"Consciousness emerges as a phenomenon - an arising and passing episode of awareness - when a sense organ and a sense object make contact. This moment of contact consists of the cognizing of a sensory object (forms, sounds, smells, tastes or touches) or a mental object (thoughts, memories, plans, etc.) by means of a sensory organ (the eye, ear, nose, tongue or body) or by means of the mental organ (mind). Also coarising with this cognition is a momentary perception that identifies the object in light of past experience and stored recognition patterns, along with a momentary feeling tone that knows the object as pleasant, unpleasant or as carrying a feeling tone that is more neutral. When underlying tendencies of attachment, aversion or confusion are enacted, craving toward (or away from) the object also arises. Craving manifests either as wanting plesant feeling tones to persist (even as they inevitably pass away) or as wanting unpleasant sensations to go away (even as they continue to present as the sense door).

Grasping is an intentional stance taken by the active response mechanisms of the psychophysical organism. It takes the form of either 'attaching to' the object of the moment's experience or of 'resisting' the object of experience. Whether it manifests as holding on or pushing away, the attitude of grasping creates an artificial distancing of 'one's self' from what is happeing in the moment. It is this grasping response that causes the becoming of self, the momentary birth and death of self-identity that inevitably involves suffering.

[...] the liking or not liking of something is itself what creates the self, the person who likes or does not like what is happening this moment.

[...] grasping is not something done by the self; rather, self is something done by grasping.

[...] The self can only exist as a fleeting attitude toward experience, one in which 'the person who likes or does not like what is happening' is invented and defined.

[...] self as an event, self as a response - arises and passes away as relentlessly as everything else. A virtual self is born and dies as fast as our senses are capable of constructing and relinquishing experience. When this happens repetedly, the natural abilities of the mind to synthesize unity out of diversity and continuity out of discrete episodes of cognition conspire to create the ilusion of a stable entity. Just as a series of still photos presented at high speed will be resolved by the mind into a continuous visual narrative, so also a succession of discrete 'selves' will be identified in natural experience as the continuity of a single cohesive self. While each 'moment of selfing' is actually grounded in a unique combination of coarising sense organ, sense object, consciousness, perception, and feeling, and is constructed by a unique intentional response to each moment, the patterns of such response demonstrated by any individual are both regular and idiosyncratic enough to yield the experience of a unique self.

[...] the construction of personality - the fashioning of a self - only occurs when an attitude of possession or appropriation takes place. [...] When its moment passes away it is discarded, and another self is constructed to take temporary ownership of the next thing.

One has only to replace the grasping response, the reflex of holding on or pushing away, with an attitude of 'This is not mine, this is not me; this is not my self'.

[...] overcoming the propensity to create a self who suffers each moment calls for replacing the habitual response of grasping with equanimity."

Untangling self

"The midpoint between sense desire and aversion is equanimity, a state of mind that is evenly balanced. It's fully engaged with experience, but it neither favors nor opposes what is happening. We are aware of what is arising and passing away without any inclination to change it into something else. When this equanimity is coupled with a mind that is both tranquil and alert, we have found the still center of the mind. "

Untangling self

"Craving 'to become' is an impulse that makes us lean forward, away from here, into a better moment, a better self. When we do so, we separate that idealized moment from the actuality of what is just here. It’s only when we learn to end the separation of the possible and the actual that we also learn to end this dichotomy between doing and being. Calm abiding is a present-tense phrase, a way of being in the midst of our lives. We learn to calmly abide in the body, in the mind, in the midst of reactivity. Nothing has to go away. It’s the shift from the object orientation to the seeing orientation. All of our likes and all of our dislikes, our wanting and not wanting, are born of object orientation. This object orientation—defining identity by objects (including the contents of our consciousness)—limits us. We’ll always have a sense of unease within it.

Calm abiding is something different. It’s a deep knowing of the ways in which events come and go, both unlovely and lovely. It’s knowing that we can’t control or define ourselves by those events. It’s learning to rest in a non-preferential, non-reactive relationship that is sensitive, receptive, and free from the demand that things go one way or another.

Meaningfulness is found not only in the dramatic and the intense but also in the small moments, illuminated by a curious awareness. We discover that meaningfulness is in our being present. We don’t need to seek meaning, but to understand our capacity to be present in this responsive, still way."

Doing, Being, and the Great In-Between - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Fall 2016

"When desire is replaced by equanimity, and awareness of all phenomena thus unfolds without reference to self, we gain the freedom to move along with change rather than setting ourselves against it."

Self as a verb - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Summer 2005

"As practice matures, we reach a stage of perfect equanimity, where all the factors of enlightenment ripen. At this time, there are no cravings or yearnings, even for the next breath or the next moment of experience. There is not the slightest impulse toward either becoming or not becoming. As the mind settles into this perfect balance of noncraving, the flow of consciousness conditioned by changing objects suddenly stops. The mind then opens to and alights upon nibbana, the unconditioned, the unborn."

The end of suffering - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Winter 2013

"Equanimity is the nonreactive, nonmoving mind".

Stepping out of self-deception - p. 138

"Buddhists are pointing to an intensity of emotional response that accepts and even celebrates what is happening without trying to distort it into something else, into something that “I” prefer."

The Buddha's smile - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Winter 2012

"Equanimity arises from the power of observation — the ability to see without being caught by what we see.

We might understand this as “seeing with understanding.”

As a form of equanimity, this “being in the middle” refers to balance, to remaining centered in the middle of whatever is happening.

A simple definition of equanimity is the capacity to not be caught up with what happens to us. We can practice with equanimity by studying the ways that we get caught. Instead of pursuing the ideal of balance and nonreactivity directly, we can give careful attention to how balance is lost and how reactivity is triggered."

A perfect balance - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Winter 2005

"Equanimity is a way of being present with pleasure without attachment and of being present with pain without resistance. Equanimity embraces both pleasure and pain, and by doing so can bear them both without suffering."

Unlimiting mind - p. 7

"Equanimity here does not mean disconnection or neutral feeling, but a much more profound state that allows one to remain imperturbable in the face of even the strongest feelings. When one realizes that the arising feeling is one thing, while the attitude generated in response to it is something else entirely, the chain of compulsive causation is broken and a moment of freedom is born."

Unlimiting mind - p.79