"As we continue to hold on to the thing, we turn it over in our thoughts, and our thoughts are also colored by the same craving and sense of insufficiency. Proliferating thoughts beset us - thoughts about I, me and mine. So when we grasp, we create anew the sense of self. In fact grasping is identical to creating the sense o self. The sense of self arises through grasping.

The 'I' is constantly defining itself in relation to something that exists: I think, I feel, I hurt, my home, my partner and so on."

Emptiness: a practical guide for meditators

"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

"Nonattachment is, of course, what we are practicing when we meditate.
Because the self is composed of mostly habitual ways of thinking, feeling, acting, reacting and so forth, it means that when I "let go" of them while meditating, I am deconstructing my sense of self - or, more precisely, the self is deconstructing, because it is not really something that "I" can do." 

A new buddhist path - p. 50

"We come to meditation with the usual assumption that the thoughts and images and feelings that arise are something that I am doing, only to realize that the thoughts, etc. have a life of their own. It's more correct to say that the thoughts are "doing" me: that my sense of self is composed of mostly habitual ways of thinking, feeling, acting, reacting, remembering, planning, intending and so forth.

One's thinking, feeling, intending, etc. constantly relate back to the self-image of a "me", yet that image too is a conditioned construct.
Conditioned by what? By earlier experiences, both passive (what happened to me) and active (what I did in response).

According to Buddhism, the problem isn't that we have a self; on contrary, there's never been a real self, so there's nothing to discard. Nor do we need to get rid of the sense of self; that's necessary to function in daily life. The problem is a sense of self that feels and believes itself to be separate from the rest of the world.

Realizing that the sense of self is a construct gives us insight into why it is the source of our most problematic dukkha. A constructed self is not something that has any discrete reality of its own. It's a cluster of impermanent and interacting psycho-physical processes that are not grounded in anything more substantial.

The solution to our festering sense of lack is deconstructing and reconstructing the sense of self, so that it doesn't feel so separate." 

A new buddhist path - p. 43-47

"Sankhara, one's habitual tendencies, are what survive death and lead to the conception and development of a new psychophysical being, which is necessary for those tendencies to continue actualizing. The sense of self as we know it does not survive, which is why we don't remember our past lifetimes, yet mental tendencies continue to exist, and cause the formation of a new one." 

A new buddhist path - p. 138

"We cannot be the experience we perceive. This means we are not our thoughts, emotions, states of mind, physical sensations or sense data."

Awakening: a paradigm shift of the heart - p. 201

"As we see everything coming and going - the breathing, feelings, mind states - we begin also to see that the whole notion of a self who is doing these things is imaginary. 

The things you're identifying as self are merely mind states that you're going through.

The truth is that we don't own anything, not our bodies, not even the content of our minds.

When you're fully aware of a mind state - the same way you're aware of the breathing - you'll see that it's just there. It doesn't belong to anyone.

We can't regulate what comes into our consciousness. All we can do is relate to it in a new way.

Under no circumstances attach to anything as me or mine.

You're just a series of births and deaths happening, all day long. You're a process."

Breath by breath: the liberating practice of insight meditation

"Self, in other words, is a projection of ownership onto all experience (this is my body, these are my feelings, perceptions, formations, and this is my consciousness). The five aggregates really do occur—that is not in question. They just don’t belong to me. Experience occurs, but the person who owns it is a fictitious construction.

If the self is so simply created, it is just as simply abandoned. In the same text, the Buddha says that there is a practical way leading to the cessation of the view of self as a really existing entity: regard the aggregates as “this is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.”

The self attitude causes suffering, the nonself attitude does not. It is as straightforward as that."

I think I am - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Spring 2010

"A sense of self is inevitably uncomfortable since, being a psychological construct, it is groundless, and the usual ways it tries to ground itself to feel more "real" just make things worse."

Money, sex, war, karma

"My sense of self is composed of habitual ways of thinking, feeling, acting and reacting - all of them being temporal processes, different forms that time takes."

Money, sex, war, karma

"For Buddhism our real problem isn't inability to keep living forever. The more basic problem is right here and now: that our sense of self isn't real, which gives us, again, a sense of lack that manifests as insecurity and ungroundedness. Since we don't feel real enough, and nothing we acquire ever makes us feel real enough, we long for immortality as a kind of substitute reality that can postpone the problem indefinitely."

Money, sex, war, karma

"Buddhism is about awakening, which means realizing something about the constructedness of the sense of self and the nothing at its core.

Usually that void at our core is so uncomfortable that we try to evade it, by identifying with something else that might give us stability and security.

The point isn't to get rid of the self: that's not possible, for there never has been a self. Nor do we want to get rid of the sense of self: that would be a rather unpleasant type of mental retardation. Rather, what we work toward is a more permeable, less dualistic sense of self, which is more aware of, and more comfortable with, its empty constructedness."

Money, sex, war, karma

"If my sense of self is actually composed of habitual ways of perceiving, feeling, thinking and behaving, then karma isn't something I have, it's what I am.

I change my karma by changing who I am: by reconstructing my habitual ways of perceiving, feeling, thinking and behaving.

Karma is about how habitual ways of thinking and acting tend to create predictable types of situations."

Money, sex, war, karma  

"We can think of ourselves spiritually as being somewhere on a continuum between one and zero. One is the full embodiment of the "I" separate from all things, and zero is emptiness and the unconditioned. Spiritual practice is supposed to move us from one to zero.

This continuum can also be thought of in terms of time, with zero abiding within the timeless and one firmly entrenched within the ideas of past and future."

Stepping out of self-deception - p. 215

"The mind attempts to assume spiritual authority over the heart. The leadership of the "I" makes a compelling case as it measures what it has, figures out what it needs, sets down an agenda, and progresses toward its goal. It knows exactly where it is going, what it still lacks, and how to achieve the desired result, all in quantifiable terms. But if the mind has never been where it is going, how could it possibly have any idea how to get there, or even what "getting there" looks like? The mind has a blueprint for its salvation but all its maps are in abstract form, and over time we give less and less credibility to anything but the wisdom derived from direct experience."

Stepping out of self-deception - p. 168

"We" do not have a mind. The mind has created the sense of "you" and "me" from the way it perceives reality. "We" are a part of the mental processing of the mind. The thoughts of the mind and the sense-of-I are not two separate events. We exist only because the mind thinks us into creation.

Stepping out of self-deception - p. 166

"We are not going anywhere or becoming anyone."

Stepping out of self-deception - p. 91

"The sense-of-self forms conclusions because it fears living within the ambiguity of a question.

As we journey along our spiritual path, we become more willing to move from mental certainty to the open amazement of not knowing."

Stepping out of self-deception - p. 64

"The sense-of-self comes into play when we think reality can be altered.

The mind gives birth to the sense-of-self when we are disputing the conditions of reality." 

Stepping out of self-deception - p. 49

"Ironically, what blocks your view of your mind's true nature - your buddha mind - is also your own mind, the part of your mind that is always busy, constantly involved in a steady stream of thoughts, emotions and concepts. This busy mind is who you think you are.

You identify yourself with the contents of this busy mind - your thoughts, emotions, ideas - and end up thinking that all of this stuff is "me" and "how I am"."

Rebel Buddha - p. 11