So how do we practise non-self?

Only an arahant has completely ended the ego; all other beings are governed and ordered about by it. In the condition of an ordinary person, still so full of turmoil and affliction, we must cross very long stretches of road, avoiding this mistake and mending that shortcoming, to open the way step by step toward non-self. If instead we run toward the ego, with pride, greed, anger and delusion, it is very comfortable and there is no obstacle, like a vehicle let loose downhill: it goes easily, straight down the slope, but at the bottom of the slope lie the abyss, the burning fire, the stabbing knives, the sharp spikes, and the demons with eyes “blazing and rolling” waiting for us! That is hell, the place where those who “let go of the brakes” return.

Practice, by contrast, is climbing uphill. If we are determined to go toward non-self, we should know that we are like a heavy vehicle labouring uphill, and the road is not smooth for us either: it is full of stones, thorns, brambles, swamps... Wherever we go, we have to clear and mend as we go. Pedalling uphill while clearing away all the jagged thorns and rocks, we climb on and on until the day we reach the “top of the slope” – which is where an arahant, on attaining it, exclaimed:

My mind now shines

More brightly than a thousand suns;

The Three Knowledges I have realised,

I have fulfilled the Buddha's teaching.

So where shall we begin this long journey?