I talked to the translators, to the scholars about that. They said, well, we can do that except that there's four different kinds of four benefactors. So, they're similar. Like one is parents, living beings, sovereigns, and three jewels. Another one is heaven and earth, teachers, sovereigns, and parents. Another one is heaven and earth, sovereigns parents and living beings another one is sovereign parents teachers and friends and lay supporters so i just uh we'll post this you can you can look and see what it is and you can some sense you see you can make up your own for benefactors and how this this gives you a range of ways to think about it heaven and earth and or three jewels and then go from there yes well heaven and earth i think maybe you could say is nature earth the earth so you could say the you know the whole the whole universe plus the planet and then your parents some people might not want to have parents

[01:24]

Anyway, you can see these are different ways that in the past people have thought about them. And you can sort of visualize whatever you think the four benefactors in your life are, the four categories of benefactor are in your life. Tonight I don't mean to be discriminating, but I am discriminating In some sense, tonight's talk is not exactly going to be like regular Dharma, so I'm not going to do the chant, if that's okay. A while ago I mentioned something about the development of the self and maybe relating that to face-to-face transmission. So since I said I'd talk about it, I thought maybe tonight I would talk about it. I find this area of the psychology or the psychobiology or the neurophysiological origins of the self, I find it pretty interesting.

[02:48]

particularly the thing I mentioned, which is that in a certain phase of development, of normal development, if a child has a primary caregiver, which is usually the mother, face-to-face interactions are very important. And in a way I would say that it's through face-to-face interactions that we are able, as human beings, to enter into a normal life, and in particular enter into a life in the conventional world where we have a sense of self and in the positive sense can function in normal human society.

[04:12]

But from a certain point of view, this is also describing the way a being enters into the creation of a world. A world where there is this sense of self and other in it. And the way it happens is... The way it happens, the way... the way some people are describing it now, is that there's a kind of mutual regulation in social exchange. And in particular, the affect of joy is very important. And the affect of joy is particularly dependent on this face-to-face dyadic relationship between infant and mother, or infant and primary caregiver.

[05:30]

And what is called a gaze transaction. And In these transactions, these face-to-face transactions in particular, which are face-to-face transactions which are visual, particularly eyes, are important. And in a sense, one of the ways that some people are thinking about this or describing it or seeing it is that the eye of the infant looks into the eye of the adult and sees the adult's mind through the eye.

[06:38]

particularly sees the adult's mind in terms of how it regulates its affect. The eye varies in the way it looks depending on the affective state of the being. And both a baby, an infant, an infant and an adult When they're in a state of arousal, when their body and mind and brain are in a state of arousal and a state of joy, the pupil tends to dilate. Babies in a state of low arousal, looking into a face, that is the face of someone who is happy to see the child looking into a face of an adult who has a sense of self and with that sense of self for example the self of being a mother and also the self of being a mother of this child when seeing this child

[08:10]

the way that this self regulates its affect is to be happy to see the child and to be interested in the child and to have dilated eyes. When the baby sees this interest as depicted, as signaled by the dilated eyes, as the baby sees this positive affect and happiness and joy in the adult, the baby's eyes dilate and the baby starts to feel positive affect too. Of course, then it often happens then that the adult looking at the baby who is now becoming more aroused and joyful, the adult then also becomes more joyful. The baby again seeing this more joyful adult becomes more joyful. And this kind of interaction, which is not only signaling joy, but also enacting mutuality.

[09:18]

And this coordination, this reciprocal reward pattern between the two, creates a kind of symbiosis, where the internal states start to be shared. They have sort of the same internal state. Now one of the things that goes on there is not only do they have a similar internal state, but they also have different internal states. The baby has rudimentary organizational development and the adult has highly developed organizational development. Has a sense of self, has language and so on. The capacity to representing symbolically, the baby doesn't. This happens to the baby particularly, by the way, this gets particularly intense around the age of eight to 12 months.

