and the other half negative (like ‘melancholy’). In a narrative-focus
condition, the participants were asked to review what was occurring in their
minds as they were trying to figure out what the words meant to them. In an
experience-focus condition, they were asked to just sense, without judging, what
was occurring in their mind, bodies and feelings as they read the words, without
30   P. VERHAEGHEN

purpose of goal other than noticing and observing. The narrative-focus condi-
tion did indeed yield, as one would expect, activation in the posterior c­ ingulate,
the VMPFC and the DMPFC. In the experience-focus condition, however, the
mindfulness-trained participants showed suppression of these three narra-
tive-self regions and an increase in activation of the insula and the secondary
somatosensory cortex – areas associated with the core self. These results confirm
that meditators (even with relatively little prior practice) can tune the narrative
self down and the experiencing/witnessing self up. One interesting additional
result was that in the non-meditators, the two selves were correlated – when
the core self was activated, so was the narrative self, and vice versa – whereas
in the mindfulness-trained meditators, the two systems were decoupled. This
suggests that in non-meditators, engaging the narrative self may be an auto-
matic response, a habit that is deployed whenever the core self is engaged.
Even a little meditation experience, however, allows people to step out of this
routine and free themselves from getting caught up in stories about I-me-mine.
Third, this meditation-related dampening of the narrative self seems to lead
to greater happiness in the moment. One study showed that the shift from nar-
rative to core self was accompanied by a marked decrease of negative and mixed
negative–positive emotions (Dor-Ziderman et al. 2013). Thus, narrative-selfless
meditating may be one way to (at least momentarily) achieve some form of
relief from suffering.14
It is possible to go further still in meditation and silence the core self – true
anattā. Two studies seem relevant here. One is a single-case study on jhāna
meditation (Hagerty et al. 2013, with Leigh Brasington as the participant); when
the participant entered the 6th jhāna (a meditative state traditionally said to be
experienced as infinite consciousness; e.g. Harvey 2013; this was the deepest
state for which brain recordings were available in this study), there was strong
deactivation in the somatosensory and primary motor cortex, as well as the cere-
bellum, suggesting that Brasington was shutting down part of the core self, if not
the protoself. Brasington was not able to give a verbal report on his experience
in this state, which may be consistent with both the traditional description of
the state and the possible falling away of the manas and witness-consciousness,
as hinted at by the brain data.
The second study (Dor-Ziderman et al. 2013) examined 12 long-term vipas-
sanā practitioners. Participants cycled through three types of meditation
conditions: a narrative-self condition (‘Try to think what characterizes you’), a
minimal-self condition (akin to a core-self condition: ‘Try to experience what
is happening to you at the present moment’), and a selfless condition (‘Try to
experience what is happening at the present moment, when you are not in the
center’). Immediately after each bout of meditation, the meditators reported
their experiences. In the minimal-self condition, there was a reduction in activa-
tion in the DMPFC, as well as a more global left frontal deactivation. The selfless
condition showed an even further decrease in DMPFC activation, as well as a
 CONTEMPORARY BUDDHISM   31

reduction in activation in the precuneus (part of the narrative self ) and the
inferior parietal lobe – the latter region is known to be involved in the feeling
of agency, a key function of the core self.
What did it feel like to these meditators to turn down these self-observing
parts of the self? Three meditators described their experiences as a general relax-
ation or quieting of body, thought, or experience in general (e.g. ‘Very pleasant
and relaxed and quiet… devoid of effort’). These were also the meditators with
the least amount of meditation experience (the smallest number of accumulated
hours was 1,290). Three other participants, with more experience, described
altered experiences of the body, the senses, or disorientation in space (‘… as
if I took a step back and am looking at myself from the back. I see myself but I
am also aware of what is happening around’). Finally, the four most seasoned
meditators described experiences without any sense of ownership or agency (‘It
was emptiness, as if the self fell out of the picture. There was an experience but it
had no address, it was not attached to a center or subject … There was no sense
of an object [sic] there running the show’). This lack-of-ownership experience
was the only type of experience associated with a decrease in activation in both
the inferior parietal lobe and the thalamus, both regions that are associated with
the core self. Thus, in this very accomplished group of meditators (with about
20,000 h of accumulated experience), this specific experience of selflessness
was associated with the dimming of brain regions that are associated with the
core self – as literally (or neurally) selfless as one can possibly get, short of falling
silent, like Brasington in the Hagerty et al. study.
On an interesting side note, all 12 participants in the study felt very suc-
cessful in their endeavour to meditate selflessly. Clearly, however, only the
meditators with a tremendous amount of meditation experience succeeded in
actually meditating with only minimal stirrings of a sense of self, although the
less accomplished meditators were clearly convinced that they succeeded in
doing this as well. This suggests that not-self is a strategy that unfolds its results
gradually (and slowly) over the course of many years of practice; it also suggests
that the experiences that occur along the way can easily be mistaken for the
goal – a finding that should inspire humility.

