Siddhartha concluded no self, yet asserted himself to take the gift of cow's milk and actively sustain his own life (versus actively permit his own starvation).
The actual freedom and dharma discussed on this site focuses on practice and ultimately the cessation of self: AF - extirpation of any self or being whatsoever; dharma - cessation of coming into being.
What is this act of self-assertion (i.e., drinking the offered milk) after the realization of no contiguous being or identifiable self? As Adam. asked in March,
why not just die? Gotama taking the gift of milk is an apt, affectless action born of the simple, unavoidable choice at that moment to live or die.
Further still, Gotama,
after realizing no self,
after accepting the gift of milk, chooses to continue his own sustenance and lives a long life based on this ongoing choice to self-sustain. He, like others in history, strives to clearly, without confusion, to pass on selflessness despite the cacophony of various neediness around him.
So, what is the affectless self-sustenance of one's life after (despite) realizing and ceasing self and in the absence of a stream of such gifts? There is still a moment to moment choice about living or dying and how.
Without the nature to die affectlessly - and people do permit their own apparently affectless deaths (i.e., Thich Quang Duc) AF and dharma (and others) affirm that there are ways to live affectlessly and self-sustaining after realizing there is no fixity or self.
Living freshly in each moment (aptness in the meeting place of one's interior changing attributes (such as those related to aging) and of the exterior changing conditions (i.e., such as those related to weathers, harvests, population)), living only in each fresh moment, is like accepting the milk gift again and again - a choice at "each moment".
Some lives have many choices at this moment, some have only the choice at this moment of perceiving their death, some lives at this moment are perceiving physical and/or mental misery from which an exit would be welcome if not available or accessible.
There are fewer human psychopaths than not bent on destructions (else human population and its ingenuities would not be abundant), so human aptness is often evidenced in altruistic behaviours (i.e., caring) as much as its mass psycopathies (selectively altruistic, such as genocide), and, evidenced neutrally in wonder and creativity.
The AF and dharma practices (even practices of divine faith) reveal in order to undo that which is fabricated - be it to undo "lighter fabrics" of a contiguous, but separated entity (dispassionate being also called "being", "watcher", "observer", "awareness", "no-self", "investigation of itself") and/or "heavier fabrics" like identity (i.e., , hero, failure, bipolar, beautiful, leggy, squat, etc ).
Practitioners make the decision in any practice moment that the fabric of self-centering (including dispassionate being) is ultimately contributing to a dissatisfaction, an imperfection, a fault, a falsity or something at least to abandon. This is similar to divine faith: that a self should cease and make way for providence.
Like a marathon, getting to cessation or freedom is a silly ultimatum, the practice/ongoing is everything. There is only ongoing freedom in ongoing freely. There is no declaration of freedom or cessation or anything that is not extinct at the exact moment the declaration ceases. "Af/dharma ist tot." ; )
No script, no following another's words or actions. When I travel towards the sunset to get to Mongolia, a Frenchman travels towards the rising sun to get to Mongolia. He and I must be very aware about ourselves and the earth if we advise each other of the path to Mongolia.
- lady blah blah