This morning I want to bring up the idea of healing the world. And that idea as I say it, that I feel, oh, there's an implication there that the world is wounded, that the world has a disease, a dis-ease. I think that the Buddha dared to bring up, the Buddha dares to bring up this, the issue of disease.

[01:14]

The issue that there seems to be some dis-ease in the world. There seems to be a war actually. in this world where people are apparently being very cruel to each other. And in each of our hearts too there may be some dis-ease, some wound. And I think that the Buddha was interested in healing this wound in the world. And I myself entertain the possibility that the fundamental disease of the world is, particularly among human beings, that selfishness is a word that refers to this fundamental disease

[02:33]

And this disease can also be said in the view that we, that self and other, are really separate. Believing in that, seeing that, and acting from that point of view, seeing that we're separate, perceiving that we're separate, taking that as real, and the actions on that basis often tend to be selfish and can even be cruel. And so that's, in some sense, the basic problem in this world. And the Buddha wishes to heal that.

[03:39]

And the healing of that disease is to realize selflessness. So there are two things we can know about. We can know about this wound, this world where there's this person, and then that person, and then that table, and that chair, and that mountain, and that river, and they're separate. And they have kind of like their self-identity. We can know about that world. And that's the world of what we call conventional truth, where everything we see are conventionalities. And then there's another thing we can know, which is selflessness.

[04:49]

These are the things we can know. And everything is one... These two categories of objects of knowledge exhaust that exist for us. We can know conventionalities and we can know selflessness. Most people know conventionalities Some people know about selflessness, can actually see it. In order to heal the wound in the heart of the world, I propose to see and realize, actualize selflessness. We have the potential, I believe, and by believe I mean to this possibility that we have the potential to realize selflessness.

[06:08]

But we are not naturally selfless beings. We seem to be, and I don't think we're naturally spontaneously selfless, selfish beings either. We have the potential to be selfish, and we have the potential to be selfless. We have the potential to realize selfishness. And based on that potential, we get educated, in our human society and our education combined with our potential to be selfish, many of us have accomplished this. But we need assistance to realize selfishness. We need loving assistance, as a matter of fact. If we don't get loving attention, we will not be able to develop selfishness. We won't be able to clearly perceive self and other as being separate. unless we get loving attention.

[07:19]

It's our brain to come up with this perception of self and other being separate. But through this education process, which happens in normal human society, our potential to be selfish is often realized. And once realized, you know, wreaks relative havoc on the world. relatively more or less. Some people are, you know, bigger troublemakers than others, apparently, by certain ... But even if the person doesn't hurt other people too much, the selflessness hurts the person's heart. because the person's always afraid and anxious that the other is going to get them in an unfriendly way.

[08:21]

We also have the potential, I believe, to realize selflessness, to see through the illusion of our perception of separation, and realize selflessness. But again, that doesn't happen spontaneously either. There has to be an education process, also a loving education process. And usually the development of selflessness after the development of selfishness, because usually you have to be at least a teenager to fully develop selfishness. And you can't become selfless before you face the full consequences of the... So again, although we have the potential to realize selflessness, in order to realize that, we have to also realize how thoroughly we are not selfless.

[09:39]

We have to realize how thoroughly selfish we are. Quickly putting that in a positive tone, if we can thoroughly realize how selfish we are, we will realize selflessness. Our selflessness will be realized in that vision. To study the Buddha way is to study selfishness. To study selfishness and thoroughly realize how pervasive it is in our life, in our own behavior, is to forget selfishness.

[10:51]

And to forget selfishness is to be enlightened by all things. And to be enlightened by all things is to heal the world. I have this image in my mind that we confess, we admit, we thoroughly study our selfishness, joyfully study our selfishness, joyfully study this somewhat obnoxious topic of our own selfishness, realize selflessness,

[12:09]

forget about selfishness, realize selflessness. And then, after realizing selflessness, we interact with, we bring the body that has realized, the selfless body, the body that has realized selflessness, we bring it, we walk it, we talk it, we situate it in the world, and this body that has realized selflessness shows all beings how to realize selflessness. And this is our mode of healing the world. So this is a blog that has recently moved into Green Gulch. Her name is Razi. And a lot of times, Rosy moves around the world and in an undiseased fashion, in a healthy fashion, she seems to be relating to people as though they're her own.

[13:24]

She doesn't go around thinking, oh, they're not other, they're me. But if you just look at her rear end when she's bopping around, that little rear end tells you, you can see that little rear end doesn't think it's separate from the rest of the universe. That little wobbly thing, they go, oh, you know, they're healed temporarily. Everyone feels relieved to see that little kind of wobbly walk she has. Because that rear end is selfless. It knows selflessness. It's not kind of like, oh, I'm going to walk cool. I'm going to be like this real neat little strutter here. It's just her little muscles, actually her big muscles, her big little thigh muscles, set the way they are in her, interacting with the earth. It's not her trip, you know.