Summary and outlook

In this paper, I argued that there is good evidence that anattā as understood
in early Buddhism should be viewed less as a doctrine and a metaphysical pro-
nouncement than as an appeal and a method to achieve, or move progressively
closer to, liberation. Brain data collected on Buddhist or Buddhism-inspired
meditators show interesting correspondences with this view of not-self as a
possibly soteriological strategy. First, meditation leads to a quieting of at least
parts of the narrative self. Second, this dual experience seems to lead to at
least momentary increases in well-being. Third, this process can be learned, and
32   P. VERHAEGHEN

seems to be already underway after a mere 40 hours of experience. Finally, very

highly accomplished meditators seem to be able to tune down even the core
self and truly experience anattā, including an apparent subduing of reflexive
awareness. The available evidence does seem to point in the direction of the
feasibility of the strategy of not-self for both beginning and seasoned medi-
tators. We do, however, know little about the effectiveness of the strategy in
achieving Nibbāna; it is also not clear how this could be studied empirically.
A related, and more realistic research goal could be to investigate how these
increasingly selfless meditative experiences correlate with increased insight and
improved ethical intuition, forming – hopefully – an integrated path with real-
world liberative consequences.

Notes
1. 
Person being defined here as the experiential, embodied unit most of us would
call ‘me’: an ‘organized, temporally extended system of mental and physical events
characterized by dense causal and functional interconnectedness, including
complex physical and psychological feedback loops’ (MacKenzie 2010, 81). There
seems to be little controversy that Buddhism does not deny the existence of a
person defined suchly.
Note that the Buddha takes each of the khandās in turn; I singled out consciousness,
2. 
simply because it seems closer to what Western philosophy would consider to
be pertinent to a discussion of the self, making the semantics read less oddly.
3. 
Translated here as ‘painful’.
4. 
Note that from a Buddhist perspective, an alternative, more emergent or Gestalt-
type view (i.e. the Self emerges out of the kandhas taken together, as a property
of the ensemble of kandhas, not of each single one taken on its own) would not
work either, as argued by MacKenzie (2010). First, by Buddhist definition, the
psychophysical complex formed by the kandhas is the empirical person, and the
empirical person is clearly in flux and therefore impermanent (and suffering);
second, the psychophysical complex could, by definition, not be an independent
owner and controller of its parts.
5. 
‘For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble
on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or
hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception
and never can observe anything but the perception. When my perceptions are
removed for any time, as by sound sleep, so long am I insensible of myself and
may truly be said not to exist. […] I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind,
that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which
succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux
and movement.’ (A Treatise of Human Nature, 1.4.6.)
6. 
The simile of the chariot is used in other passages of the Canon as well, e.g. the
Vajirā Sutta (SN 5.10), but never with the negation of the existence (or ontological
findability) of the chariot.
Thus foreshadowing Mādhyamika philosophers like Candrakīrti: ‘[The self] is like a
7. 
cart, which is not other than its parts, not non-other, and does not possess them.
It is not within its parts, and its parts are not within it. It is not the mere collection,
and it is not the shape.’ (Madhyamakāvatāra, 6.51)
 CONTEMPORARY BUDDHISM   33

8. That this sense of self is a primary aspect of experience can be derived from the
‘immunity to error through misidentification’ – barring psychopathology, I will
not mistake my perceptions, thoughts, emotions … for anyone else’s (Shoemaker
1968).
9. Vasubandhu is not the only Buddhist thinker to posit reflexive self-awareness;
for instance, Thompson (2011) refers to the Yogācāra-Svātantrika philosopher
Śāntarakṣita (725–788 CE) who claims that ‘reflexive awareness [svasaṃvedana]
is what distinguishes sentience from insentience’ (161), making self-awareness
a defining feature of consciousness.
10. The Sanskrit word for the Pāli attā.
11. Note that Albahari also claims that the Vedic concept of Ātman, in the mind of
many scholars, has been vested with too much Cartesian-style eternality; her view
is that it basically refers to the witnessing consciousness, thus bringing Buddhism
and the Vedic traditions much more closely together that is often assumed.
12. To list the first 18: ‘There being “I am,” there comes to be “I am here,” there comes
to be “I am like this” ... “I am otherwise” ... “I am bad” ... “I am good” ... “I might be”
... “I might be here” ... “I might be like this” ... “I might be otherwise” ... “May I be” ...
“May I be here” ... “May I be like this” ... “May I be otherwise” ... “I will be” ... “I will be
here” ... “I will be like this” ... “I will be otherwise”’.
13. Note that the strategy of not-self provides a clear but implicit link to ethics.
Thanissaro emphasizes that I-making involves the setting of boundaries between
self and not-self; those boundaries are fluid, partly because they depend on
our desire for happiness and our attribution of agency and control, which may
serve, at any given point, to narrow or broaden one’s definition of self to include
narrower or wider circles around one’s person. Especially in Mahāyāna Buddhism,
the knowledge that everyone yearns for happiness and that the boundaries
between ‘me’ and ‘you’ are permeable are seen as strong rational (and sometimes
empirical) grounds for compassion (e.g. Goodman 2009; Harris 2011; Todd 2012;
Verhaeghen 2015).
14. Meditation also has long-term psychological benefits (for a comprehensive meta-
analysis on mindfulness and meditation as therapy, see Goyal et al., 2014), but it
isn’t clear whether these benefits are associated with I-unmaking. There is good
evidence that changes in self-focused attention (rumination and worry, which
can perhaps be taken as proxies for ahaṅkāra) drive the changes in psychological
outcome (a statistical reanalysis of 6 clinical trials shows that changes in self-
focused attention explain 44% of the variance in psychological outcomes after
meditation/mindfulness training; Gu et al. 2015).

