As I've said before, and so many times, that our Zen ancestor, Eihei Dogen, said that to study the Buddha way is to study the self. And to study the self is to forget the self. And to forget the self is to be realized by everything. Did I say to study the self is to be realized by everything? Or to forget the self? To forget the self is to be realized by everything. Or you could also say, to learn the Buddha way is to learn the self.

[01:20]

And to learn the self is to forget the self. And to forget the self is to be confirmed by everything. So that everything that happens realizes you. The sun rises, the sun sets, and realizes you. Somebody says hello to you, somebody says goodbye to you, you drink a glass of water, you touch a doorknob, you cough, you hear a bird, you feel insulted, you feel pain, all those things, each one of them realizes you. And you can be realized by everything when you forget about what yourself is. Now, last week we were talking about the five skandhas, the five aggregates, the five heaps, the five clusters, various names.

[02:38]

various translations of five skandhas, pancha skandha, five skandhas, five aggregates. Shakyamuni Buddha had the ability to see his past lives, and he said, when I reviewed my past lives, What I saw in every single life was five aggregates. When he looked back through his many rebirths, he always saw five aggregates, [...] five aggregates. Each five aggregate is different, but that's what he saw. And towards the end of the class, Peter said that it sounded to him like this kind of learning about the self would involve a kind of analysis, and he had thought that the Zen practice of Zen Center was not an analysis practice.

[03:58]

It's not like you go down in the Zendo and sit there and sort of like analyze what you're experiencing, try to see, you know, the five skandhas. Right? Is that right, Peter? And my response to him was, it's not that this kind of teaching is for you then to like try to analyze your experience. This teaching is to help you realize how you're constantly analyzing your experience. In fact, we have a mind which does analyze every moment we analyze. It's part of our ability. We analyze this room. as having a certain number of windows a ceiling and a floor and if you took the ceiling away we would immediately analyze the room differently we analyze this room of having a certain number of people in it positioned in certain places and we have them analyzed into particular elements all over the place and each person we analyze into component parts we do it like that moment by moment in one second we make innumerable

[05:23]

analysis of the field of our experience into innumerable elements. This is what our mind is doing all the time. What our nervous system is making possible all the time. It isn't that in Zen we tell you to use your mind that way. It isn't in Buddhism that we say, use your mind that way. It's rather become mindful of how it is that your mind is functioning. So non-discriminating wisdom is the wisdom of the Buddha. The way the Buddha sees is non-discriminating. The Buddha's mind and heart are totally unprejudiced and non-discriminating. The content of non-discriminating, unprejudiced vision is what?

[06:32]

What's the content of non-discriminating wisdom and unprejudiced heart? What's the content of it? Pardon? Paiskanas, yeah. And what, pardon? No, that is prajna. What's the content of prajna? Huh? Huh? No. Compassion is prajna's partner. What's the content? What's the content of compassion? What's the content of wisdom? Yeah, just what's happening. Well, what's happening for wisdom? What does wisdom see? Huh? No, it doesn't see emptiness. You can't see emptiness. What do you see? Does anybody here see emptiness? Huh? You see pain. What else do you see? Sentient beings. What else do you see? Pardon? You see everything arising. You see things as they are?

[07:34]

Yeah, okay. The content of non-discriminating wisdom is discriminations. like man, woman, feelings, pain, pleasure, neutral, emotions, greed, hate, delusion, passions, faith, confusion, right, wrong, good, bad, pride, contempt, fear, anxiety, these, and the mind's discriminating all this stuff. The content of non-discriminating wisdom is this stuff, this constant foaming, turbulent, lively scene of the mind discriminating and creating world after world after world, moment after moment after moment, non-stop, throughout, except in very deep sleep or in very deep trances, the mind takes a break from this discriminating activity.

[08:42]

Otherwise, discrimination, discrimination, discrimination, discrimination all day long. Fueled by glucose. Supported by protein structures. And in combination with oxygen. which converts the glucose into heat and water and carbon dioxide and makes the body warm so that all this discrimination arises out of the person. The discrimination is just a characteristic of human beings. Non-discriminating wisdom is to study this discrimination. And what is non-discriminating?

[09:51]

It is, first of all, not to discriminate among what the discriminations are. It isn't like, oh, here I am being judgmental. Here I am having petty thoughts about people. Well, I'm not going to pay attention to that. Here I am having grand, magnanimous, peaceful, loving thoughts of people. I'll focus on that. That's not non-discriminating wisdom. Non-discriminating wisdom is to study everything. And another thing we can discriminate, we can discriminate it, is we can discriminate self and other and we can discriminate self-clinging, self-concern, self-pride, self-love, self-cherishing. And we can discriminate how painful that is.