[14:24]

It's just... is selfless. She has realized selflessness in her rear end. And also, sometimes people see her coming running, they say, oh, it's a dog, you know. And then she comes up close and they see this face. And this is not a face which is saying, you know, I'm separate from you. And they just, the world is healed for the moment. But sometimes she gets, sometimes she sees things like she's afraid of kids. And when she sees kids, suddenly she has a disease. And she gets frightened and she goes, and then she doesn't save the world. Or she doesn't heal the world. She manifests a delusion. She becomes a neurotic. But there's a lot of things about her that are un-neurotic and selfless and heal the world.

[15:27]

And there's things about you like that too. Maybe the back of your kneecaps is like that. Maybe your earlobes are like that. I don't know. Human beings need to include a good deal, a big part of our... We need to bring our selfishness in on the program. It can't just be our kneecaps. Thoroughly realize how selfish we are in order to become free of it. And so what is the... Some kind of money thing going on here. Money. We're interested. What is it? What's the money for? What's it doing with the money in the Zendo? It will be revealed later.

[16:32]

Maybe somebody found a $100 bill, huh? A $100 bill. Here he comes to get it. So how do we do this thing of realizing how thoroughly selfish we are? Or how do we realize how much we're worthless? How do we do that? Well, one way is to go around, you know, I didn't think of this beforehand, but I guess in the Middle Ages, Christians used to walk around, or actually crawl around, at least during Bergman films, crawl around in the mud, you know, in black and white mud, beating themselves over the back with whips. What are they beating themselves for? Selfishness.

[17:35]

The greatest sin is selfishness. They're beating themselves. Selfish, selfish, selfish, selfish. That's one way. The Buddha tried that but then gave it up. He didn't use a whip, but he was harder on himself than almost anybody was. It didn't work. Just being mean to yourself doesn't necessarily bring you into thorough understanding of how selfish you are. How about going to a priest and confessing? That sometimes helps. Be careful not to confess too much. Because too much, you miss what you actually did. Maybe you did some petty crime and then you say, I did this terrible, huge crime.

[18:37]

But you didn't do a huge crime. But you don't want to admit the one you did. Like that story which I tell over and over again about, you know, driving down the road with my wife, you know, driving along. And I take a left and drive into a worse traffic jam. And then I say, I confess, that was the stupidest thing I've ever done. And she says, even when you confess, you compliment yourself. This is a fast crowd. This is a few seconds before people get that one. It took me quite a while to get it. But it wasn't an accurate depiction.

[19:45]

It wasn't an accurate confession. I should have said, compared to a lot of things I've done, that wasn't so stupid. But it was stupid. Give that about a three on one to ten scale. So confession is good. But you have to do it accurately. I did such and such a selfish thing. I did a thing which was like, that was like three on the scale of one to ten for selfishness. That was a seven. That was a two. That was a nine. That was a nine. That was a ten. [...] That was a four. That's okay. But really, you've got to be careful because while you're talking, and about the selfish thing you did. You probably did three other ones. So actually talking sometimes distracts you from noticing how selfish you are. Oh, I'm so selfish.

[20:47]

You're taking up a lot of time saying that. Did you ask me if I wanted to hear about this? Oh, no, I didn't. I'm so sorry. I'm so selfish. I broke that. Stop. That's enough. Let's just settle down. You're missing a few there. It's not so much you should go around like, where are my selfishness? Because looking for it, you miss a whole bunch. But it's okay. It's a good start. Was I selfish in the last couple of hours? last few minutes. Was I? That's okay. But a more sustainable, but another sort of more open way is, well, actually I'll talk about some different aspects.

[21:52]

One is a technical one. A technical way of studying selfishness is called the Sometimes it's called the concentration on the self or the samadhi of the self. Another way sometimes translated or talked about as concentration or absorption in the self as it receives its employment. Every moment your self, if you've got one, is receiving its function, its employment. And then it functions, however it's functioning. And then the next moment it receives its function and it goes away. And then it receives its function in the next moment and goes away. It arises through receiving its function, it functions, and then it's gone. Every moment you get a self.

[22:53]

And so aside from watching for self, just watch the self. See how the self gets its function. So that's a basic meditation on watching how the self is formed, how it comes to be in each moment. And it's sometimes hard to see how it comes to be because we already have it, and it's acting upon the world. I've already got myself before I come in the room. Rather than I come in the room and here's myself. I have myself before I meet you rather than I'm meeting you and to a meeting you I have myself. If we can start to notice how the self is born of all things coming forth, this is like one of the ways to meditate on selfishness and selfishness at the same time. Selfishness and selflessness right at the same time are pivoting on that self.

