Non-self is the ultimate goal of spiritual practice

“I gaze up toward the sacred tree,

Following the Morning Star, spread across the leaning sky;

The Buddha became fully Awakened, embracing the whole Dharma realm;

With no self, there is no private realm left...”

Non-self: two words that seem so simple, yet they contain all that is absolute, the sacred and mysterious, and the vast Dharma realm itself. Non-self is also the ultimate aim, the summit of practice in Buddhism. It is a goal that no other founder of a religion has proclaimed except the Buddha; no other religion has affirmed it except Buddhism.

Long ago, when the ascetic Gotama had just left home to seek a teacher and a path, he went to two famous masters of the time, Alara Kalama and Uddaka Rāmaputta. Both had attained very high meditative concentration and supernatural powers. Alara Kalama had attained the Base of Nothingness and could glide over the surface of water, while Uddaka Rāmaputta had attained the Base of Neither Perception nor Non-perception and could lift himself up and soar through the sky as freely as a bird.

At first he went to study with Alara Kalama. Remarkably, in less than a month the ascetic Gotama attained the Base of Nothingness, whereas many ascetics who had practised for ten years had not been able to. And the master Kalama invited him to stay and lead the community together. At that point he asked: “Venerable Alara Kalama, in this Base of Nothingness is there still a self, or is there no self? For if there is still a self, there is no liberation yet; but if there is no self, who knows that he has attained it?” The teacher fell silent and could not answer. The ascetic Gotama asked leave and departed.

He went on to study with the master Uddaka Rāmaputta, and within just a few days attained the Base of Neither Perception nor Non-perception, and could lift himself up and fly through the sky. The master Uddaka Rāmaputta praised the ascetic Gotama as a person of great capacity, since he himself had had to practise for 40 years to attain it, and offered to hand the whole community over to him. When the two stood together in the air, he asked: “Venerable teacher, in this Base of Neither Perception nor Non-perception is there still a self, or is there no self? If there is still a self, there is no liberation yet; but if the self has ended, who knows that he has attained it?” – “I cannot answer this question. You must go and find the answer yourself, for yourself and for all beings.”

So the crux is whether a self remains or not; if a self remains, there is no liberation. And after six years of extreme ascetic hardship in deep forests and remote mountains, still without finding the answer, he gave up the path of austerities and turned to the practice of profound meditative concentration.

Then, after 49 days and nights in concentration beneath the Bodhi tree, he attained complete liberation, becoming the Perfectly Self-Awakened One, becoming the whole universe, and realising complete non-self – which is also the summit of practice and spiritual realisation in Buddhism. Therefore, the summit of practice is Non-self.

After the Buddha's time, the level of spiritual realisation among teachers gradually declined, and declined further with time. The farther people were from the Buddha, the less they reached non-self as the Buddha and the arahants had. Because their realisation did not equal the Buddha's, there was no Buddha to guide them, and the scriptures left behind were hard to understand, many developed additional theories to add to the Buddha's teachings and then founded new schools, but forgot the original goal of non-self.

This too is an obstacle for students of the Dharma, because the sectarian spirit leaves Buddhism lacking in harmony. For Buddhism to be united and strong, the answer is not to blend all the schools together; what matters is to find a reasonable common ground, a common denominator that lets the schools of Buddhism live in harmony and unity with one another. That common ground is the Goal of Non-self, toward which all schools can turn together. In this way, whichever method or school it may be, they will all meet and reconcile with one another, and Buddhism will flourish.

Today, more than 2,500 years after the Buddha, those with lofty spiritual realisation are rarer still. Many teachers speak as fluently as clouds drifting and water flowing, what we call preaching with “unobstructed eloquence”, but have no spiritual attainment within. This is what is truly worrying for Buddhism, because a person who speaks well and draws many followers, yet has no spiritual realisation in the mind, will gradually lead everyone away from the goal of non-self. As time goes on, people drift further and further from the non-self of Buddhism. And then, the more people practise, the larger the ego grows, because of very strange aims. People fight over every scrap of advantage and compete over every word. When one person says a barbed remark, the other has to find something fiercer to answer with; when one person sees that they are more loved by others, they rejoice secretly, and when another sees that they are not yet loved, they seethe inside... Competing over such trivial, meaningless matters, people become divided from one another, temple from temple, one school from another, though they are within the same Buddhism, all because we have forgotten the goal of non-self. And so the temple is no longer a peaceful harbour, no longer a field of merit where everyone can sow the good roots of liberation.

Only when Buddhists learn about non-self does the ego grow lighter the more they practise, and love radiate outward. People meet with tender eyes, gentle words, warm kindness, willing to yield, understanding and helping one another without keeping count of their merit... and the temple suddenly becomes a home. Therefore, even if we have not yet attained the path, if our mind holds the goal of non-self, then this world of ours is already a heaven of happiness. If the schools of Buddhism all turn toward the goal of non-self, Buddhism will be united.

And this is what I ask of the great masters of our time: when guiding their disciples in their own methods of practice, they must affirm the goal of non-self in two respects. First, the way of gathering the mind spiritually must lead toward non-self; second, in conduct, behaviour, deportment and fine details of manner as shown outwardly, they must express the ethics of non-self and altruism.