[10:21]

This kind of intense interfacial gazing. When the baby sees this eye, this mother's eye, when the eye gets dilated like that, there actually is a kind of gleam or sparkle there. It's not just dilated like going to the doctor and getting a dilation. It's a dilation out of interest and positive affect. And there's a light there. There's more light bouncing off the retina back to the child. There's a sparkle, a gleam. The baby is happy to see this. So again, the kind of just, you know, almost irresponsible and outrageous thing I would say is that the baby can see, well, everybody can see, you can actually see the brain when you look at the eye. The brain is embryologically and anatomically an extension of the brain.

[11:30]

The eye is anatomically and embryologically an extension of the brain. If you go to your eye doctor, I don't know who your eye doctor is. My eye doctor is also a big professor. When he looks in my eyes, he talks about my brain. and my heart and other parts of my body because it's connected to everything. When you look inside and look at the back of the eye, you can see the brain. You're looking at the brain through the optic nerve and that's what he can see. A lot of stuff there you can see. When you look into someone's eyes, you're actually seeing, in a sense, their brain, in a sense, almost looking right out there at their brain in plain sight. Particularly, you're looking at the right hemisphere of the brain, which is more concerned with vision and affect, motivation and learning, and attachment behavior.

[12:45]

That part of the brain is more stimulated by these things I just mentioned. Again, the outrageous thing to say is not only that, but that in a sense the baby can see and enter into a symbiotic linkage with the brain that has a self. It can see by through the eyes and through the face. It's starting to learn what it is to have a self. and is learning in a pleasant environment. And the person who's teaching is also experiencing positive affect in this. Babies at three months can't handle, aren't so interested in this kind of interfacial activity. If they're in a state of, let's say, a pleasant state, and you look at the face, they tend to not look at it so much, and even turn away after a while.

[13:53]

But they aren't susceptible to this kind of arousal. And also, the mother doesn't tend to get quite as aroused looking at the young baby either. The baby who is just in a pleasant state, but not in this kind of aroused, joyful state. Joy is used in the sense of not just positive affect, but a kind of urge to interact with When you look at a little baby, the mother doesn't get quite as excited as when looking at a baby around nine months. And if someone does get excited looking at the baby younger, they probably won't be able to respond. But at nine months, they can start to respond to that interest. And when they see that interest, they respond by themselves getting more interested. And again, The response to that is to get more interested and more interested and more interested.

[14:58]

The baby gradually learns through this interfacial transaction to tolerate more and more intense affect and also to learn how to regulate it. Both by example from the mother And also, well, maybe mostly by example from the mother, actually. The normal healthy interaction of the mother is to modulate the intense interest in the baby somewhat. It's actually, what do they call it, a high-risk pattern if the mother doesn't modulate her interest in the baby somewhat. her positive affect towards the baby if it stays stable regardless of what the baby's going through. The normal response is when the baby, like...

[16:03]

Like maybe the baby's rather calm, the mother comes with a big smile, the baby smiles, and the mother would often then respond by relaxing her smile a little bit. And then the baby's smile can go on for a while, it can drop away. then the mother can again pay attention, the baby can get aroused again, the mother can stay with it a while, turn away or relax a little bit, and the baby can tolerate more and more intense stimulation and arousal. And at a certain point, the baby may get so aroused that the baby turns away and stops looking at the mother. And at that time, if the mother doesn't respond by leaving the baby alone, the baby will often cry.

[17:07]

And then mothers who don't turn away when the baby turns away, mothers who keep trying to stimulate the baby when the baby averts from the gaze, they might also keep stimulating the baby when the baby cries. So in that case, the risk there is the risk that the mother doesn't seem to know, doesn't seem to understand how to modulate her affect in response to the babies. So affect regulation, which is a big part of developing the self, you learn ideally from someone who has a sense of self that is connected to an ability to modulate affect appropriately to the cues that she's getting. What?

[18:13]

Affect is... Effect is... The root of the word is to strive after. Okay? And it is to stimulate or imitate in order to make some desired impression. So you go up to a baby and go... You don't maybe feel like you're trying to make an impression on the baby, but... That's what you're doing. You're making an impression on the baby. Another meaning of it is to display a preference for. Another meaning is to imitate. So, it has to do with our emotional expression. And it also has to do with the way we feel. So, joy is an affect, and joy is also a way to reach out and, you know...