[10:53]

Non-discriminating wisdom just sees self, some self-concern, pain. Five skandhas, and the five skandhas come up, and there's a self there someplace. Where's the self? Well, let's see. What would Buddha see? Buddha looks and says, you got a self here? Well, I see five skandhas. Now, where is the self? Oh, there it is. It's a smell, actually. Oh, it's an idea. Oh, it's an emotion. Oh, it's a feeling. The self actually must be one of these five skandhas, but that's not a very good self, so actually I don't see the self. It's hard to get a hold of it. Then, with that kind of discrimination of the self, pain, anxiety drop, and that very self which is now no longer seen as something which embraces all five aggregates, no longer as an independent thing, something independent of anything, independent of the five aggregates or of something else, this interdependent self, which has no self,

[12:11]

is then confirmed and realized by everything. It's realized by pain, by pleasure, by neutral sensation, by greed, by hate, by delusion. However, greed, hate, and delusion aren't functioning too well under this circumstance because they temporarily evaporated because of the clear vision of the interdependent self, the dependently co-arising self. to sit upright in, you know, Zen style or whatever style, to sit upright and not run around to try to see the self or avoid the self or to see anything, but just sit upright and see. Then the experience will spontaneously come up to you and take its mask off. now to a certain extent or to a great extent whenever we see whenever we have an experience we put a mask on the experience a persona a person if you study everything

[13:38]

if you observe everything that happens with equanimity and balance, gradually everything takes its mask off, takes itself off. And the mask, instead of being placed over everything, is now just seen as one of the things. So, the practice of sitting in meditation, if you sit with this kind of unprejudiced attitude to what's happening, you develop unprejudiced non-discriminating wisdom. Things start revealing themselves to you. It isn't that you necessarily try to look for the five skandhas, but rather the five skandhas be a way for you to debunk yourself. If you're afflicted by believing in yourself, just ask yourself, well, what actually is it?

[14:43]

Is it a phantom? Well, if it's a phantom, what aggregate do you put phantom in? What aggregate is phantoms? Anybody? Huh? There's not an aggregate called thoughts, is there? Hmm? What? In the formations, which of the formations would, would, do you want, if it's a phantom, which of the formations? Feelings, another one. Formations is the fourth aggregate, right? Mental formations. So which mental formation do you want the phantom, well we already said self was a phantom, so you got it in the fourth, the fourth category? What's in the fourth category that would give you a phantom? Hmm? Delusion? Is delusion in the fourth skanda? Which one is that? Or is it? Actually, is what delusion?

[16:00]

Guessing? No, guessing is not delusion. But I actually... Guessing is fine. But actually, I wasn't actually wanting you to guess. I was actually wanting you to tell me what you think rather than guessing. Huh? Volition. You think that a phantom would be volition? I choose this. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, if it's a phantom, it's a concept, I would say. Concept's the best bet. But if somebody has some other thing they want to have it be, let me hear it. Huh? So it could be a concept. If it's a concept, is the self a concept? Does anybody... actually have a self that's a concept? Anybody here have a self that's a concept? That's actually your self? The one that you're taking care of? The one that you're insulted about or proud of? Does anybody have that self? Concept self? Huh?

[17:01]

You do, and you're taking care of that one? You do? No, do you really? Take care of the concept? No, yeah, you got the concept. Tell us about the concept. It's a package of concepts that's me. Well, what is it? What's the concept? Well, it changes. Oh, just for example? Well, I'm a... Just for now, what's the concept of yourself now? Student. No, no, let him do it. Okay. Well, yeah. Sitting here in this class. Sitting in the class. That's your concept of yourself? Well, that's part of it. Uh-huh. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's hear more. No, let's hear the whole group. Okay.

[18:02]

Um... Is that, is that, is it, no, but no, is somewhat embarrassed part of your self-concept? Yeah. It is? Just right now it is. Was it before you came in the classroom? Was it part of your self-concept? No. No. No. Okay, let's hear more about the self-concept, if you don't mind. Okay, I'll tell you your self-concept. And Jackie, you can tell them too. Student. Zen student. Are you a Zen student or Zen school? Zen student. Male.

[19:02]

Over 30. Under 50? Not female. Wearing glasses? Blue eyes? Pretty much. African American? No, not African American. Not African. Huh? Well, yes, I know it's based... In any ways, it's these... It's a collection of qualities that define him as not other, right? You can also have qualities that other people share, but as you get this information, somehow it comes together to give you an idea sufficient for you to, at least for practical purposes at the moment, to distinguish yourself from the other people in the room, practically speaking.

[20:05]

And that's a concept which you can tell us about with language and we can talk to him about it and understand what he's saying. OK, that's a concept. Is that actually a self? Is that a person, that concept? I think probably not. I mean, I never met a person like that, who was just that. That's not a person, that's just a concept. I could make concepts of somebody, I could give you all those things again, of somebody who doesn't even exist, same list, and say that's another. But that's not a person, that's just a concept, which you can read about and discuss. And nobody, this person that I make up, which has all the characteristics that he just listed as his concept, which are perfectly good for him at the moment, that person doesn't exist. And you can say anything you want about that person, that person will not be insulted, frightened, upset, or protective.

[21:05]

But if he were to actually think that that was a self, which I don't think any of us really would think it was a self if you thought about it, If he actually thought that was a self, and that that self then embraced the totality of his life, then that would be called confusion, because all he described there was a concept. He didn't describe a feeling. He didn't say his self was a feeling, although he could have, but he didn't. He started talking in terms of a concept. He didn't say your self was positive sensation. It's a grouping. You see, that's the thing. He said it's a grouping, right? That's what we think. We think it's a grouping. But actually, if you look at the grouping, there's nothing...

