Liberation Through Non-Clinging Across Buddhist Traditions

How approaches from different Buddhist traditions can complement and support each other on the path to awakening
By Joseph Goldstein

Part 2 of 3

Nonduality and the Teachings on Nonself

One of the liberating insights common to all Buddhist traditions is the realization of nonself (Pali, anatta): the absence of any permanent essence in this mind/body process that can be claimed as “I” or “mine.” An oft-repeated instruction in the Pali texts says to see all things with perfect wisdom: “This is not mine, this I am not, this is not myself.” In this realization, the “I” or “self” as subject disappears—or rather we realize that, except as a cognitive distortion, it was never truly there.

In many explicitly nondual practices, which are often prominent in Mahayana and Vajrayana, this nonself perspective is often emphasized. Such teachings are effective for glimpsing and deepening this realization. While impermanence (Pali, anicca) and dukkha are easily recognized and can also lead to non-clinging, nonself is such a radically unique way of understanding ourselves and the world that it can profoundly alter our practice. Yet the point is to see through the illusion of self as a way to end our suffering and not to get attached to any particular method of doing so.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, one of the great Tibetan Dzogchen masters of the last century, highlighted the importance of this:

The idea of an enduring self has kept you wandering helplessly in the lower realms of samsara for countless past lifetimes. It is the very thing that now prevents you from liberating yourself and others from conditioned existence. If you could simply let go of that one thought of “I,” you would find it easy to be free, and to free others, too. Use any practice you do to dissolve this idea of “I” and the self-oriented motivations that accompany it. Even if you do not succeed in the beginning, keep trying.

Another way of understanding nonduality—one widely discussed today—is through resting in awareness as various mental objects arise. A simple example occurred for me during a walk when I heard a bird singing. Initially, there was a distinction and separation: the bird in the sky and me walking. Then, a subtle shift happened, and the experience was spontaneously expressed as a haiku:

Bird song
In the empty sky
Of mind

In that moment, all sense of separation dissolved—only birdsong remained. It was interesting to toggle between these two ways of perceiving. Using the analogy of the mind as an empty sky, one perspective emphasizes the sound itself, while the other highlights the awareness that knows it. In both cases, however, sound and knowing are present. The question, then, is not which approach is superior, but how each can support the deepening of wisdom and the freeing of the mind.

Yet here is where some confusion can arise in contemporary discussions of nonduality. While experiences like “bird song in the empty sky of mind” may offer a taste of the nondual, something essential may still be missing in terms of the practice of liberation—namely, the direct realization of the selfless, empty nature of both knowing and what is being known. It is common to be resting in awareness yet still maintain a subtle identification with the act of knowing, which sustains a preverbal sense of self. The essential point of nonduality in the context of liberation, then, is seeing through the particular duality of a “self-as-subject” knowing an object.

As we consider this meaning of nondual awareness—the collapse of this subject/object dichotomy—there are still objects being known. Although there is no self-as-subject apart from the object, two distinct processes remain: knowing and what is being known (whether one calls them objects or appearances), and these two cannot be separated. Different traditions may emphasize one aspect or the other, but in either case the reality of what is happening is the same.