Acknowledgements
I thank Warren Todd for comments on an earlier version of this paper, and an anonymous
reviewer for invaluable comments and nudges.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
34   P. VERHAEGHEN

Notes on contributor
Paul Verhaeghen, PhD, is a professor of Psychology at the Georgia Institute of Technology,
studying memory, attention, ageing and their interfaces. This paper was written in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for an MA degree in Buddhist Studies from the University
of South Wales.

ORCID
Paul Verhaeghen   http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9164-7170

References
Albahari, M. 2002. “Against No- Ātman Theories of Anattā.” Asian Philosophy 12: 5–20.
Albahari, M. 2006. Analytical Buddhism: The Two-tiered Illusion of Self. Basingstoke: Palgrave
MacMillan.
Albahari, M. 2014. “Insight Knowledge of No Self in Buddhism: An Epistemic Analysis.”
Philosophers’ Imprint 14: 1–30.
Black, B. 2012. Senses of Self and Not-self in the Upaniṣads and Nikāyas. In Hindu and
Buddhist ideas in dialogue: Self and no-self, edited by L. Kuznetsova, J. Ganeri, and
C. Ram-Prasad, 11–27. Farnham: Ashgate.
Bronkhorst, J. 2007. Greater Magadha: Studies in the Culture of Early India. Leiden: Brill.
Collins, S. 1982. Selfless Persons: Imagery and Thought in Theravāda Buddhism. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Damasio, A. 2010. Self Comes to Mind. New York: Pantheon.
Dennett, D. C. 1991. Consciousness explained. London: Penguin.
Dor-Ziderman, Y., A. Berkovich-Ohana, J. Glicksohn, and A. Goldstein. 2013. “Mindfulness-
induced Selflessness: A MEG Neurophenomenological Study.” Frontiers in Human
Neuroscience 7: 1–17.
Dreyfus, G. 2011. “Self and Subjectivity: A Middle Way Approach. In Self, No Self?
Perspectives from Analytical, Phenomenological, and Indian Traditions, edited by
M. Siderits, E. Thompson, and D. Zahavi, 114–156. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Farb, N. A. S., Z. V. Segal, H. Mayberg, J. Bean, D. McKeon, Z. Fatima, and A. K. Anderson.
2007. “Attending to the Present: Mindfulness Meditation Reveals Distinct Neural Modes
of Self-reference.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 2: 313–322.
Flanagan, O. 1992. Consciousness Reconsidered. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Fox, K. C., M. L. Dixon, S. Nijeboer, M. Girn, J. L. Floman, M. Lifshitz, and K. Christoff. 2016.
“Functional Neuroanatomy of Meditation: A Review and Meta-analysis of 78 Functional
Neuroimaging Investigations.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 65: 208–228.
Ganeri, J. 2012a. Buddhist No-self: And Analysis and Critique. In Hindu and Buddhist ideas
in dialogue: Self and no-self, edited by L. Kuznetsova, J. Ganeri, and C. Ram-Prasad,
63–76. Farnham: Ashgate.
Ganeri, J. 2012b. The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness, and the First-person Stance. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Gethin, R. 1998. The Foundations of Buddhism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gombrich, R. 2009. What the Buddha thought. Sheffield: Equinox.
Goodman, C. 2009. Consequences of Compassion: An Interpretation and Defense of Buddhist
Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Goyal, M., S. Singh, E. M. Sibinga, N. F. Gould, A. Rowland-Seymour, R. Sharma … J. A. and
Haythornthwaite. 2014. “Meditation Programs for Psychological Stress and Well-being:
 CONTEMPORARY BUDDHISM   35

A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.” Journal of the American Medical Association:

Internal Medicine 174: 357–368.
Gu, J., C. Strauss, R. Bond, and K. Cavanagh. 2015. “How do Mindfulness-based Cognitive
Therapy and Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction Improve Mental Health and
Wellbeing? A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Mediation Studies.” Clinical
Psychology Review 37: 1–12.
Hagerty, M. R., J. Isaacs, L. Brasington, L. Shupe, E. E. Fetz, and S. C. Cramer. 2013. “Case
Study of Ecstatic Meditation: fMRI and EEG Evidence of Self-stimulating a Reward
System.” Neural Plasticity 2013: 1–12.
Harris, S. 2011. “Does anātman Rationally Entail Altruism? On Bodhicaryāvatāra 8: 101–
103.” Journal of Buddhist Ethics 18: 93–123.
Harvey, P. 1995. The Selfless Mind: Personality, Consciousness and Nirvana in Early Buddhism.
Abigdon: Curzon.
Harvey, P. 2013. An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History, and Practices. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Hume, David. 1739. Of personal identity. Reprinted In Personal Identity, edited by J. Perry,
161–172. 1975. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
James, W. 1890. The Principles of Psychology. New York: Holt.
Kuznetsova, I., J. Ganeri, and C. Ram-Prasad. 2012. Hindu and Buddhist Ideas in Dialogue:
Self and No-Self. London: Routledge.
Locke, J. 1690. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by A. D. Woozley 1977.
Glasgow: Collins Fount.
Lusthaus, D. 2004. “Yogācāra School.” In Encyclopedia of Buddhism, edited by R. E. Buswell,
914–921. New York: MacMillan.
MacKenzie, M. 2010. “Enacting the Self: Buddhist and Enactivist Approaches to the
Emergence of the Self.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 9: 75–99.
Nagel, T. 1974. “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” The Philosophical Review 83: 435–450.
Northoff, G. 2013. “Brain and Self – A Neurophilosophical Account.” Child and Adolescent
Psychiatry and Mental Health 7: 1–12.
Panksepp, J. 1998. Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rāhula, W. H. 1996. What the Buddha Taught. Dehiwali: Buddhist Cultural Centre.
Raichle, M. E., A. M. MacLeod, A. Z. Snyder, W. J. Powers, D. A. Gusnard, and G. L. Shulman.
2001. “A Default Mode of Brain Function.” Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences 98: 676–682.
Sartre, J.-P. 1956. L’Être et le Néant [Being and Nothingness]. New York: Washington Square
Press.
Schlicht, T. (Forthcoming). Selves – or Something Near Enough. In Buddhism and bioethics,
edited by E. Guhe
Shoemaker, S. S. 1968. “Self-reference and Self-awareness.” The Journal of Philosophy 65:
555–567.
Siderits, M., E. Thompson, and D. Zahavi. 2011. Self, No Self? Perspectives from Analytical,
Phenomenological, and Indian Traditions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Strawson, G. 1997. “The Self.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 4: 405–528.
Strawson, G. 2008. Real Materialism and Other Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thanissaro. 2012. Selves and Not-self: The Buddhist Teaching on anattā. Accessed in pdf
format. http://www.dhammatalks.org/ebook_index.html
Thompson, E. 2011. Self-no-self? Memory and Reflexive Awareness. In Self, No Self?
Perspectives from Analytical, Phenomenological, and Indian Traditions, edited by
M. Siderits, E. Thompson, and D. Zahavi, 1157–1175. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
36   P. VERHAEGHEN

Todd, W. L. 2012. A Selfless Response to An Illusory World: A Comparative Study of Śāntideva

and Śaṅkara. diss., Lancaster University.
Tomasino, B., S. Fregona, M. Skrap, and F. Fabbro. 2013. “Meditation-related Activations
are Modulated by the Practices Needed to Obtain it and by the Expertise: An ALE
Meta-analysis Study.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 6: 1–14.
Varela, F. J., E. Thompson, and E. Rosch. 1991. The Embodied Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Verhaeghen, P. 2015. “Good and Well: The Case for Secular Buddhist Ethics.” Contemporary
Buddhism 16: 43–54.
Wynne, A. 2009a. “Early Evidence for the ‘No Self’ Doctrine? A Note on the Second
anātman Teaching of the Second Sermon.” Thai International Journal for Buddhist
Studies 1: 64–84.
Wynne, A. 2009b. “Miraculous Transformation and Personal Identity: A Note on the First
anātman Teaching of the Second Sermon.” Thai International Journal for Buddhist
Studies 1: 85–113.
Zahavi, D. 2006. Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-person Perspective.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Zahavi, D. 2011. The Experiential Self: Objections and Clarifications. In Self, No Self?
Perspectives from Analytical, Phenomenological, and Indian Traditions, edited by
M. Siderits, E. Thompson, and D. Zahavi, 57–78. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Copyright of Contemporary Buddhism is the property of Routledge and its content may not be
copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's
express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for
individual use.