[22:10]

grouping the group. There's just these different things which you say are gathered. Nothing holds the five together. And you think, he thinks, he confessed that he thinks that something actually groups the five. That's exactly what's, that's self-confusion. He just said that, and many people think that way, and that's self-confusion, because the self, you see, first of all, he was willing to describe the self as a concept of self, and there can be a concept of self, and he started to define it. This is the way the mind works. It can discriminate between the concept of... What's your name? Great. The Greg and I can discriminate between the concept of Greg and the concept of Amanda. We can discriminate, and we do. I have concepts for Amanda, I have concepts for Greg, and Amanda and Greg have concepts for themselves. And we can talk about the concepts, and we could agree point by point about the concept.

[23:16]

It might take a little, you know, haggling, but we could basically agree on the concept for Amanda and Greg. Okay. Then Greg might say, yeah, but there's more to myself than that. There's also actually a little bit of, give me a little feeling in there, some awareness, consciousness, some actually bodily sense, like smell and touch, and a whole bunch of mental formations too, like anger, anger. Faith, concentration or distraction, laziness, energy, diligence or lack of diligence, self-respect or lack of self-respect, all these things composing myself at the moment. And he proposed over and above all these elements of his experience something that grouped them, something that grouped those five. But what could group the five? What experience could group the five? The self.

[24:16]

But what is that experience? There is no such experience. Because the concept doesn't group them. Even though the concept may think it can group them, it's just a concept. A concept doesn't group a feeling. It's separate from the feeling. It's a concept about the feeling, but actually this is a concept of the self, which you say can incorporate the whole experience. But it doesn't. Because, in fact, the concept of incorporating the whole experience is one of the elements When non-discriminating wisdom looks at the experience where the self is seen to group the experience, it sees that actually the self falls into one or more of those categories, and also there is the idea that the self embraces the whole, but that's not clear. That's confused because the self does not embrace the whole, but we think it does. That's the definition of pain. that we think that something groups it.

[25:18]

Like you look at a line of ants. You see a bunch of ants. Like you have 40 ants on a piece of paper and they're all over the piece of paper. You don't see a line. If they line up, we see a line. Where's the line? Is there actually a line there? But we think there is. We see our experience, or we see all the elements of our experience, which you could, for the sake of discussion, put in these five categories, just so you don't lose track of any of them. But you don't have to say the five. You say you take your experience, and we think that something groups the experience. Like I was working with some people on this Ashes site for Jerry Fuller last week. A group of us got together. But where was the group? What's the group? There's no such thing. It's just a concept put on the experience of a bunch of people.

[26:23]

Yes? There's an experience that comes up fairly frequently among people who have to have their limbs amputated, and it's what's known as the phantom limb experience. Yes. Phantom limb experience. Yeah. You have to have an arm or a leg removed for some medical reason, and you wake up from the anesthesia, and for very once in a time, you'll still feel as though you have that arm or leg, even though you go over it. Yes. So it's as though whatever concept we formed of what it was like to have that arm or leg is still there, even though that part of you is gone. Yes. I'm trying to make some sense of all this, and it's almost as though this demonstrates in a way that how we can centralize something is still very different from a physical aspect of ourselves. Yes, right.

[27:27]

In terms of your actual experience, You do not, you know, human beings do not have a physical experience of arms and legs. We do not have that experience. Arms and legs are concepts. Arms and legs are concepts. You see something before your eyes now. I'm sitting over here waving, waving, waving about here, thrashing about physically. And you can make what you see into a person who has arms and legs. But actually, what you're seeing here is colors which you're composing into arms and legs. you actually have a physical sensation of some lights coming into you, which you convert into the concept of a body with arms and legs, or perhaps a body that's missing an arm.

[28:29]

If you think you have arms and you amputate what you think is an arm, the nerves are still going off, and then you keep interpreting those nerves in terms of the concept of arm. even though obviously it's not any longer telling you about an arm. But it never really was. You were always just dreaming that up. The actual physical sensations are colors, smells, tangibles, tastes, and sounds. That's our actual physical experience. We convert that physical experience into concepts. Like my body, your body, arms, legs, torso, head. There's a reason for this. There's a dependent co-arising of this concept. But this concept is a concept. It's not a physical thing. It's a concept. Can I ask a question?

[29:38]

Sure. You were saying that when you wave your hands, we perceive it as... Actually, I tried to avoid saying wave my hand. I said thrashing about, waving over here. I'm wondering, you're saying how we experience that action, but how do you experience it? If I experience it as arms and legs, then that's a mental, conceptual experience. It's not a physical experience. No. Physical experience is to be stimulated by physical things. And the dimensions of physicality which we're stimulated by are electromagnetic radiation of a certain, actually of a wide range we're stimulated by it, but we're particularly sensitive to electromagnetic radiation of a narrow range which we call light. Other animals have a similar level of sensitivity to that range of electromagnetic radiation, but they also have a fairly equal equivalent level of sensitivity to a wider range of electromagnetic radiation.

[30:55]

Some creatures make chlorophyll in response to electromagnetic radiation. We don't. we respond in a different way. So we're affected by electromagnetic radiation in a very highly determined way that we all, almost none of us can see anything beyond a certain extremely narrow range of radiation. We call that light. We can also hear physical vibrations, mechanical vibrations in the air and in water. that impact upon our whole body, but particularly our ears, sensitive to these mechanical waves. Our eye, as in sense organs, is not sensitive to mechanical waves. You press on the eye and it does something to it, but you actually don't, you're not, you know, it's not basically built to be pressed on by the finger. It's sensitive to electromagnetic radiation.

