"The body is not self. If it were, it would not get sick. You could tell your body: be like this or don't be like that. But because the body is not self, it does get sick. You can't tell it: be like this or don't be like that. He points out that the same is true for feelings, perceptions, inclinations and consciousness. You cannot determine in advance how you will feel, what you will perceive, how you will be inclined to act, or what you will be conscious of. You do not choose to feel happy rather than sad, to perceive a world that delights rather than disturbs you, to always incline to a calm rather than an agitated response, to be unconscious rather than conscious of something distressing. In others words, you are not in charge of what is going on within your own experience.

The liberating insight he [Buddha] proposes is not the realization that there is no self but the realization that I am not the same as or reducible to any or all of the five bundles (aggregates) that constitute me.

Gotama understood awakening as the result of directly knowing how experience comes about.

The key to freeing oneself from the repetitive cycles of reactivity and beholding nirvana is attention. When attention becomes embodied through contemplation of the transient, tragic, impersonal and empty nature of the bundles, our relationship to experience begins to shift in disconcerting ways. The practice of embodied attention challenges our habitual perceptions of self and world as permanent, satisfatory and intrinsically ours. By stabilizing attention through mindfulness and concentration, we begin to see for ourselves how pleasurable and painful feelings trigger habitual patterns of reactivity and craving. These two insights not only undermine our inclinations to hold on to what we like and to push away what we fear but open up the possibility of thinking, speaking and acting otherwise.

'Seeing things this way', says Gotama at the conclusion of his discourse on not-self, 'the attentive noble disciple disengages from form, disengages from feelings, disengages from perceptions, disengages from inclinations, disengages from consciousness. By disengaging, reactivity fades; non-reactive, he is freed; the knowledge arises: 'I am freed.'' This is the experience of nirvana as immediate and clearly visible; it is at this crucial point that one sees for oneself how one is free not to react to life but to respond to it from a perspective that is no longer conditioned by such inclinations." 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age

"Gotama declares: 'I will show you the burden and the carrier of the burden, the burden's addition and the burden's relief.' He explains that the burden is the five bundles (aggregates), the carrier of the burden is the person of such a name and clan. What is added to the burden is reactivity/craving and the burden relief is the fading away and ceasing of that reactivity, that is, nirvana." 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age

"As soon as I come in touch with a situation in the world, it feels a certain way, makes perceptual sense and inclines me to adopt a stance toward it.

Consciousness emerges out of the entire complex of interactions between an organism and its environment.

Consciousness is a seamless whole that is not equivalent to the sum of its parts.

Consciousness has a total, unified awareness of what is happening that none of its constituents (feeling, perception, inclination, etc.) can achieve on their own.

For Gotama there can be no such thing as "pure" consciousness, an unconditioned or pristine "knowing" that exists independently of the phenomenal world of discrete physical things and mental processes.

Without a condition there is no arising of consciousness.

Consciousness is determined by the particular conditions that give rise to it. 

Consciousness  is a impermanent, contingent, compounded and varied as anything else in experience." 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age 

"The goal of the fourfold task, I would argue, is to lead an integrated life.

An integrated life is the outcome of having embraced the suffering world, let go of reactivity and beheld reactivity's ceasing. From this still and empty space one then responds with intuitions, thoughts, intentions, words and acts that are not determined by reactivity.

The moment in which reactivity ceases is also the moment that allows a "complete view" (the first branch of the path) to emerge." 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age 

"Mara, the personification of reactivity, is conquered not by eliminating every last reaction from one's mind but by finding a way to become impervious to his attacks. We acquire freedom from reactivity yet without the reactivity ceasing to occur. If we observe these impulses and do not feed them, they will die down over time and diminish in frequency.

Gotama continued to be subject to Mara's attacks even after his awakening. As long as we are embodied in flesh, nerves and blood, reactivity will be part and parcel of what it entails to be human." 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age 

"I see Gotama's vision to be primarily concerned with these fundamentals:

An understanding of conditionality as the context for
A fourfold task:

to comprehend suffering,
to let go of the arising of reactivity,
to behold the ceasing of reactivity, and
cultivate an eightfold path that is grounded in the perspective of

Mindful awareness and leads one to become
Self-reliant in the practice of the dharma." 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age 

"A secular approach to Buddhism is thus concerned with how the dharma can enable humans and other living beings to flourish in this biosphere, not in a hypothetical afterlife. Rather than emphasizing personal enlightenment and liberation, it is grounded in a deeply felt concern and compassion for the suffering of all those with whom we share this earth.

The purpose of the Buddha's teaching is not to resolve doubts about the nature of reality by providing answers to such conundrums but to offer a practice that will remove the arrow of reactivity, thereby restoring practitioners' health and enabling them to flourish here on earth.

Such a practice is concerned with finding an authentic and autonomous response to the questions that life poses rather than confirming any doctrinal article of faith." 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age 

"Emptiness is first and foremost a condition in which we dwell, abide and live.

Emptiness thus seems to be a perspective, a sensibility, a way of being in this poignant, contingent world.

Rather than being the negation of self, emptiness discloses the dignity of a person who has realized what it means to be fully human.

Such emptiness is far from being an ultimate truth that needs to be understood through logical inference and then directly realized in a state of nonconceptual meditation. It is a sensibility in which one dwells, not a privileged epistemological object that, through knowing, one gains a cognitive enlightenment.

To dwell in emptiness means to inhabit fully the embodied space of one's sensory experience, but in a way that is no longer determined by one's habitual reactivity. To dwell in such emptiness does not mean that one will no longer suffer. As long as one has a body and senses, one will be "prone to the anxiety" that comes with being a conscious, feeling creature made of flesh, bones and blood.

For Gotama, the point is not to understand emptiness but to dwell in it. To dwell in emptiness brings us firmly down to earth and back to our bodies. It is a way of enabling us to open our eyes and see ordinary things as though for the first time. As the Buddha instructed his student Bahiya, to live in such a way means that "in the seen, there will be only the seen; in the heard, only the heard; in the sensed only the sensed; in that of which I am conscious, only that of which I am conscious.

How, in the course of Buddhist history, did the concept of emptiness evolve from a way of dwelling on earth unconditioned by reactivity into an ultimate truth to be directly cognized in a nonconceptual state of meditation?" 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age 

"We are creatures who react as we come into contact with the world through our senses.

Such reactions are entirely natural. They are neither good nor bad. Strictly speaking, they are not even "ours". They are simply what happens when an organism interacts with its environment. They are what arises.

The person who lets go of reactivity does not shun involvement with the world but moves nimbly and lightly through it.

Gotama recognized that human beings spend an inordinate amount of time absorbed in the amplifications and proliferations of reactivity.

Letting go of reactivity is a consequence of comprehending reactivity.

The practitioner sees the tricksterish wiles of reactivity for what they are: the seductive, infantile play of an organism that is primarily - and, for the most part, redundantly - preoccupied with its biological survival.

Nirvana [is] to be understood in one of two senses: either as the ceasing of reactivity or as freedom and independence from reactivity.

To behold and thus become aware of nirvana means consciously to affirm and valorize those moments when you see for yourself that you are free to think, speak and act in ways that are not determined by reactivity.

Nirvana is clearly visible the moment reactivity stops." 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age

"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