As you may have heard us say many times before, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. to learn the Buddha way is to learn the self. To be intimate with the Buddha way is to be intimate with the Self.

[01:03]

To imitate the Buddha way is to imitate the Self. I say this in different ways because I know the original Chinese word which could be translated as study, learn, imitate, be intimate with. It's a character which has two bird's wings in it, and it kind of applies to the kind of learning that birds do with their parents. They sit in the nest with their little wings, and they watch their parents flying to and from the nest. They study their parents, bringing them food and going away to get them more. And they watch the flying. They interact with their parents who come and meet them face to face, feeding them, looking at them, protecting them.

[02:24]

All the while they're studying, they're becoming, they're learning. about the relationship. They're becoming intimate. And finally someday they try flying. Sometimes they don't do too well, but they often do learn through this intimate process of study how to fly. And through this intimate process of study they grow up, they mature by having food brought to them, but also by the interaction between themselves or between, you know, the two faces. So studying the self, becoming intimate with self is a key aspect in the Buddhist practice. And we go on further to say that to learn the self or to be intimate with the self is to forget the self.

[03:38]

And to forget the self is to be enlightened by everything. is to be awakened by everything. So that's how study of the self is related to the path of awakening. Now, today, this moment, I can't say for everybody, but, you know, depending on our level of understanding of our self, of the self, things are proportionately awakening to us. And if we understand ourselves not well at all, then just maybe a few things wake us up. A few things make us realize us. And then some other things perhaps don't wake us up. They make us... They don't seem like they support us.

[04:49]

Maybe we feel insulted and we don't see how the insult wakes us up. We don't feel how the insult gives us life. But when we're awake, everything gives us life. Everything gives us life. We see that. When we're asleep, everything gives us life too, but we're asleep, so we don't see it. And the main thing to be asleep about that we're emphasizing in this teaching is to be asleep about the self, to not know what it is, or to have a very limited idea of it. So we're encouraged by some ancient teachers to study, to learn about what the self is, And I thought I might mention today that fairly recent, in some ways, scientific studies in psychology and neurology and neurobiology and psychoneurobiology

[06:31]

and many fields have been working together in the study of the self. And finding, psychologically, psychoanalytically, neurologically, and so on, in many fields, they're finding that in the social interaction between the mother, usually the mother, but anyway, the primary caregiver, the one who really cares, in the interactions between this mother figure and the child, in the face-to-face interactions between them, there is a birth of this thing called the self, or there is a birth, a psychological birth of this, if I would call it now, a structure, a psychoneurological structure, which could be called the self.

[07:57]

is born through the interaction between the parent and the child. And this self, this structure that's born comes to a point in development where it feels itself to be separate from the other. from the object, which is sometimes called the self-object. And part of the reason why it's called the self-object, the mother is sometimes called the self-object, because that object is the object from which the self is born. The sense of self is born through a conversation with this caring other.

[09:01]

this caring other. And not just caring, but enthusiastically caring. And not just enthusiastic, but highly excited sometimes. And almost hysterical sometimes. The most intense social interaction that is known to us humans is this interaction between these two faces. It's also between the body of the child and the face of the mother, and the body of the mother and the face of the child, but the focal point is the face. And the focal point of the face is the eyes. But the whole face is important, but the eyes are the focus, and the face is the focus of the eye, of the interaction with the eyes at the center.

[10:18]

By this most intense interaction, which is intense and also pleasant and joyful, That interaction is the crucible in which the self is born, in which we are born into the world of self and other, in which we are born into the world of delusion. But there's no way around this for healthy development of a human being, because the The most important way that the child learns that we children learned to take care of our stable homeostatic condition, the most important way we learn this is through these interactions.

[11:31]

These are the sometimes called the central moments or the pivotal moments of the day in the developing child. Pivotal in the sense that they are the way that the child attunes to the way of the nervous system being in balance, being not too depressed and not too excited. Of course the person, of course we also need food and other things. Our diapers changed and so on in order to be balanced. But when we eat, which is a kind of, to some extent, it's a kind of a one-sided deal.

[12:36]

We take in food or we get certain kinds of physical interaction which reduce certain kinds of tensions and allow us to feel relatively at ease. But these interactions are not as important as the interactions with the caregiver in this kind of facial attunement. The baby, at a certain point in development when this happens, the baby, the infant starts to move by some means or other away from the caregiver, off on her own for a little while. Maybe just a few feet away. And after playing for a while alone, she often gets out of sorts.