[31:59]

So if you close the eye and press on it, That's called the eyes shut and not really operating to receive light. The ear responds to being touched by gas or liquid, the eardrum, and sets off these things. The body, the whole body surface... is sensitive to touch. And all the other organs are actually a modification of the touch organ and taste sensitive to chemicals and smell sensitive to gases. Gases, liquids, liquid chemicals, mechanical waves, electromagnetic radiation, and tangible touch in the grossest way. These are the way we have physical experience. And all these physical experiences that we have, we do not know about. We are not conscious of in an objective way. Sense experience is non-conceptual and non-objective.

[33:05]

But we convert sense experience into concepts and then we can know them. But that's conceptual experience, not physical experience. And that conceptual experience goes with physical experience and consciousness and feelings and all kinds of mental formations to comprise a moment of experience, which is extremely rich and varied and changing many, many times in a second. That whole thing, that whole mental thing changes many, many times in a second. And of course, non-mentally, it changes even faster. I mean, inconceivably rapidly, the brain and nervous system are changing. I mean, astronomically complex in a second. Mentally, our mental experience is a vast simplification of the overall life experience.

[34:12]

But even that is extremely high intensity and rapid. And we have a tendency to try to put a face, put a person put a group on the experience, moment by moment. And that is the cause of pain. That is the cause of pain, attachment, and, well, all the problems in the world. All of them. They all come from that. Yes? So I'm going to make up a little story. In a such way, just to answer my question, It seems to me that the real self is whatever it is that learns. The real self is whatever it is that learns? Whatever it is, if, for example, a child is hit, and ten years later it's the person that hit and experiences anxiety or fear, there's something that's endured over time.

[35:26]

And most people, I want most people to think of that thing that endures over time, whether it's learning something new or something useful. That's the self. That's what you think of as a self. And I'd like to be disabused of that. In other words, that seems to me to be a definition of self that's hard to get rid of. The self is something that lasts over time. Not just lasts, but, well, that is capable of a pathologian, redemption, interval, salvation. But then your self would be the same self as someone else who was conditioned in the same way as you. You would have the same self, if that was your self. So if I trained you and the person next to you by certain, then you'd have the same self.

[36:28]

But that's not what you think yourself is. I don't think you think that. That's right, I know. But it still doesn't help me get rid of the idea that. No, it takes more work than that to get rid of the idea. I think Greg's thing is more what your idea of self is. Your idea of self includes your conditioning patterns, various conditioning patterns you've gone through. But you can still distinguish yourself from the two men on both sides of you. And not only from the two men on both sides of you, but every other creature on the planet, you can do that. which is more than just... And all three of you could be trained in exactly the same method in certain ways and have exactly the same conditioning in certain realms, and you could still discriminate between yourself and others, and yourself would be something that in the self... As far as I know, nobody has... Well, I take this back.

[37:29]

I think there is sort of possible... incomplete selves. And some people could have, instead of a group that embraced all your experience, you could have a group that embraced half your experience. And you let the rest of it just be sort of floating around and unengaged. But it would be very difficult to have a self like that because to be attached to part of your experience and let the rest of it go free, I don't think that self is going to, what do you call it, it's not going to work for you. And I think anybody who's got that kind is driven to get the regular kind so that you can have regular human delusion and regular human pain rather than this special variety which you can't talk to anybody about because they can't follow the conversation. Elizabeth? Are you awake? The urge to grasp?

[38:43]

The origins of this kind of, the origins of trying to make experience into something that you can grasp The way that arises is complex, but we can understand it. It has different elements and conditions which give rise to it. One of the things is that this idea of self was born among us humans some time ago. We're not sure exactly when, but at a certain point in history, human beings the human nervous system gave rise to this sense that the human beings gave rise to this sense or this feeling that the rest of the environment that they were relating to was external to themselves.

[39:49]

And because of that they could know something. So I'm proposing to you that other animals and plants relate to the environment, you know. The sun rises and they go, gee, [...] you know, or they jump out of the water or they start tromping around, biting things or whatever, or they turn, turn their flower, open their flower. All their living beings relate to the sun. And when the sun sets, they go through another big change. They start quieting down and jump back in the water and close up. They have these responses to the sun. but there's no sign that any of them think, that sun, that thing, is external to me. And therefore, they don't know the sun. We, at some point, a few thousand years ago, came up with the idea.

[40:52]

We came up with an idea, with a concept, that things in the world were out there, A living being, like a deer or a gorilla or a tree, imagine suddenly they go and they look. The sun's external. It's out there. And that is the dawn of objective knowledge. That happened at some point. And the people, the creatures that that happened to, well, they took over the planet. Because once that happens, you have not objective knowledge, and that is like, it's very powerful. You can transmit it. Because it's external. You can give somebody else this knowledge. You can write it down and show it to people. You show it to people who aren't people, other organisms, they don't know what you're talking about.

