This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Meditation with Matthew Brensilver; Anatta or Bust and the Complexities of Causality. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Guided Meditation: entering the dharma realm; Anatta as a cause and effect of freedom - Matthew Brensilver

The following talk was given by Matthew Brensilver at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on January 07, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Welcome, folks. I appreciate your presence here. Just a technical note: I will make a Zoom option available next week. I will post that on the IMC calendar and on my website, matthewbrensilver.org. You are welcome to stay on YouTube, but we will also have a Zoom room if you want to see each other's faces. It is probably good to see each other's faces. All right, let us practice together.

Guided Meditation: entering the dharma realm

We take refuge¹, not to insulate us from the world, but so we can meet it in such a way that reduces rather than compounds suffering. We are far more suggestible than we think. When we marinate in environments of hatred and confusion, barbarism becomes more likely. So even if we are very careful with our intention of non-harming, it is important that we come back again and again, remembering refuge.

We have to find ways to abide in goodness to restore the heart against the bombardment of greed and delusion. Here, we consciously—though it is a little harder online—enter a kind of Dharma² realm or field. Everything means something a little different once we have entered that realm. How your body feels is a little different. What your thoughts mean is a little different. It is a web of association to moments of practice, kindness, clarity, letting go, and courage. Enter the dharma field.

When we do, the Dharma meets the "second arrow."³ What meets the "first arrow"—the suffering still left over—is not a perfect consolation for the totality of human tragedy. The Dharma meets the second arrow, and perhaps meets the first with a kind of quiet grief, very close to love.

So we abide together, connected with a network of goodwill, renunciation, and the intention to not harm. This entry into a Dharma realm may be quite subtle. Maybe it seems like barely anything is different. But as one of my teachers, Shinzen [Young]⁴, would say: "Subtle is significant."

We start to take our cues from goodness, an image of someone or something we love. Maybe just a conscious breath that reminds us of all the moments we have loved, a conscious breath that reminds us of all that we know. You don't have to trace out the implications of your love in this moment. Just rest with it.

One of the signals that we have entered a realm of Dharma—a field of sensitivity and care—is that there is more space. The view becomes vaster. We become a little less preoccupied by the notion of "my life." Love and egocentrism work at cross purposes.

We might consider a question: What does love ask of you? What do you vow? How do you wish to serve? All of us are these weird hybrid creatures: lay people on what is actually a very radical path. It is radical in its commitment and faith in love and nonviolence.

Anatta as a cause and effect of freedom

That is good to practice with you.

In some ways, the topic feels not so well-timed, but in other ways, it feels right. I do not want to be reductionist and diagnose all sociopolitical derangement as a spiritual problem, but the topic of self is relevant in what we are perceiving. We see that egoic forces are wedded to the great agent illusion⁵.

The Buddha said that to study the Dharma is to study causality. We are interested in what causes and conditions tend towards suffering, and what causes and conditions tend towards peace—considered the highest happiness.

There is a saying in statistics: "Correlation does not imply causation." Correlation means two things are related; knowing about one gives you information about the other. For example, if you know how many cigarettes I smoke, you know something about my disease risk. They are correlated. But two things can be correlated without a causal relationship. People who wear bow ties might have higher rates of Vitamin D deficiency, but that doesn't mean tie-wearing causes the deficiency. Maybe people who wear bow ties are more likely to work inside and have less sun exposure.

Causality entails something more than correlation. You have to rule out reverse causality. For example, maybe the presence of disease makes people more likely to smoke.

So, why talk about this? I have had ongoing questions in my head, and discussions with others, about the relationship between the insight into self—Anattā⁶—and freedom. What is the relationship between that insight and freedom? Does the insight have causal efficacy? Does having that insight cause freedom?

Sometimes it is claimed that insight into Anattā causes a change in the experience of one's life. I think that is true in many cases. You might be grappling with something subtly or desperately, and it is hard to know how personal it all has become. By "personal," I mean how deeply that experience, feeling, or story is a commentary on who you are. Taking something personally involves isolation, loneliness, and alienation—a disjointedness that is a facet of egoic life. There is often the potential for shame, which is the underbelly of self. By "personally," I mean how mesmerized we are by the narrative of "my life"—birth, life, death—and how obscured the vastness of space, time, and Dharma becomes.

Then, the fever breaks. The agitation dissolves. The sense that all experience refers back to me dissolves. Phenomena become completely unthreatening, just the ebb and flow of nature—arising and passing. The effect of that is a reduction or vanishing of suffering. There seems to be a causal relationship: the insight catalyzes freedom.

Fair enough. But more often, I feel like Anattā and freedom are correlated, not necessarily in a simple causal relationship where Anattā causes freedom. Sometimes Anattā is not the cause of freedom, but the holistic effect of our path. Our growing freedom unfolds the understanding of not-self.

We understand Anattā through many mechanisms, not simply those punctuated insights into the emptiness of self. There are many forces on the path that lead us in this direction. The Dharma functions to encourage a de-centering of the self. As I have talked about at times, Dharma is like cognitive therapy: what views to pick up, what ideas to believe. It really begins with a de-centering of self.

Dukkha⁷ (suffering) becomes profoundly impersonal. The First Noble Truth—that there is Dukkha, that it is woven into the fabric of existence—means that imperfection is not a problem to be solved. You did not create this law. It isn't that you are failing. This is a de-centering effect.

Goodness likewise becomes impersonal. When we touch into goodness, it is revealed amidst our utter ordinariness, not our specialness. Our Sīla⁸ (ethical conduct) moves us against the intoxication of self. Developing this ethical sensitivity, we realize how deeply we assume others are features within our life, rather than their own unique expressions of consciousness. We recognize that we are as much an object in their mind as they are in ours.

Someone joked that in a traffic jam on the Bay Bridge, usually we look forward at all the cars and say, "What are these people doing in my way?" The task is to gaze backward and wonder, "Look at all the people I'm blocking." [Laughter]

Love is the dramatization of the subjectivity of the other. As the world gets larger, the self gets smaller. The degree to which we center and privilege our own well-being over that of others starts to shrink.

We get other tastes of Anattā in the humility engendered by this path. It is a humbling path. We get to see the limitations of our willfulness. If we are practicing sincerely, our grandiosity is absolutely pummeled. We cannot sit still for five minutes and conclude, "I've really got my [act] together." Five minutes is enough to dispel that. The self softens.

We see how compulsivity animates our life. You know you need to let go, and yet you cannot. When we witness that, we start to develop compassion for ourselves and others. We see how locked in we are with those grooves of habit energy, where it seems like there is no overriding the tide of delusion. Amidst that helplessness, we come to appreciate conditionality more deeply.

All the psychological healing that happens on the path is a gradual dis-identification and loosening of the self-story. Even if the self is not the explicit target, the effect of all the healing is a softening, a fluidification of the sense of self.

So the case I am making is that so many aspects of this path lead us into a more fluid sense of self. That is why I get hesitant when the approach is "Anattā or bust"—"I'm going to see this or not, it's now or never." Not only does that put pressure on the self to make not-self happen, but the causal assumptions are confused.

The path works holistically. Sometimes you see examples through meditation, or even drugs or extreme endurance, where people have an experience of Anattā, but it doesn't always lead anywhere. As Joseph Goldstein said, "An experience is not a path."

The path works holistically to move us towards Anattā. Anattā is a cause of freedom, but also an effect. I offer this for your consideration.

Let us practice well this week. Take good care of yourself and each other. I will be back next week.