*Notes on understanding [[anatta]], not as some mystical thing, but as an instruction to notice a particular mental habit.* The mind, building a model of the world, cannot recalculate everything from scratch all the time. The map must be smaller and simpler than the territory to be of any use. But then every map discards some level of detail, according to assumptions about what is important to remember and how things work. What are these assumptions? When the map is closer to raw perception, reality itself corrects errors quickly. Walking along an uneven path, you misstep, and your sudden loss of balance corrects you. The sooner you notice the difference between what you expected to happen and what happened, the less severe your fall will be. As we get older and create more abstract concepts, this feedback loop stretches out. Is something you've done or thought an error, or have you just not yet seen the full context in which it makes sense? Meditation is one way to introduce shorter feedback loops, to investigate not just the contents of the map, but the process of map-making. We gain much from starting at the level of bare perception, the simplest sensations, setting aside as much as possible the habitual way of engaging with thoughts. But at every level of conceptual elaboration, *anatta* has some application. We can focus on either or both of: - the personal sense of self - the apparent solidity of *any* concept # Factoring out self-centeredness > [[Vajrayana]] does not endorse greed, rage, lust, paranoia, or idiocy. It understands those as forms of generosity, clarity, compassion, accomplishment, and equanimity (respectively)—but mixed with narcissistic mental contents. > --[[David Chapman]] First there is a pure intention, something we can all relate to as a vision of something good; and then that pure intention gets fenced in by an inclination to manifest that pure intention only for some supposed small and separate self, regardless of, or worse, at the expense of, the rest. Unpacking those pairs a bit: Generosity -> Greed: - May there be abundance - May *I* have abundance Clarity -> Rage: - May there be clear seeing - *They* are mistaken Compassion -> Lust: - May there be intimacy - May *I* have intimacy, and only some kinds Accomplishment -> Paranoia: - May good be done - *They* are doing wrong Equanimity -> Idiocy: - All arises within vast spaciousness - *I* stay calm and still by not paying attention *The Five Wisdom Energies* by Irini Rockwell elaborates more on this nondual view that characteristics can express as either neurosis or wisdom, depending on context and refinement. You can put this into practice whenever one of these "problematic" emotions comes up. Look for the pure intention. Take the view that it arose before any fixation on producing that intention only for a specific object or narrow context. If you have like programming metaphors, you can think of this move as refactoring a hardcoded value out of a function by turning it into an input variable.