[41:56]

They back away. you know, or they come forward, but they don't know what you're talking about. And the ones who didn't know what those other ones were talking about, they aren't around anymore, those other ones, those other humans. They couldn't deal with progress. The deer and stuff... They could adjust because we didn't even talk to them much about it. And they didn't get traumatized. And they didn't miss reproductive opportunities by not getting along with this thing. So they're still with us for a while. We'll see. But basically, that thing happened. Now, when that happened, this other thing happened. a sense of something here and something over there led to a sense of this being independent of that, this being an identity, an individual. Rather than something which is completely interconnected, we got the idea of a separate individual thing.

[43:06]

And this, like, was another big thing. breakthrough in this part of the galaxy. Before that happened, there's no sign, nobody has seen any sign of anything like that in this solar system or any nearby solar system. We didn't even know that there were solar systems until recently. But people who know about external things have now told us there are solar systems in our galaxy. But we're the only site of anything alive that could know of something. And this sense of identity in conjunction with knowing something is this concept of an identity. Then it got mapped onto the living creature. It made it into a thing which was separate from its environment and separate from others. And then that got projected all over the place. And that caused pain.

[44:07]

project the self on everything so you could package things and grab them as a possible way to get rid of the pain. So this wanting to package things has to do with wanting to project the self all over the place and also wanting to make things graspable as a possible manipulative technique to try to make the pain go away. So those two things, the craving for some relief from pain or some more pleasure for this self and the idea of self which gets projected, those two things work together in such a way as to create this strong tendency to grasp the self and grasp the other, to grasp this, to grasp that, and to make everything into graspable entities and therefore to spread the sickness of this delusion throughout our life But if you understand how it happens, then you forget this thing, and then all this stuff which has been causing you trouble confirms your life.

[45:14]

Yes? I was thinking that when you were talking about non-humans, when do you taste it like a cat, even though it doesn't have a self-concept, it still suffers? I think that animals are coming right along and mutating and stuff like that. They may have this breakthrough themselves. But I think because cats and dogs and also wild animals like deer and wolves are connected to us, actually, they're connected to our pain. They also feel pain and pleasure, but they don't feel the pain which arises from this self-clinging. However, they're connected to our pain from that self-clinging, so I think they have empathy for us, especially domesticated animals are very sensitive to our neurotic misery, especially, most of all, dogs.

[46:17]

Dogs are the most receptive and empathic with our human neurotic misery. And because of that sympathy, they may be the first species on the planet after the humans to have this breakthrough of self. If they're going to have most of the problems of having a self by hanging out with us, they might as well have one, because then they can get enlightened. So I think a lot of dog... There's a lot of dog-human switching, you know? I think, you know, a lot of... Some human beings are not very nice, as you may have noticed. But some are pretty nice, but don't really figure this out. So some people say, if you mean like a happy, healthy dog, that that dog was a kind used car salesman in his former life. To get to be a dog is not that far away.

[47:19]

To jump back from being a dog and to give them the opportunity to practice Buddhism is not that far. Dogs are really, they've got a lot going for them. They're kind of compassionate. They're kind of loyal, I mean very loyal. They're devoted. They've got a lot of the Buddhist virtues going for them. The problem is that they don't have enough delusion going for them. Therefore, they aren't motivated to, you know, and the delusion they don't have is they don't have the delusion of objective knowledge. Objective knowledge is a delusion. Objective knowledge is a very powerful organic biological breakthrough, very powerful, and those beings which have it dominate over those who don't have it. They do. Even beings that are much bigger than them, they can dominate because they can figure out how to bomb them, trap them, trick them to run over the edge of a cliff, stuff like that.

[48:24]

Because of objective knowledge, you say, cliff, edge of cliff, fall, horse, go. Over the edge. We can do that. So it's very powerful, but it is a delusion. These things are not external. The world is not external to us, but we think it is. Based on that, we make the supreme delusion of a separate self. And that's going, you might say, too far. So far, that's the end of the road for delusion. That's the supreme and fundamental delusion. We've got to fix that one. We can't live with it. We cannot live with it. We must see through it. But not by trashing it or hating it, but ironically, by loving it. When you see what self-cleaning does for you, and many Buddhists talk about self-cleaning as the enemy, the most dangerous and destructive thing in the world is self-concern.

[49:31]

It is the enemy. But we must love this enemy. Not like it. Love it. Take care of it like you would a child who had a high fever and was running around the house throwing knives at everybody. Disarm this delirious being. Disarm it and love it. Take care of it. Help it. find its rightful place. Its rightful place is under the loving vision of a bodhisattva who is present with them and runs all over the airport making sure that they don't fall down. Total devotion to taking care of this self so this self does not destroy life. Love it. And if you love it, you will be released from it. And everybody else will, too.

[50:33]

Hate it. Deny it. And it will become a powerful demon which will manipulate you and hurt other people. Bring it out in front. See this self. See this belief in its independent existence and see how... Since it is independent, since it is independent, this is an independent thing, how wonderful. Cherish it. Take care of it. And cause trouble with that. When you see that pattern of sickness and delusion and all the ill that come from it, again, you want to shrink back from it. It's not attractive when you start seeing this. And if it's got something to do with you, it's very embarrassing. But Shakyamuni Buddha was embarrassed by his self when he saw it. He was very embarrassed. But he got over his embarrassment and faced his self and faced his self-clinging and forgot it and woke up by virtue of all things.