[13:38]

She doesn't know how to take care of her emotions. She just doesn't know how to manage her emotional states. Her life, her body generates emotional states, but they get screwed up. So she gets depressed. She loses her way. When she set off on this little voyage of a few feet or, you know, a few hand gestures, she was okay. She had the wherewithal to want to try to do something. She had some enthusiasm about maybe playing with a doll. She was up for life. So she tried something. But the way she tried it didn't work so well for her.

[14:45]

But somehow, anyway, she often, not always, crawls back to mommy. Sometimes she can't get back to mommy. She's so debilitated. And mommy sees her, or someone sees her in a state of collapse. She can't even cry sometimes. She's such a wreck. So she gets back together with this person, and particularly with this face. And her face is the most intense indicator of her condition. Her eyes are kind of like glazed over. Her face is flaccid and droopy. Her affect is depressed and disconnected. But with a few kind words or touches, and her also being able to touch and look into the face, in a matter of sometimes five or ten seconds, it all comes back together.

[15:56]

She's back in balance. The nervous system is re-attuned. And then Mother goes off to do something else. Maybe the other room, maybe a few feet away, but Mother's had enough. She knows she's done her job. The baby's back in tune. Mother knows how to walk into the kitchen and come back without collapsing. She learned that somehow earlier. So she can teach that to the baby. This information of how mother controls her affect state, her emotional state, that is like imprinted into mother's right hemisphere. Also, sometimes Daddy is pretty cool, too. And it's imprinted in his right hemisphere. And when the baby looks into Mommy or Daddy's face and they look into the eyes, they can see in the eyes the right hemisphere.

[17:01]

And they can see in the eyes, the way the eyes behave, how this more developed person manages to keep their emotions on somewhat of an even keel. Now, some of us are better or worse than others, and sometimes we take drugs and stuff, so we damage what we know. But anyway, even taking drugs is part of the way we try to manage our state. And the baby sees that ability, and they learn. They learn how to take care of themselves. And after about a year and a half, or two years, they can actually go off on their own. And when they start to droop or get too excited, they have learned how to modulate their emotions so that they can stay away from Mother for, you know, a fairly long time before they get out of sorts and need, again, a kind of reattunement to this more sophisticated system of balance.

[18:12]

But something else happens in this necessary attunement process, and that is a sense of self and other develops, a sense of the one over there who I see, and I see that I have the ability to see them over there, and I am someone who is separate from what I imagine over there. and the sense of a self arises. And also, aside from a sense, there is an actual system of management that develops that can maintain continuity through change and through different situations. And this is necessary, and it happens, and it is the thing we must learn about.

[19:25]

But I say we must learn about it in order to be happy, because once this thing has evolved, It's necessary that it evolves, and it's necessary for us to have it in order to function, but not understanding it is the key... well, not understanding it is the key problem of our life. And jumping a ways, What we need then is another face at some point in our life. We need to be able to imagine, just like we did before, we imagined this face out there. which taught us how to have a self, how to care for our life and our nervous system, but also how to be somebody separate from the one who's teaching us, we need another face which teaches us to forget the self, another face which teaches us to study the self,

[20:43]

And this is called a Buddha face. The first face, the maternal face, the parental face, was a face that had to be very excited around objects. It was a face that got very excited looking at our face. When our face was droopy and depressed and confused and unhappy, it didn't necessarily get droopy and depressed and confused and unhappy, but it did show concern. And that showing concern, in that process of showing concern, it showed us how to take care of ourselves and recover our normal balanced state.

[21:50]

But it did something else, and that is when we were happy, when there was happiness in our face and in our body, that face lit up. Particularly the eyes lit up. When we were happy, when we got balanced and then we expressed happiness or joy, that face, which is always interested in us, and was interested in at the moment of joy, that face became somewhat excited about our happiness. As our body moved and our face changed, that face expressed interest and joy in seeing us. especially if we were happy. And we saw in that face, in those eyes, we saw a light. There was a light, a glimmer, a flash of light.

[23:04]

And when we saw that flash, we got more excited. And when we got more excited, another flash came. And we got more excited. And when we got more excited, more flash came. And in this way, we worked together with this other face to create, again, what I said before, the most intense excitation level that we are capable of experiencing. And we learned at the maximum level of excitation to turn away from it before we fainted. And if our caregiver was skillful, they let us turn away. Sometimes the caregiver can't stand that the child turns away out of self-protection or in order to not get too excited and blow a fuse.

[24:08]

This is called a high-risk caregiver because the child needs to be allowed to turn away when it gets to be too much and then come back. Some caregivers can see when the child's getting too excited and they turn away or they cool down. But at this level of high intensity is when not only does the caregiver show the child concern and interest and joy over the child's concern and interest and joy, but at that level of high intensity, this interaction becomes imprinted in the brain. The brain is so excited, it's in this molting, receptive, high temperature kind of state, and that's the moment when this whole pattern emotional management gets actually imprinted into the right hemisphere through the eyes, through the light, through the love.

