Recognize that the self is an illusion and the source of much suffering, and engage in practices like the Five Aggregates to see through this illusion and reduce suffering.
Employ the Five Aggregates (form, feeling, perception, mental formations, consciousness) as a foundational Buddhist framework to understand how suffering arises in each aspect of experience and to work with any difficult situation in your life.
Integrate the conceptual understanding of ’no self’ with heart-centered practices, as this liberation can make joy, tenderness, compassion, equanimity, and healing more accessible and vibrant.
Actively practice clearing away grasping energy and identification with phenomena, which creates space for positive qualities like joy, compassion, and equanimity to naturally arise.
Practice viewing all experiences—sensations, emotions, thoughts, intentions, and consciousness—through the lens of the Five Aggregates, rather than through a personal ‘I,’ to release the mind from identification, fusion, and appropriation.
In meditation and daily life, practice returning to immediate experience (e.g., body, sitting, breathing) by renouncing the tendency to embellish and build elaborate mental stories that trap you in conceptual worlds.
Consistently notice the unreliable, unstable, intermittent, and flickering nature of all phenomena, including your body, mind states, and possessions, to gradually get used to the process of losing things and to cultivate equanimity.
In meditation, observe the body as a fluid field of impersonal sensations (e.g., tingling, pressure, expansions, contractions) rather than rigidly identifying it as ‘my body’ or ‘I am the body,’ to understand its conditional nature.
Approach ownership of material things and relationships with nuance, recognizing that they are conditionally ‘yours’ but not absolutely, to reduce grasping and clinging and navigate change more smoothly.
Pay close attention to the pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral feeling tones that accompany every experience (e.g., sights, sounds, thoughts), noticing how they constantly arise and vanish, revealing their unstable nature.
When unpleasant experiences arise, pay close attention and investigate how they can be an opportunity to cultivate positive qualities like calm, integrity, patience, care, honesty, healing, stability, compassion, or humor, rather than reacting with irritation or aversion.
Understand that your perceptions and interpretations of reality (e.g., people, future, past) are subjective ‘mirages’ colored by past experiences and conditioning, not objective facts, to avoid unnecessary reactions and suffering.
Realize that your thoughts about something (e.g., your mother, a situation, the future) are not the thing itself, which is a fundamental step towards liberation from suffering caused by mental projections.
When encountering people with different views (e.g., on COVID, vaccines, masks), remember that their perceptions are shaped by their unique experiences and exposures, promoting empathy and reducing conflict.
Recognize that elaborate mental stories, plans, and even intentions are ‘constructions of the mind’ (mental formations) that arise from conditions, rather than originating from a solid, personal ‘I’ or being factual reality.
See emotions (e.g., anger, fear, pride, joy) as impersonal phenomena ‘of the public domain’ that arise and pass, rather than ‘your’ personal property, allowing them to be liberated without personal attachment.
Develop a quiet and stable mind, then investigate the subtle sense of ‘I’ by asking ‘Who is hearing? Who is thinking? Who is sitting?’ and observing the impersonal nature of knowing without trying to get rid of it.
Practice removing the pronoun ‘I’ from your internal language (e.g., saying ‘hearing is happening,’ ‘fear is known,’ ‘chopping carrots is happening’) to observe how this shifts your experience and perception of a solid self.