[51:42]

So I have, I feel like I have embarrassed beckoned you into the ocean of Buddhist psychology in this class. And my main concern is that you leave this class with a sense of how to work with this material. We can learn if you want to. We can keep studying this material. It has vast landscapes of teachings. But the main thing is you need to be able to actually experience your sense of your experience, how the self works with it, how pain is related to that. And you need to be able to feel your pain and be present and patient with it so that you can actually see this stuff happen. If you can get into that, you can gradually master the whole ocean. But otherwise, it's too abstract. And some of you will be interested in studying it abstractly, but

[52:48]

If you can get into it and listen to the pain, you'll be able to start... If you can contemplate the pain, you can switch over to contemplate the self and see the relationship between the self and the pain. And loving that situation, taking care of that situation, you will become enlightened about it and liberated from it. Yes? It seems to me that the aspect of memory... Where does memory fit? If you look at your list of dharmas, you might have trouble finding the English word memory. So now we're getting into the specific experience that we have experienced of memory. However, there is a word on the Dharma list called, in Sanskrit, smriti, or in Pali, sati, which means mindfulness.

[54:00]

And mindfulness is sometimes translated as memory. There's a kind of practice of being mindful. Somehow we have this practice of being mindful, and people can remember sometimes to be mindful. They say, OK, I'm practicing mindfulness. Now, how do you do that? Well, there's four ways. You can be mindful of the body. the feelings, the quality of consciousness, and in all these dharmic analysis things, like the five skandhas and so on. And you can be aware of the truths, like the Four Noble Truths. There's suffering, there's a cause of suffering, which is this kind of grasping. There's an end to suffering, which is not doing that anymore, and there's a path to get to the end of it. These kinds of things can be contemplated mindfully. But people often wonder, how can you remember to be mindful. Well, it turns out that, again, at some point in history, somebody was mindful at some point. In other words, they thought, oh, this is happening, the pain.

[55:05]

In some sense, it's not that big a deal. All of you probably had maybe that experience sometime. Oh, pain. Oh, pleasure. Oh, pain. Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, pain, pain, pleasure, pain, pain. Well, I can't tell which. Pain. I can't tell which. Pleasure, pleasure. Anybody ever had those experiences? When you notice, just simply notice those things, that's an example of mindfulness. Now, if you actually take that on as a practice to go about your life noticing your feelings, then you kind of remember to do that. You kind of say, well, here I am swirling about. Oh, actually, what is happening with me anyway? Oh, I have a pain. I have a pain right here or here. Oh, I have a pleasure. This is sometimes translated as memory, to remember to pay attention to what's happening. There's another kind of memory, which is memory like the memory of, for example, yesterday. Does everybody have a yesterday available to them? I mean, what was your yesterday?

[56:09]

Actually, I didn't expect to be asked what my yesterday was, or even to be asking myself in front of all you, but now I am asking myself. So just a second here, I'm going to go now and find a yesterday. So various ways for me to find yesterday. One of the ways I look for yesterday is to say, now what's today? Today is the day of the Abhidharma class, I mean the Buddhist psychology class, so today's Thursday. That means yesterday was Wednesday. We got this rule, right? Wednesday, Thursday. So now I think, okay, now Wednesday, [...] okay, Wednesday. Now I have all these associations with Wednesday. Wednesday, they have staff meeting at Green Gulch and practice committee at Green Gulch and I didn't go to them. That was nice. But I was at Green Gulch, I think. I was there. What was I doing? Oh, I did some calligraphy. I did some calligraphy on the memorial pole for the ashes ceremony we did.

[57:13]

Yeah. Oh, and I remember I did Chinese characters, and I remember what they were. And at the top, I drew a circle with three little things coming off. That was my yesterday, for short. Now, was that my yesterday? I'm talking about that today. Yesterday I wasn't talking about it being yesterday, was I? Today I call it yesterday. Why? Because Sonia asked me about memory. I'm showing you about memory. But what is memory? Memory is that I'm dreaming up some images right now in my head. This is not yesterday. This is me now. creating some images of something which I say was at some other time. But what I'm thinking of, you know, Green Gulch, Memorial Pole, Chinese choreography, that's not yesterday. That's my imagination today, which I say was yesterday. Someone might even argue with me and say, they didn't have the staff meeting yesterday.

[58:19]

And I might say, oh, well, then I'll change my memory. Take staff, meeting, eliminate. Or I might say, oh, yes, they did. I saw them doing it. And we struggle, and we struggle, and we argue. And pretty soon, my memory or their memory wins out. And then maybe we change and say, OK, your memory is the one, so now I'll switch over to your memory. Memory is concept. This kind of memory is concept. It's just a concept. And all of us can make up concepts of yesterday and the day before. But some of us maybe don't have, actually right now, without working at it, we do not have a concept of three weeks ago Tuesday. But some of us do, some of us don't, because of different uses of our mind during the past few weeks. But I would just say probably a lot of us have to do a little work to sort of come up with what it is. But we would create it here right now.

