How to Look and What to Look With

With the first fetter, you only have one tool to look for the self, and that is your attention. You can use this attention to look around the various sense organs and their sense objects.

First, try to become familiar with what the attention is:

Without moving your head, or your eyes, move your attention to the left foot. Notice that your left foot is known by its sensation, by which there’s a non-judgemental or non-descript awareness of your left foot.

You might also notice that there’s a spatial distance or a directional knowing about the left foot and its location, where your attention orients or stretches out to settle itself on the left foot in order to make sense of it in spatial reality. Notice what that feels like.

You might even feel a subtle pull in your eyes towards the foot. If you notice that - then good.

It’s really important that you notice this non-judgemental awareness going forward, where the foot is known only by sensations. Even the interpreation ‘foot’ must be absent. Next, move your attention to your right hand and notice how the internal spatial reality changes. Now move your attention to your forehead, and then to the back of your head.

So this is your attention spot, and you’ve managed to move it around the body. You can use this as a way to inquire into the self. Try to also notice what qualiites the attention spot has. Is it wide or narrow? Is like a ball, or a circle? What texture does it have?

Let’s go deeper…

Sense Organs & Sense Objects

What you can do next is use this attention to traverse the various sense organs. For example, without moving your head or eyes, settle your attention on your left foot again… then move your attention to an object in the room, say a chair or a door.

Now you’re familiar with how the attention works, you're going to look for the self. 

Move your attention to the hearing space and spend a few moments noticing sounds. Next move your attention to the seeing space, and spend a few moments noticing what you can see in the room. Next, move your attention to the feeling space (the body) and notice the weight of the body on the chair, and any other sensations.

This is 3 of the sense organs and their sense objects (eyes & seeing, sounds & hearing, body & feeling).

As a side task, did you notice the very moment the attention traversed from one sense organ to the next, as if it jumped over a barrier, or crossed a sensation layer, or warped from one to the other? Have another look, if you like

Now, let the attention naturally settle on you.

Have a look around those three sense organs for you.

What makes it certain to you that you’re in the room?

What does that feel like? Is it a sense/feeling that you’re there, or is there a background image in your mind of you that you land on to reference you?

Where does your attention naturally rest when it reverts back to the feeling of you?

Perhaps look at what you feel isn’t you, (a chair) and allow the attention to naturally settle on you.

Be honest with the answer - if you feel like ‘you’ are there, explain what that feels like.

Most people will find themsleves in the head. They feel like that’s where they are.

Whatever feels like you, bring that sensation or thought to the fore, and look behind it, around it, through it for more of you.

You might conclude that you can’t find the self. That is the thought ‘I can’t find it’.

It’s the self explaining its situation, but from the perspective of the inquirer. Any kind of narritive is an attempt to explain what is happening. ‘I can’t find it’ is simply doubt. It a position of gatekeeping to stop you going any further.

You’re intellect will trick you time and again like this.

When you really cannot find it, the narritve and the intellect stops dead. It goes entirely offline, but having read this, your mind might try to conceptually simulate ‘going off line’. Doubt can therefore morph into anything.

Now, keeping the above in mind, lets look at the common, inevitable pitfalls…