[23:59]

has as a center, self, and selflessness actually has as its topic, self. There's no selflessness without self. There's no like vague, floating selflessness. Selflessness is always connected to a self. The selflessness of each thing is connected to a thing. There's no things without selflessness. There's no selflessness without things. There's no self without selflessness. There's no selflessness without self. But if you don't look at the self, it's hard to see the selflessness of the self. And we don't like to look at the self because also there's no selfishness without the self. So if you look at the self, you might see the selfishness. And seeing the selfishness is nerve-wracking sometimes. It's embarrassing. And so, again, when we first look at it, and then we want to, like, hide it or, you know, over-confess it, which also hides it.

[25:08]

You think it hides it. Nobody else thinks you hide it, except those who you're paying to say, yeah, you were so selfish, yeah. That was you. Sometimes people tell me things that they do that they think are just terrible and I can't understand what the problem is because they didn't tell me what they did. Like, I know it all out of proportion, you know, and I just can't understand what the problem with this thing was and then I ask them questions and then I find out what they did and I say, oh my God. But they think they told me what they did, but it isn't exactly that I see what they did. It just doesn't make any sense to why they would be confessing what they told me, because it doesn't make any sense that they would. But they thought they were telling me something bad they did, but actually they told me something that they didn't do. But then my lack of understanding gradually, they had helped me understand, and then I finally understand what they did, and I say, oh, I see what the problem was.

[26:19]

Thank you. So anyway, when we see our selfishness, we kind of go, oh, my God, and we say, you know, like, I'm the most terrible person in the world. So somebody comes and says, I'm the most terrible person in the world, and you say, gee, you don't look like the most terrible person in the world to me. You look kind of like, you know, medium-grade terrible person. You don't look like, you know, a world-class monster that you're telling me you are. Well, what is really the problem here? Oh, well, I did that. Oh, I see. Oh, yeah, okay. That makes sense. But it's hard for us to look at it, to see our selfishness. But the selfishness is connected to the self, and the selflessness is connected to the self. So if you can look at the selfishness and face the selfishness, you can face the self, and if you can see the selflessness, and then if you can

[27:23]

Watch that selflessness, which is the self receiving its function rather than the self having its function and then doing its function on everything. If you can watch that, you gradually become absorbed in selflessness, which entails facing selfishness, which is hard for most of us. It's not comfortable looking at selfishness. But anyway, I said, And I'm again trying this out that the study of the Buddha way is to study selfishness. To study selfishness and realize selflessnessnessnessness. The core of the insight is to see the self receiving its function And then change. And then receiving its function in each moment. That's the core of the insight.

[28:26]

That's like a description of the insight, of the pivot from selfishness to selflessness. Okay? But the kind of mode or, you know, body-mind tone to enter into this is... Last time I talked, I talked about, you know, the tone is, thank you very much, I have no complaint whatsoever. And in thank you very much, I have no complaint whatever mode, like in that mode about, not about, you're just in that mode, thank you very much, I have no complaint whatsoever. The hiding self dares to come out and be seen. You dare to look at it in that mode of gratitude. So gratitude is not, in this case, not so much about things, but it's the mode of revelation of the self.

[29:31]

It's the entering into the samadhi of the self. The self comes out, dragging its selfishness with it, if there is any. because it knows that it's going to get a thank you very much, I have no complaints, you selfish creep. No complaints whatsoever about what we're seeing here. It is hard to look at, but there's no... There's no leaning backwards, no leaning forwards, just facing it. So gratitude is kind of like a strategy for how to meet things. It's a strategy for how to get close to obnoxious things to be faced. It's not that you're grateful that you're selfish. It's that if you're grateful, you can become intimate with your selfishness. So it's Thanksgiving's coming, right?

[30:39]

So from now until Thanksgiving, just practice gratitude. Not about anything. but gratitude and see if you can study the self in this grateful mode of not complaining about the selfish things you do, being grateful as a way to be able to stand seeing what you're up to. It's almost like... I kind of hate this example, but it's coming, so maybe it's appropriate. It's kind of like you've got this intravenous, a little bit of a sedative coming through you of gratitude, so you can face how obnoxious you are. Just kind of like helps you settle into, yeah, I'm really self-concerned, aren't I? Ooh, this is so, this is so, oh, God.