[25:15]

So that we don't have to, after a while, think about how to manage our state. The brain has been turned on. But that doesn't get turned on in the brain, even though the brain has the capacity. It doesn't get turned on except through this kind of interaction. the most intense social interaction. This is it. And it is getting excited in relationship to objects. It is the way the self is born, and the self, to a great extent, is the system that maintains our sense of... that can internally maintain our sense of equilibrium and continuity through the changes of our life. What's the Buddha face for? The Buddha face in some sense does the opposite. It teaches us how to not get excited around objects.

[26:21]

It is a face that is equally interested, in a sense, to the maternal face. But, I mean, equally in the sense of as deeply concerned for our welfare as the maternal face. But not excited about us. And not excited about itself. the maternal or caregiving face says, you're my best friend. I found that there's an article in a magazine, it was called The Face, and there's a cartoon inset in the article, and it has this lady with a cat on her face, and she's looking at the cat, and the cat's looking at her, and she's saying, she says to the cat, who is my best friend?

[27:34]

The cat's kind of going, hmmm. The cat's not going to get it, it looks like. But the caregiver says, you are the greatest thing in the world and you're just like me. I love you and you're over there. And maybe you love me, who is over here. And I'm very excited about you when you're excited. You being excited is like, I mean, that's pretty much it, is your excitement. And I'm trying to take care of myself, but the way I'm taking care of myself is really kind of all about taking care of you.

[28:40]

One time I went to the beach with a Buddhist scholar and his daughter. And this beach right down here. It was before I knew I had any daughters. And we're standing in the water and his daughter was running in the surf. And he looked at her and then he looked back at me and he said, It's times like this that make it all worthwhile." And I thought, what's he talking about? He saw something there that made it all worthwhile. It meaning, I suppose, all the trouble of being a parent, of being a husband, of going to work, of being a Buddhist scholar, of going to faculty meetings, whatever, anyway. it all worthwhile, seeing this kid. He saw something there that made it all worthwhile. What did he see? I guess he saw somebody who was really great, who was just like him.

[29:49]

He saw himself dancing with incredible joy through the surf, I suppose. Later, when I found out about my daughters, I was swimming with one of them in a lake one day. And I was doing the side stroke so I could see her swimming next to me. And she was doing the back stroke. So her head was moving through the water. And, you know, you can imagine that the water was making her hair wet. So it was flat to her head. So you could see the contour of her head. It's almost like it was shaved. And she was an adult, you know. And I saw this adult woman swimming through the water. But what I saw was my own face, my own head as a woman. Can you imagine how much fun that is for a man to see a woman, himself as a woman, floating through the water?

[31:03]

Just like I suppose it would really be a thrill for a woman to see herself as a grown man, as she sees her son, which you can see, oh, that's me, but kind of like in another way. Me as a strong young man, wow. Amazing. Mia is a beautiful young woman. Of course, fathers like to see young men who look like them, and mothers like to see young women who look like them, too, and babies. But it's all a thrill, isn't it, to see the little baby, the medium-sized baby, the grown baby, and hopefully maybe the old lady, if you can live long enough to see, oh, there's an old lady that's just like me. It's all fun, isn't it? It is fun. It's very exciting. And this is what it takes to make a self. You don't do it on your own. You do it through somebody else having an intense appreciation of you being the way you are.

[32:07]

But the Buddha face is not excited about you. Thank you. The mother, the father, you know, who's swimming through the waters with you, who is getting this intense narcissistic light, and who's responding to you with this great joy which nobody can even see. Where is it coming from? And yet they look at you and this great activation of their nervous system happens around you, around the object you. And it shines out of their eyes and when you're looking at it you feel like, you feel it.

[33:12]

You may not know it, but it's there. The most intense activation around objects creates the self. But the Buddha's eyes teach you the most intense deactivation of the mind around objects. Maybe your mother and father's love for you was infinite. It was certainly sometimes incredibly big. The Buddha's love for you is just as big and maybe bigger. It's just that the Buddha's love for you is a love where the mind, where the brain and mind are not activated around you. Matter of fact, it's deactivated. No matter what you are, the Buddha eye sees you just the same, basically. It can tell the difference between you when you're happy or sad, but it doesn't get more excited when you're happy or sad.

[34:17]

And when you look into those Buddha's eyes and the Buddha's light shines out and says, you're just like me and you're great, but I'm not excited about it. In other words, you're just like me and you're great, but I'm not excited about it, means you don't have to be this way. You don't have to be this way of being separate from me because actually you're not. And the funny thing about the parent is they're saying, you're not separate from me. And you're born from your non-separation. You're born of that conversation. You're nothing but that conversation. And yet the conversation is saying you're separate from this conversation. The Buddhist conversation with you is that you're not separate. You're not separate. And the mind is not activated around the objects. And you learn by looking in the Buddha's face, you learn that there's a light that appreciates you and is not excited about you at the same time.