[19:20]

stimulate others. So the way we stimulate each other and the way we express our emotions is affect. So the I don't know what I should say here. One other thing I would say that in this book, towards after about 500 pages, the person says that until fairly recently, the self has been viewed as a metapsychological phenomena and was not accessible to scientific investigation. and I won't read you the reasons, but anyway, various things have led to the, have now legitimized and even emphasized the importance of an interdisciplinary study of the self.

[20:43]

The book is called, the way I, the acronym for it is Aros. Affect, regulation, and the origin of the self. Huh? Author is Alan Shore. So after about 500 pages, he makes this point. An interdisciplinary study of the self We have here, I don't know, the study of the self is something we're into, supposedly, in Soto Zen. The Buddha way is to study the self. But actually, as bodhisattvas, really, it should be interdisciplinary. Bodhisattvas vow to use all dharmadors, all disciplines, all arts and sciences in the study of the self.

[21:48]

So it's, to me, nice to hear that now neuropsychology, neurobiology, psychobiology, biological psychology, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary biology, and so on and so forth, all these different fields are now interested in studying the self. and particularly this thing about the face and the face. So again, to me, the way I see this is that the face, it is through a face that we come into the world. It is through a face and through... It is through the face of another and through the eyes of another that we manage to develop a sense of self. The other... who is an adult and has a sense of self, transmits the teaching of self to us through the eyes and face.

[22:56]

Transmits it in an environment of love, of interest, of positive affect, in the most intense interaction that we know. And intensity right up to the limit of the organism's ability to experience. And again, just to say that after this symbiotic phase, the child moves into what they call a practice period. where they start to learn how to modulate their own affective state in separation from their mother. So you've all seen these examples of the child going off for these little explorations away from the mother. Other primates do that too. Go away for a little while and come back, go away and come back.

[23:59]

And when you go away from your mother, you don't have the mother's face. You turn your back on your mother. And you look out at the world and the world's not looking back at you with those big dilated eyes. Unless you walk by that gallery in San Francisco that sells Keen photographs. Keen paintings. And so the child goes out there and looks at the world with mother at the back and well They don't know how to take care of their affect. It goes wacko. They get wilted. They don't see the world telling them, you're really interesting. They don't see that. So then they turn back towards mom. They go back to mom. One time I was at a lake and a boy was out on a

[25:01]

an inner tube right in the water trying to stand up on the inner tube he said mom look mom and she said my eyes are all on you and also look mom no hands right we go away but we we deteriorate And this going away starts to happen around one year. So between one year, approximately one year, which is after the symbiotic linkage where the where the child is actually able to see into the mother's state, and the mother able to see into the child's state, and they attune to each other, and this attunement is very pleasant. This attunement then develops the child's ability to withstand extremely intense stimulation, which they're going to need as they go out into this exploration thing, which is going to be very exciting, walking and the world being their oyster.

[26:11]

And they go into, in that time from one year to a year and a half, a state where they have what we call a stage-specific or stage-appropriate grandiosity and omnipotence. And the sense of self starts to develop there. But the main thing in the sense of self is not just that you think you're great, but the ability to regulate your state without looking in your mother's face. But during that training, during that practice period, you go out and come back, go out and come back. So the child goes out and they get depressed and their energy drops and their affect gets negative and then they come back and look at the mother and there's an example here which So this is a case of a little boy.

[27:28]

He's gone off on a voyage away from his mom. His name's Tad. Huh? He is... I don't know how old he is. He's probably about between... He's probably between... He's probably about a year old. So he's gone off and he's been playing with a plastic toy drum and now he sits gazing around the room. His glance shifts from object to object without staying on any one of them or even appearing quite to see. His face is drooling. His expression lacks. His eyes are a bit glazed. His body slightly slumped and flaccid. His mudra has sunk down into his lap. His movements are slow but without any apparent direction.

