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Notes on video lecture:
Anātman: Buddha's Concept of the Not-Self
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
exist, person, awareness, physical, not, Buddhist, four, experiential, discourse, persist, changes, consciousness, not, control, against, enlightenment, spirit, five, asserts, volition, senses
the concept of the       -self
two ways to understand it
1. intellectual: reading about it
2.                         : meditating on it
the discourse on the not-self
where the Buddha talked about the not-self
the second sermon he delivered after his                           
first was discourse on the          truths
testament to the importance of the not-self in                  thought
Anātman
the Not-self, the illusion of self, something different from              or soul, the unreal projected by ignorance on the real, the absence of a self, a thing with the property of not existing, a rendition of the impermanence of being
what did the Buddha mean by the self?
two ways
1. delve into the philosophical                    of the time and try to determine what the word meant to the Buddha
2. infer what the Buddha meant by self from his argument                the self
if an alien came and found a paper written arguing that Santa couldn't            because a man can't visit more than a million homes a night, one could conclude that this what people believed
in the same way we will understand what the Buddha mean by the self by looking at his arguments against the self
the          aggregates
constitute everything about a             
1. form
anything                  in the world
your physical body
2. feeling
emotions
3. perception
our five             
4. mental formations
desires
                
5. consciousness
the phenomenon of subjective                   
you cannot find the self in any of these aggregates
two characteristics of each of these
1. impermanence, e.g. characterized by change
if the self is characterized by change, is it proper to call it self?
the self is something we believe to                through time
consistent with how we view the self today, a continuity of identity
self is a solid essence that endures through time
the Buddha says too much                so it is hard to say a self is there
2. associated with control
if feelings were self, you could                them
if form (body) was self, you could control its shape and functionality
the self is the thing that                control
the self should be under control, the self's house should be in order
you ultimately don't have control over your body, feeling, perception, mental formations, and                           
the self is about control and persistence through time
and the fact is that there is        as much control over the various faculties as we like to think
and we are not as impermanent as we like to think, i.e. we can't remember thousands of memories we once had

Ideas and Concepts:

Buddhist vocabulary of the day via tonight's Buddhism and Modern Psychology class: "anātman, n. the not-self, the illusion of self, the absence of self, something different from spirit or soul in that it is the unreal projected by ignorance of the real, a thing thought of to be the self with the property of not existing"
From the integrity-encouraging-metaphors department via tonight's Buddhism and Modern Psychology class: "In Buddhism there is a traditional belief that if you refuse to answer a question asked of you three times, your head will split into seven pieces."
Naturalistic Buddhism
Feelings and Illusions
The First Two Noble Truths
Buddhism as Rebellion Against Natural Selection's Agenda
The Eightfold Path and the Matrix
Mindful Meditation
The Default Mode Network
The Evolution and Purpose of Feelings
Anātman: Buddha's Concept of the Not-Self
The Five Aggregates and the Non-Self
Left Brain, Right Brain, and The Self
Delusions of the Self
What Mental Modules Are Not
The Modular Theory of the Mind
Modular Theory of Mind and the Non-Self
Mind Modularity, Cravings, and Self Control
The Experience of the Not-Self
The Exterior Version of the Non-Self