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.