[28:30]

His emotion is rated glum. Attention unfocused. hedonic tone negative. Hedonic means, you know, pleasure state, you know, hedonism, you know hedonism? Hedonic tone is negative. Okay, so Tad moves on all fours and starts crawling. He moves slowly but directly towards his mother, who is sitting several yards away on the floor. He touches her arm lightly. She helps pull him to a kneeling position beside her. As Tad continues to pull himself to standing, he smiles slightly. and puts his arm around his mother's neck firmly for additional support. Now standing, he touches a nearby chair with his free hand. He stands gazing around the room with a sweet, soft smile on his face. His expression gives the impression that he is quite pleased with himself and with his ability to stand there.

[29:35]

He puts his thumb in his mouth momentarily and then turns to look at his mother, lightly pressing his body into hers in a brief hug. The interaction is tender and quiet. The mother continues to hold him for a few minutes. Presently, she places him on the floor to sit. She hands him a cloth block and she prepares to stand up. The mother gets up, walks away. and from Tad to an area behind the couch. Tad watches her movements carefully for some moments. Then quite suddenly his body becomes energized as he rolls over onto his stomach. He starts crawling over to the busy box on the floor several feet away. He pulls the busy box onto his lap and looks at it, concentrating for a few seconds. His emotion is rated as interest-driven, curious, his attention focused, his hedonic tone positive.

[30:39]

That took 10 seconds. Okay. So, you know, so you, first of all, you, well, anyway, first of all, you form this bond with your mother, this linkage, this symbiotic state. Then, and that's like between, particularly between 8 and 12 months. Around 12, babies often start walking. But the walking isn't the important thing. The most important thing is this starting to handle your own world. Actually going away from the mother, not looking at her, seeing how you can interact with the world. And you've already got this idea from your mother through her eyes that there's somebody out there that cares about you and has a sense of organization. Now, part of what I, in terms of Buddhism, felt I wanted to say was that...

[31:45]

is that this tie between the child and the mother is pre-verbal. And although it's pre-verbal, it's there, and even the starting to move around and explore the world is also pre-verbal. So around the time, like eight to ten months up to a year, the sense of self starts to develop and the sense of self, the sense of an individual is starting to develop. In other words, ignorance is starting to develop. And it's like ignorance is necessary in order to be a normal human being. And this ignorance is pre-verbal. And it develops in a positive environment from someone who is really interested.

[33:07]

So the mother brings us into the world. She has the capacity for language, but the baby doesn't. But this being who has the capacity of language forms this symbiotic relationship with the one who doesn't. But the one who doesn't still is connecting with this one who does. And this language, the sense of self and language is being transmitted even before the child can use it. It's still coming because the child is connected, is close to this being. And then as they progress to learn how to move about on their own without looking at the being, they still keep checking back to this basic pattern for support. And as they get more and more support and can stand more and more intensity, they are able to develop a sense of self.

[34:13]

And then the grand leap is that after many years, one needs to meet another face, a Buddha face, in order to do the same process in reverse. One needs to look into another face in order to leave the world. And one needs to get a transmission from one who, in some sense, is showing you the illusion of this sense of self and the illusion of symbolic representation and the illusion of attachment and the illusion of self and other.

[35:18]

So the face brings us into the world and the face takes us out of the world. And the face takes us into the world and also helps us learn how to negotiate the world by reconnecting with it as much as we need. And the face takes us out of the world but also helps us go out of the world without depending on it. So maybe that's enough. Oh, and one other thing I thought I would say was that this visual dialogue between the mother and the child is described as the most intense form of interpersonal reaction. And it's the crucible for forging these pre-verbal affective ties. And I thought, this is like, this is the way we're brought into the world is the most intense activation of the mind around objects.

[36:29]

The way we're brought into the world is by the most intense activation of the mind around objects. Around the object of the face. Children like breasts somewhat. I mean, I don't know if they like them, but anyway, they relate to them. But they don't get that excited about a breast. They don't like smile at the breast. And the breast doesn't smile back at them. It's the face, and particularly the eyes, that get them excited. The face and the eyes. That object, that face, those eyes, The most intense activation of mind happens around those objects. And Bodhidharma says, don't activate the mind around objects. We have to learn how to look at the face and those eyes and not activate the mind. We're brought into the world by most intensively activating our mind around an object.