[59:22]

The idea being misconstrued as what happened is that misconstruing is confusion and delusion. We call what we imagine delusion. What happened? That's delusion. And most people do that. So it's kind of like, it's allowed. This happened that day. No, it didn't. Yes, it did. No, it didn't. The most powerful person wins, and that's history. Now, some people say, yes, you won, and that's history, but I still don't agree with you, but I'll shut up. And then that person who won writes the article, and the other person doesn't argue. So then people say, well, since nobody's arguing, that's history. That's what happened. That's her memory. But some people actually don't remember things that way. But they change their memory to a way that they think would be more influential.

[60:29]

And then that becomes history. And then they start to actually forget that they just made it up because they thought it would be more popular. Debra? Just the whole concept of separation from other self. It reminds me of God and me being treated by a separation from God. But then I saw it as an awakening of consciousness. She was saying that she felt satisfied and fun. And it was the most beloved thing. See it as that we made a story, or just Right. Yes. And I told quite a few times, many of you have heard me tell the story, the Greek story of Amor and Psyche. amor, cupid, love, and psyche, you know, in the form of a beautiful female.

[61:42]

They get together in the dark and are in love, are in union, but they don't know each other. She doesn't know him. The mind doesn't know love. It's in the dark. The mind, however, is psyche is stimulated to find out what it is that she loves. But you can't find out, you can't know love unless you make love separate. You can't know God unless you make God separate. But if you make God separate, you're in trouble. But if you don't make God separate, you don't know God. You totally... all cozy with God, totally inseparable, totally one and in blissful union with God, but human beings at some point decided, you know, they made the move.

[62:44]

But made the move means that some human being could think of it. Somebody just thought, hey, that's external, whatever it was. Whatever it was, that's external. That deer is external. That man's external. That woman's external. And I know her. I know him. That was just kind of like a thing that happened to somebody at some point. And then that led to making everything external which means making God external, which means making love external. So then you lose God and you lose love and you lose everything that gives you life by making it external. But you get knowledge, which again came to... that took over. So it wasn't exactly a decision. It was actually, I think, a... an event that happened at some point is that people were able to know.

[63:49]

And it was an unstoppable, unstopped breakthrough for the human species. And we've been trying to adjust to that ever since. And the self arose in conjunction with that. In the story of Amoran Psyche, she has some sisters who push her to find out who her lover is. They push her. The sisters represent, in some sense, the evolutionary tendency of life. Many biologists say that if you look at the way life is, you can see that life is It is natural for life to have worked towards being self-aware. And self-aware means being aware of other. You can't be self without other. And so we're the only species also that is aware of death as external.

[64:53]

Death as external gives rise to a sense of self. We're the only ones who bury each other. because death is external and therefore we are separate from it and from each other. That's a delusion which arises from our ability to think of such a silly thing. And now that we can think of this silly thing, we actually think it's not silly, it's reality. It is reality that I'm not you. You actually, you actually, some of you anyway, maybe one of you at least, thinks I'm not you. Perhaps several of you do. Perhaps all of you actually think I'm not you. But by definition, I'm not yourself. But the self that you, your real self, so to speak, your eternal self, is a self that doesn't have a self, and that self is inseparable from me and everybody else.

[65:59]

But in order to see that, you have to go and sit with the self that's not the other, and there's pain all around that self, and anxiety all around that self. So to take up your seat on that self is a big challenge. Yes? I was wondering, how do you make the differentiation between nurturing and embracing self-cleaning and getting absorbed in it? Well, how do you make the, you know, how would you make the distinction between, like, let's again have this child with a fever who is delirious, right? How do you distinguish between indulging or, what was the other word you used? embracing and protecting and was the other indulging getting absorbed okay so if you like come up to the kid who's flying around the room how do you how do you take care of them and protect them and protect others without getting absorbed into it do you want to you want to try to practice it right now with me I'll run around the room and you can try to protect people from me without getting absorbed in my energy can you see how you would have to do how you do that

[67:20]

I mean, if I was running around the room, you'd have to protect people from me. But at the same time, you wouldn't want to just become one of my projectiles and let me use you to throw you at someone. So you have to get in there with me in such a way that you're interacting with me and protecting me from myself and other people from me, but also Not just becoming, you know, part of my trip, you know, like saying, well, let's go now. Cut mommy's head off. Okay, let's go, you know. He wouldn't go that far, you know. Like one time I was in the bathtub with my daughter, which is a little girl, and her mother was out of town for a few days. And she said, isn't it nice to have mommy not in the house, just the two of us? And I said, yes, great. She said, let's go in the kitchen and get all the dishes and go and break them and throw them in mommy's bed.

[68:23]

And I said, OK, let's do it. And she said, no. So you get in there. You get in there with this situation. And you don't oppose it. and you don't go with it. You get in there and dance with it, and then the situation's taken care of. You have to get intimate with this self, but it's not nice to be intimate. This self is an embarrassment. It's not that the self is an embarrassment. It's the clinging that's the embarrassment. It's the clinging. So how do you get in there and take care of this grasping, clinging kind of stuff? It's not really a self. It's just clinging to this self and it's actually clinging to the self because it doesn't see what the self is. So you've got to get in there with the clinging and with the pain and with the anxiety all around that clinging and then you have to start to educate The mind, which doesn't see clearly, which gives rise to the clinging.

