Reflections on the Self and the Unified Experience

This weekend, I started reading Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising by Bob Burbea. Here are some of the things I noticed while I was offline.

For me, this kind of reading naturally called for a quick recap and meditation on the self. By self, I’m not referring to the nominal self (“I”), but rather to a concept that emerges at the intersection of my phenomenological and Dharma-based perspectives; using the latter for lack of a better term within Dharma traditions
https://puredhamma.net/is-there-a-self/atta-as-self-wrong-translation-in-natumhaka-sutta/

Here is an explanation of self and no-self provided by Venerable Hsin Ting:

In our cultivation, non-self is contemplating that the five aggregates are empty. To observe this from within a quiet state is the tranquility of Nirvana. “Self” means eternal, unchanging, singular, and characterized by self-mastery—being in complete control of itself, independent, with a real nature. For instance, when the “I” eats, dresses itself, and goes about its daily tasks, this should be spoken of as a “nominal self.”

While meditating on how form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness (the five aggregates) relate to self, I arrived at the following:

The aggregates are not self, not separate from self, and not mutually existing with self.

• not self → they are not eternal, not unchanging, not singular, and not characterized by self-mastery (they have dependent origination instead)

• not separate from self → the previous point rejects identity; however, there is no self elsewhere from which these aggregates could be separate. This denies a self outside the aggregates.

• not mutually existing with self → this denies that the aggregates exist alongside a self.

When I first read Calm Mind and Perfect Ease by Venerable Hsin Ting, I thought I understood these characteristics. In retrospect, I think I was still assuming the existence of a true self, closer to the Ātman concept in the Hindu tradition.

Instead, the Buddhist tradition rejects the existence of such a self and proposes not-self (Anattā/Anātman) and dependent arising as fundamental metaphysical principles.

Eventually, this line of thought led me to another fragment in the book:

All phenomena arise from causes and conditions and cease due to causes and conditions; all phenomena come into existence from causes and conditions. The world is impermanent and not real, so we need to let go of all matters. Unable to let go, we alone suffer; able to let go, we can live in happiness.

“The world is impermanent and not real” (Anicca and Anattā).

Here comes a fundamental question; one I’ve asked myself before and thought I understood:

What does it really mean that the world is not real?

This clearly doesn’t mean that the world doesn’t exist, or that it is imaginary, or that Buddhism is advocating some kind of nihilism or idealism.

I initially took a familiar route, physics:
Events are real, but simultaneity, duration, and order depend on the frame of reference → reality depends on observers in a relativistic sense.

That felt suggestive, but still incomplete.

So before drawing new conclusions, I returned to the five aggregates, since they describe the components of lived experience itself. If the world is “not real,” then whatever illusion is being pointed to must appear within experience, not outside of it.

Before going further, I want to briefly ground this in the five aggregates, not to explain them in detail, but to keep the analysis anchored in experience.

The Five Aggregates

1. Form (Rūpa)
Physicality

• Body

• Senses (eye, ear, etc.)

• Material world as experienced

2. Feeling (Vedanā)
Raw tone of experience

• Pleasant

• Unpleasant

• Neutral

3. Perception (Saññā)
Recognition and labeling

• “Red”

• “Sound”

• “Danger”

• “Friend”

4. Mental Formations (Saṅkhāra)
Conditioned reactions

• Intentions

• Habits

• Emotions

• Thoughts

• Volitions

5. Consciousness (Viññāṇa)
Awareness tied to an object

• Seeing-consciousness

• Hearing-consciousness

• Thinking-consciousness

At this point, I focused on Perception (Saññā) and sound.
What makes a melody a melody?

A melody is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity.

Key words: succession, perceives, single entity.
Meaning, it is the perceptual unification of discrete events into continuity.

Can the same mechanism be applied to Mental Formations (Saṅkhāra)?
Take thought.

Thought is commonly defined as a cognitive process, and a process is:

1. a series of occurrences

2. unfolding over time

3. requiring continuity to be apprehended as one

So:

• sounds → unified as melody by perception

• mental events → unified as thought by perception

In both cases, the illusion is not the events themselves, but the single entity we take them to be.

This same logic extends to Form (Rūpa) and the body. What appears as a stable physical thing is, on closer inspection, a continuous stream of processes: cellular turnover, biochemical reactions, neural firing, and so on.

At this point, the connection became clearer for me.

When Buddhism says the world is not real, it is not denying phenomena. It is pointing to how phenomena appear.

Phenomena appear as:

• unified

• continuous

• self-identical over time (like one enduring thing, instead of many momentary events)

But phenomenologically:

• experience consists of discrete moments

• structured by conditions

• without an underlying substance

I think this is the perfect place to stop my notes for today :))

Next, I’d like to look more closely at what specific perceptual and cognitive processes contribute to this sense of unity, especially through Gestalt principles and the idea of horizon, which describes how the mind fills in, stabilizes, and organizes experience in ways that make the world feel solid and enduring.