[37:39]

We leave the world giving up activating the mind around objects, even the most important one, which, of course, is your own face. Because that's what the mother is doing, is she's providing a mirror. The mirror says, you are just like me, and that's the most important thing in the world. And this is very exciting. I'm very excited about this. And the baby gets excited. And I'm really excited that you're excited about this, that you're getting the picture of how important it is that you are you, and I am me, and we're the same thing, and boy, this is great, and let's get excited. Okay? The opposite, and boy, Dharma is saying, don't activate your mind around this wonderful situation. Don't. Be of a mind like a wall, not like a firecracker.

[38:41]

Just recently I was taking some notes on teachings about bodhisattva yoga practice. And where it says he, I found myself writing she. And when I write she, where it usually says he, it kind of like stimulates me. And I feel more, it just seems, I feel bad about writing he all the time. And when I write she oftentimes, especially when she attains these various high states and when she does these amazing yogic feats, I feel good when I write she. And when I wrote here, you know, when I wrote here, the face-to-face dyadic gaze effect transmission, during the pivotal moment of the growing infant's day, when the father, you know, and I put the father in there, tears came to my eyes, that the father could be there. So, maybe, you know, maybe the women do have some

[40:07]

hormonal assistance because, you know, by which their eyes more easily dilate when they see their baby than the father does. It's possible. But if the father's eyes dilated as much as the mother's, if the father had that same affect as the mother, the father would be just as good at this. So it isn't just somebody that's around, it's somebody that has this You know, that their brain and their neurons and their chemistry is causing this autonomic response of a dilated eye. It isn't just a dilated eye. That means the brain's working in a certain way and that hormones are functioning in a certain way and they're feeling a certain way. And it's a whole body representation that's coming through that eye. And if the father... felt that way and had that physiological response, he could serve the same function. Yeah.

[41:20]

Well, you know, they also say primary caregiver and stuff, but the primary caregiver is such a long expression, and mother is easier. So maternal, I think men, we still maybe use the word maternal for this kind of function, but men are capable of this. And I think the more that they're involved in the process from the beginning, the more likely they're going to be able to do this. I don't know, you know, but... I think if men are supported to be there at the birth and to be almost as close as the mother is to the process and are supported to be able to be around the child as it develops those early years, I think you do develop that kind of interest and I think your biology does get into that. Just like in that article on serotonin, you know, serotonin is not something you're born with. When people respect you, when the environment respects you, it changes your hormones. your serotonin level comes up when people act respectfully towards you, and then when your serotonin level's up, you feel more relaxed and dignified, and then people respect you more.

[42:26]

So, you know, it's the same with these things. The hormones make certain things possible. The physiology supports the affect, and the affect supports the physiology. They work together. And so if a male can be there and and can act this way, then they can serve the same function. I think Andy was next. When you talk about the affect developing between mother and child, in a period, a very specific sort of period of time, and then from that point on, sort of... Going away of an identity itself of someone you need to surround you with makes me think of this character I've read. He mentioned there were two people, and that was really so amazing that this group of people in Columbia, up in the mountains, have been sort of isolated because of the terrain.

[43:39]

And they, in their culture, babies are chosen and birthed, certain babies, for the birth, to become these priests, these elders. And basically, they have a teacher, and they never see the light of day. 18 years. And they're trained in this whole, all the music and the lore of this culture. and to develop certain traits and characteristics or characteristics that are not seen daily. And somewhere in the 18th year, the teacher and student find out simply it's all right and watch. It's something that's for the first time together. And that to me just, when you mention that, that if you start as a child and birth, and then basically close down their sensory range to a very narrow input of just basically moving around at night or a lot of times like they usually do.

[44:50]

Well, my question about your story would be, at what age does this start? And if it starts at birth, Even if it's, you say they don't see the light of day, but do they see the face of their teacher? Yeah. In a cave, there's light on the face of the teacher. I think if the story was that they were actually in the dark and couldn't see that face, I think that the human baby would die if they couldn't see a human face. I think they would die, but maybe they wouldn't. But even if they didn't die, They've got all kinds of other non-verbal physical contact and so on. It looks like, for this research, we'd say that there's certain things that happen in the brain. Something I didn't mention, which I also think is very interesting, is that But before I go into that, I just thank you for that example.