[35:27]

And this is a way of looking at yourself and at the other, where you forget the self. And then you are awakened by everything. I saw the kitchen leave, so I guess it's getting, time is moving on here. I have just, you know, scratched the surface of this process on both sides, both the creating of the self and the forgetting of the self. But there it is, that's a little scratch. So the Buddha's face, the face that teaches us to not activate our mind around the faces we see,

[36:38]

including our own face when we look in the mirror. See, after a while, we learned to look in the mirror and see that face. We had to learn that. Some other face was necessary to teach us that that was our face in the mirror. We wouldn't be able to learn that without another face getting excited about this face. So that we, before we can walk, we can do something which almost no other animal can do, and that is recognize ourself in a mirror. When little baby humans are like, you know, compared to a chimpanzee the same age, who can swing through the trees and run around and feed themselves and almost ready to reproduce themselves, the little baby who can't even walk or manipulate objects with their hands, they already can recognize himself in the mirror, which the chimpanzee will never be able to do because the chimpanzee mother doesn't teach them what the human mother teaches.

[37:47]

So we need to learn the reverse process of this getting excited about things. about getting excited and activating our mind with preferences, prejudices, philosophies, metaphysics, and so on, which we do to objects, attributing existence to them, nonexistence to them, self to them, other to them, mind to them, not mind to them, good to them, bad to them, you name it, we do it. We have to learn how to give that up. And giving that up is forgetting the self. giving that up and forgetting the self, we will see the Buddha's teaching in every face.

[38:54]

And although we will be relieved and feel contented, and relieved means free of suffering, and content that we have realized the meaning of our life, we have to give up this excitement and we need encouragement, so we need to see the Buddha face. Who looks in our face and loves us but is not excited about us. Who looks at her own face in the mirror as she grows older and her looks change and her memory goes, and so on, she looks without getting excited at her own decay as a body and mind.

[39:57]

And she does the same with you. At the same time, she is totally devoted to you and has no life other than that devotion. Just like the first mommy and the first daddy, but there's a difference in that her eyes are serene, unprejudiced, unafraid, and are not holding to the self anymore. So, one might wonder, you know, where is his face? And this is a problem. I guess most of you found the first kind of face, because here you are, you got into the room somehow. I don't know if you had assistance, but I think most of you figured out, you know, that you're sitting in the right seat. Maybe there were some problems, you know, arguments about who should sit where, I don't know.

[41:07]

But anyway, you seem to all be doing fine. But what about the next face? What about the Buddha face? Are you learning from the Buddha face how to be cool and balanced and steady and unmoving in response to the tumultuous arisings and ceasings of your life, or the flaccid arising and ceasings of your life, or whatever is arising and ceasing.

[42:09]

Unbearable intensity, unbearable lack of intensity, whatever. Can you bear it? Can you learn to be patient with what's happened and watch things arise and cease? Do you notice things arising and ceasing? And can you be with them? like the Buddha is with them. And if you can't, how will you proceed? How will you learn how to be with things? How will you receive Buddha's compassion, which is teaching you all the time how to be with what's happening in this way, moment by moment? Do you need this or not? I guess I'm suggesting that we do. And now that I'm saying that to you, you hear that, and can you listen to that without getting excited or depressed?

[43:18]

And if you can, then you're getting it right now. If you can't, how are you going to learn it? If you don't think you need it, Well, what do you need? How are you going to learn this? Do you think you don't need to learn it? If not, I'd like to hear how that is the case, that you don't think you need to learn this. I think we do need to learn it. But just like the first relationship which gave us rise to self was an intensely difficult one, joyful but difficult for both parties, This other one will be too. But in a different way. Different kind of difficulty. Maybe that's enough. I guess there's a question and answer if you have any questions.

[44:24]

And I have a song about this. Sort of about this. And please excuse me for the way I sing. I've grown accustomed to her face. She almost makes my day begin. I've grown accustomed to the tune she whistles night and noon. Her smiles, her frowns, her ups, her downs are second nature to me now. Like breathing in and breathing out. I was serenely independent. and content before we met. Surely I could always be that way again, and yet I've grown accustomed to her looks, accustomed to her voice, accustomed to her face.

[45:34]

The next line was written quite a while ago and is kind of a He sees, so I'm not going to read it. I wouldn't want to be identified with the chauvinism of the next line. May our intention

[46:07]

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