I posted in
http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/2075348
There are two benefits, in my experience, to no-self realization
and experience.
1) liberation
By liberating the view that there is a real self, it stops
clinging. To what? Clinging to a sense that there is a 'me', a
solid subject, or more subtly a sense of being or awareness...
apart from the flow of sensate phenomenality.
All sufferings come from clinging (clinging to something as 'me',
something as 'mine'), and all clingings/attachments basically come
down to two views: 'is', and 'is not'. If there is no self or
agent, then 'is' and 'is not' of a self does not apply. For
example: imagine you are deluded about the nature of wind, and you
think that there is a windness behind the blowing, so you grasp
onto this construct of an inherent windness and obviously when the
blowing changes from what you want or see it to be, 'you' suffer.
But when you truly see that there is no 'windness' of wind, that
'wind' is merely a label for an ungraspable process of blowing,
then what is left is simply the blowing activities. There is no
more clinging to 'windness' or relating particular activities as
'belonging to a wind'.
Relating back to 'self': there is no 'self', 'awareness', 'subject'
being 'here' to be clung to. There is no me, no I, no ownership...
only the aggregates that simply 'flows'. There is nothing that is
inherently 'me', or 'mine'. There is no more clinging or relating
things back to a self or owner which results in craving and
aversion, and this is very liberating.
What's left: referenceless, ownerless, disjoint, bubble-like,
insubstantial, self-releasing and self-luminous experience.
As you progress from the initial no-self realization by
transforming the five skandhas to eighteen dhatus (discussed in
some of my earlier posts), you will also see that fetters (craving,
fear, anger, etc) begin to lose hold and disappear from your life.
However the overcoming of subtler fetters be an immediate effect
and the insights and experience may not sink in so deeply as to
remove all the latent tendencies and habits (it also depends on
whether he has former meditative practice, for RT their experience
may not be as stable due to the nature of the direct path which is
to result in direct insight quickly without necessarily having the
meditative foundation, as they do not have years of vipassana and
samadhi practice as a foundation). I consider the no-self
realization as Buddha's Sotapanna, since it entails the end of
'self-view', and the further stages to Arhantship are the removal
of remaining fetters.
2) happiness
Most people are not really enjoying their experience. They are
always either in aversion of the moment, or in desire of something
better, therefore they can never be truly happy even if they get a
billion dollars. The resting of dualistic and self-referencing
tendencies leaves us with simply immersing in selfless pure sensate
clarity which results in great bliss. There is a sense of
perfection in the here and now and a non-contingent happiness. The
bliss/happiness (I am using both terms synonymously here) of pure
sensate enjoyment without clinging to a separate experiencer is
beyond imagination. Everything ordinary becomes intensely alive and
wonderful.