[69:31]

And you say, OK, now here we are clinging to this now. What is it actually that you're trying to protect? What are you afraid is going to happen if you don't do that? What are you afraid of if you do do that? What do you think they'll say about you? What do you have to say? What are you hiding? All these things, all these greasy, grimy, horrible little twisted things around this self-clinging, you have to get in there and bring them out in front where you can see them. And if you can see them, that which, if you can see them, if you can see them, that which thinks that this stuff can be held onto and grasped, it will also see them. And it will see, actually, there's nothing to hold onto. And then the clinging will drop. And then the situation is pacified, illuminated, and liberated. But it's difficult to get in there, because this is as dynamic as a delirious child. a child who needs to be cared for, and then while caring for the child, you need to say, what do you think, what do you see, you know?

[70:35]

What do you see? And then the child says, well, I see this. Well, is it really that way? Tell me more about it. And the more they tell you about it, the more they start to see that it's not the way they see. But you have to have this kind of dynamic, dramatic conversation with whatever the mind that's cleaning is doing. Okay? Okay? This is love. This is love. But the gate to this love is anxiety. You have to go up to the anxiety all around this clean. You have to go up there and get close to it. If you can face the anxiety and pain around this messy, clean, self-cherishing, if you can get in there and face this, the door to this kind of care opens up. Yes? Excuse me. Rennell, you asked a question a while ago. Do you still have it? Oh, yeah, I still have it. I was just wondering... When you think about the physical body, does breathing count?

[71:41]

Okay, yes. Renal said, when you think about the physical body. Before I say what the rest she said, she said, when you think about the physical body. Thinking about the physical body is not the physical body, okay? It's a concept of the physical body. Now she has, then she said, thinking about the physical body, yes. Doesn't breathing count? Again, when you think about the physical body and you think about breathing, what you're thinking about is not breathing, but the concept of breathing. But as you do it. As you do it, if you're actually just breathing and not thinking about it, you do not know you're breathing. The only way you know you're breathing is to think about your breathing. Okay? However, it is salutary and useful to... when you do think about your breathing, to notice that you're thinking about your breathing. And we do actually sometimes think about our breathing. And some people say, let's promote thinking about the breathing. Let's have a mindfulness of breathing exercise.

[72:45]

But when you have mindfulness of breathing, you are mindfulness of your thinking about breathing. If you're Mindful of your thinking about breathing, that means you're mindful of your concept of breathing. Which is fine. Because then, by using your mindfulness of the concept of breathing, you are now learning about how you conceptualize. You're watching yourself conceptualize. You're watching yourself discriminate. You watch how you discriminate between breath and not breath. However, What we think breath is, is not breath. Breath is unlimited. It is unlimited. It doesn't come in packages. It doesn't come in concepts. But we make concepts out of breath so we can think about breath and know breath.

[73:50]

Before breath is made into a concept, it is... Breath is totally... We know that breath is totally all-pervasive throughout, not just throughout all of our bodies, but between our bodies and all around our bodies is breath, and we're all breathing together. There's no concept, although I said this, and you probably can see that it's basically so from what you know. There's no concept which can actually make it possible to think about that breath. So we narrow the breath into something that we can think about, and then we think about that, and then we're mindful of that concept of breath. And that mindfulness practice is good because it connects you with something which you know is actually far beyond what you're thinking it is. So we have this pint-sized, pet-sized version of breath, which is our thought about it.

[74:58]

And as you watch yourself conceiving a breath, which you make into a little self, and if you study how you do that, your eyes will open to what breath really is. What breath really is is something we cannot know, but which we can realize. if we realize also how we make it into a concept. We live in a little tiny world of objective knowledge. We're trapped in a tiny, tiny version of the universe, circumscribed by our objective knowledge and our language. We also live simultaneously in an unlimited universe totally unlimited world that has nothing to do with our thinking about it. And breath is totally pervading that world. If you want, and our pain is that we're cut off from that incredibly unspeakable realm of interconnectedness.

[76:17]

because we actually not only are living within a little tiny world of objective knowledge and self-clinging, but we think it's true. Fortunately, thinking that way hurts and doesn't work. Therefore, we hear that there's a way to drop off the boundaries of our thought and reconnect with the self, which is eternal, and unlimited which has no self and connect with the breath which is eternal and unlimited and has no self and connect with all beings which are eternal and no self but the price of entering the world of infinite love and interconnectedness is that you have to get in not even get in you have to admit that you're in a little box, all hemmed in, surrounded by anxiety and pain and fear and self-concern.

[77:20]

The huge mind of compassion is willing to descend into this little world and feel the pain of believing in a limited self. If you can do that, you'll forget it and everything will confirm you. And nothing is more difficult than being just as small as we are. And nothing is more difficult than to take care of this smallness, which is not just a sitting duck smallness, but is a delirious, crazy teenager smallness. That's what we have to take care of. Do you love enough? Do you love the possibilities of infinite bliss and peace enough to do the hard work of taking care of this little confused being, which is right here? That's the question. I hope the answer is yes.

[78:25]

And it's 9 o'clock, and I really appreciate your attention and great hearts, which I hope will soon burst into infinite space, and you'll save all sentient beings from the suffering of self-clinging. As soon as possible, please. And if you want to study Buddhist psychology more, get further into the ocean and visit some of the other lands, let me know. I'll be happy to unfold other dimensions in your faces. May our intention...

[79:11]

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