[45:53]

That's really, it's very interesting. And I think, you know, that they would get a different training from birth and have a different primary caregiver that could be really, you know, essential for the culture, that somebody would have that kind of special education. But what it made me think of, activated brain structures activated. For example, in the brain, there are certain structures which mediate what you call lower brain and higher brain function. And if these structures are not activated at a certain time, that function will not occur. So, for example, there are ways that we modulate our emotions, the brain modulates emotions, and that's actually like a neural structure that does that.

[46:56]

And if you remove that, the person, the lower brain level functioning will still go on, but it will be unmodulated. So I think many of you have heard that story of that guy in the latter part of the 19th century in the United States. I think he was a construction worker on the railroad, and somebody put a pickaxe through his skull, and he lived amazingly. But it knocked out part of his brain, but he could still talk and walk around, and he had plenty of emotion. but it eliminated a kind of part of the brain that modulates emotions. So he would like, you know, be sitting like this all of a sudden, and one of you would wink at him, and he'd just jump on you and start beating you up or something. Yeah. And these, without these structures being, if these structures aren't activated, the person will not be able to control their emotions.

[47:59]

In other words, their reptile brain will be unmediated by normal social interactions. So it's not just that the child's learning from the mother how to modulate affect, but in these intense moments of interaction, in that heat of that interaction, certain neural structures are turned on in that heat. in that intensity. And if you don't have that intensity, they will not be activated. And the child will not be able to modulate their emotional states very well. That this kind of interaction actually transforms the brain structure. And without it, the brain will not develop. The actual brain tissue will not... The tissue will be there, but it won't be turned on, so to speak. Yes? Yeah, that's a good question, and I haven't read about that.

[49:13]

You know, my guess would be, but these are ordinarily set off by the intensity Just look at your own life or any child you've ever heard about. Do children get that excited about talking back and forth to their mother? No, because you can't talk. You know, the goo-goos you make, you don't synchronize yourself to your mother with your goo-goos, but with your eyes, you appear to your mother. So this kind of, this sense of mutuality is what's so intensifying, is that the child actually, the facial expression the child turns the mother on. It's not the way you talk when you're, the goo-goos you're making at that age are not, that's not the thing. And the mother's not Googling back to you in that way. Those don't create that same intensity. So I would guess that blind people have big problems, you know, emotionally. That's what I would guess. That they have a lot of trouble. Because I would guess that these brain functions are not set up in them very well.

[50:18]

That would be my guess. And my guess would be that deaf people who can see would be much better adjusted. especially if you let them use their hands, which is also a visual thing. So I think that that's my guess, and I don't really know if that's so, but I think it is, from what little I've heard, is that blind people are handicapped emotionally because of that. And we don't notice this, we don't know this that much about them because they're blind. You know, they're not driving cars and stuff like that. So, you know, we don't see what kind of road rage they'd have. And because of their blindness, a lot of the trouble that they might get into, they don't get into. But if you could look into their minds, you might find that they're developmentally handicapped because they lack this intensity which turns on

[51:24]

certain parts of the brain which are part of the way you mediate lower or more, you know, basic emotional stuff. But, you know, it's, what is it, 8.30 now. So, I thought maybe you want to go to bed early tonight. I also thought as I read this that you might not want to do anything else but study this book for the rest of the past week. Because I think it really is fascinating. And I just touched the surface here a little bit. with my basic suggestion being just what I said, that the face and the eyes are extremely important in bringing us into the world of self, and the face and the eyes are extremely important in helping us become free of the world of self. And studying how you come into the world, how beings come into the world, is part of understanding how beings are freed from the world. So I see a lot of hands and so on, but I also thought maybe you would like to go to bed tonight a little earlier.

[52:30]

So is that right, that quite a few people would like to hit the saccharine? Well, you look very perky when I said that. Thank you. Good night.

[52:46]

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