[31:39]

This is — I'm a selfish one here. But here I am facing it, yeah. I'm right here in the present, yeah. Another practice that helps you settle into the samadhi of studying the self, of facing selfishness, related to gratitude, is patience. Patience. And patience is a big practice. And I'll just give you one little example of patience, and that is deal with your discomfort about your selfishness. If you deal with embarrassment about your selfishness, deal with your discomfort with the selfish things you've done in your life in the smallest, in the smallest doses. God, I've been selfish this way and that way for centuries, you know.

[32:45]

I've been selfish for months, for years, for weeks. It's kind of like if you get depressed, kind of like, oh my God, I'm hopelessly entrenched in selfish habits. And I'm disappointed in facing this stuff. It's just too much. I'm just too, I'm incorrigible. There's no point in facing this mountain of selfishness. So then you give up because it's too horrible. But if you take just a little chunk of it, you can face that, just a little bit. A little bit of selfishness and then a little bit of selfishness and a little bit. So more homeopathic rather than taking a huge dose of guilt. Take these tiny little pieces of, well, that was kind of, yeah, that was a little bit, that kind of, that way. Because that's really the way it comes. Of course, there's a long history, but work with what the selfishness is happening right now, the self that's there right now.

[33:54]

That's the one that's connected to selfishness and selflessness. So patience is also, in a sense, a strategy for settling into the study of the self. Another one is readiness, to be ready. This morning someone was talking to me about visiting someone who seems to be close to dying, and he said that she doesn't seem to be ready for what's coming.

[35:03]

She seems to be afraid of what's coming, doesn't seem to be ready for it. And I thought, I said to him, well, to be ready for what's coming is antithetical to being ready. When you're ready, you're not ready for what's coming or what's going. You're just ready. As soon as you say, I'm ready for X, you undermine your readiness. Ready. If you're ready to study the self, you're biased. But if you're ready without any direction or any category of what you're ready for, you're ready for whatever, I think that's a more balanced approach I think I should add one more, and that is giving.

[37:06]

To give yourself, or to consider, maybe first of all consider giving yourself, giving yourself to the study of the self. Or giving your life, or giving life, giving life to the study of the self. Consider it first for a second and see if you feel joyful about giving your time or giving time, giving energy, giving love, giving attention, giving all that you are to studying selfishness. And see if you feel joyful about giving to such a practice. If you don't feel joyful about giving yourself to such a practice, then I would suggest that you keep thinking about it until you feel joyful about giving to such a practice.

[38:14]

And don't think that you're giving until you feel about giving. And realize that you're not really giving before you feel joyful about giving your life to this study. It's a potentially obnoxious study. If you are practicing giving as an entry point, then giving comes with joy. It's not real giving if you're resentful about the gift. And this giving of yourself to the study of the self, the gift of the self, you give yourself to the study and then you see how your self is a gift. But if I don't give myself to the study joyfully, that my resentment about the study or my simply boycotting the study, which is what most people are doing, okay, okay, I'll be a Zen student and I'll study the self.

[39:23]

But if I don't do it joyfully, that resistance, that lack of joy, that lack of giving, that stingy giving of myself to this practice, my not reaching that point of giving, I don't see myself as giving. So this kind of joyful giving is related to, thank you very much. not for the self, but as the mode of studying the self. Thank you very much. I'm giving my life to studying my selfishness to realize selflessness in order to heal the world through such a realization. And I'm also going to practice patience because it's easy to get overwhelmed by the obnoxiousness of this study. So I'm going to just take it in little doses in the present moment. And this is how I'm going to just be present and ready in this difficult study.

[40:28]

Once again, I propose to you that to study the way of enlightenment, to study the way of awakening, is to study selfishness. And to study selfishness is to forget all about selfishness. And to forget all about selfishness is to be enlightened by everything that happens. And to be enlightened by everything that's happened heals the world. A great teacher Nagarjuna said, For one, selflessness is proper. Everything is pertinent. To one for whom selflessness is clear, nothing is pertinent.

[42:23]

For one whom selflessness is clear, everything is clear. And for one for whom selflessness is not clear, nothing is clear. So there's a very strong encouragement to see, to understand, to actualize selflessness. The very hard work of studying self and selfishness which leads into my song, or actually leads into your song. And before I sing this song, I'd like to just recommend, you know, another way I heard it. Usually it goes, getting to know you, getting to know all about you.

[43:35]

But another way is, getting to know you, getting to forget all. Getting to know you, forgetting all about you. But this is the first stage, the way it's usually written, by Mr. Hammerstein and Mr. Rogers. Also, it's interesting where it comes from. It comes from a musical called The King and I. She's getting to know the king, right? The king and I. It's not too long. I heard about this person. Here's another one.

[44:39]

Two boyfriends, one is the sweetest, the nicest, the most considerate.

[44:49]

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