Lessons In Practical Buddhism - Sirimangalo.Org

Once you see impermanence, it’s not seeing, “Oh, it was like
this before, and now it’s like this.” It’s seeing, “It was before,
and now it’s gone.” Seeing that every experience is and then
is gone, seeing that there actually is no “me” that’s
changing. The person who existed when I was young, the
person who will exist when I am old, all of these things are
just moment-to-moment experience. There actually is no
being. Life is much more fluid than we think, fluid in the
sense of no static entity. For example, when you look at
water, you think it’s a single thing – one body of water, but
actually it’s many, many particles of water flowing together.
anattasaññā
When you see this in regards to your stream of conscious
experience, then you see anatta. You see anatta based on
impermanence and based on suffering, because if it’s
suffering, then you can’t say it belongs to you. If it causes
you suffering, you shouldn’t cling to it; if you cling to it, it
only causes you more suffering. You can’t control it, and you
know that you can’t control it because it causes you
suffering. If you could control it, it wouldn’t cause you
suffering.
This is the theory, but the perception must arise in our
practice. Impermanence, suffering and non-self are right
here and right now. They’re in my voice. Notice when the
voice stops, you’re still thinking about it. It’s still going
through the mind, you can still remember the sound of it,
and normally, because of that, we think of it as continuous.
My voice is still there; it’s just sometimes noisy and
sometimes quiet, but you think I’m talking, so when people
make noise during the talk, you say, “Shh, the monk is
talking now,” even though maybe the monk has stopped
talking. Or someone interrupts you, and you say, “I’m in the
middle of a talk. I’m giving a talk now.” We think like this.
We think, “I’m talking to you now”, when actually there is
only the experience of sound arising at the ear. Once I stop,
the sound has stopped. Seeing this is our practice. When
you see this, this is what leads you to understand non-self.
People have a hard time understanding non-self. What does
it mean? Does it mean that I have no soul? Does it mean that
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