Transcription
Oftentimes when we come to practice, in the initial period, which could be years or even decades, we may think, "Well, I just want to relax a bit more. I want to, perhaps, have a little less anxiety or stress in my life. Or there are certain issues, certain difficulties and patterns that I'm looking to resolve." All that's wonderful. It's a very clear kind of intention and very much a part of what Dharma practice addresses. But I think what happens for everyone really committed to the practice is that eventually, at some point, we begin to notice a very fundamental relationship, which is that any kind of stress or suffering or difficulty is dependent on this sense of self -- can say 'ego,' but I don't really like that word because it has different connotations. This sense of self is at the base of all suffering. This relationship begins to become clear. And so we understand, "Well, I need to address this. I need to look into this."
Just that much is already quite countercultural. It's quite counterintuitive, even. So in the culture, you know, you can open countless glossy magazines, etc., and a lot of it's about primping up the self in some way, getting a better self, transforming the self, growing the self, making it more shiny, a self with better hair, or a thinner self, or whatever it is. So that much is not kind of common wisdom, that this sense of self itself, which we take so much for granted, is actually the base of our problem in life. Some of seeing that is quite obvious. We see if we're needing to prove our self-worth to others or to ourself how much work that is, how much work it is to be concerned with the way we appear, our physical appearance, our personality appearance. It's a lot of energy that needs to go into that, and with that, a lot of fretting and anxiety. We see how our ego kind of needs pumping up. It's like this balloon that can easily get deflated. We keep furiously trying to pump it up, and it's a lot of work, it's a lot of stress.
That level, to someone who's honest and introspective in their life, that level begins to be fairly obvious. Just take a good, honest, calm look at one's life and one sees that. But this whole question in the Buddha's teaching goes very deep. There are levels. There are very subtle levels at which any minuscule movement of suffering actually has the sense of self at its core, at its kind of linchpin. So this realization begins to dawn, and we realize it's absolutely necessary, if I'm interested in going into this question of freedom from suffering, which is what the teachings are about, it's absolutely necessary to investigate this sense of self.
So the normal sort of human consciousness is self-centred. We wake up in the morning and we think about what I have to do today, or the problems that are confronting one or the excitement, or perhaps the small circle of people around me. This is normal. I'm not even talking about any huge, monstrous ego manifestation or something like that. Just talking about the normal kind of human consciousness. It's a self-centred consciousness.
There can come the point in practice, a person dedicated to practice actually wonders -- the question may come -- "What would it be to live life and not have this self at the centre of the drama? What would that even be? Can I even imagine what it would be that the sense of self is not the centre of everything?" Or a person, similarly, through their practice or through engagement, hears teachings about no-self, not-self, all this. It's a teaching that, in some form or other, goes through all the very deep mystical traditions. Any deep spiritual tradition has something to say about this sense of self, and says look at it, because it's not what it appears to be, question it, go beyond it in some way. And a person might wonder, either because of the teachings they've heard or because of some inner intuition, "Is this sense of self which I take so much for granted the truth of things? Is that really the truth?" It seems the most obvious thing in the world, but this little dawning of a question, a whisper of a question, "Is it really the truth?" And am I willing to go through my life from birth to death, however long that is, and have a feeling that maybe I was actually living in an illusion? How does that sit?
So the original teachings of the Buddha, he wasn't much of a sort of philosopher or person making big metaphysical statements. He wasn't so much into that. Later traditions developed that very beautifully and very fully. His style was not so much that. He was very pragmatic about addressing people's problems, people's suffering in life.
There was an instance where -- at that time, India was full, northern India at least was full of these sort of wandering ascetics, people devoting their lives to sort of finding out the truth about life. And they would wander around and meet with different teachers and ask them questions. One day the Buddha was sitting around somewhere and one of these ascetics came to him and said, "There is no self, right? There is no self?" And the Buddha just remained silent. So he asked a second time, "There is no self?" Silence from the Buddha. Third time, silence. And the ascetic was just like, "Pff. Buddhas, you can't trust 'em." [laughter] He wanders off and five minutes later the next ascetic comes and he said, "There is a self, right? There is a self?" Buddha's silent. Second time, "There is a self?" Third time, silence. And he wanders off, same thing. Ānanda, the Buddha's cousin and attendant, said, "Well, what's up?" And he said, "It's not my teaching to say there is or there isn't. To say there is would be too much of an extreme view, giving reality to something that actually doesn't have reality. This self doesn't have the reality it seems to have. And yet to say there is no self would be to fall into nihilism and say that it doesn't exist at all." So the Buddha's teaching on this is extremely subtle. That's one of the reasons why it's very difficult to understand.
One of the things in many other traditions with the sense of self is that there can be a teaching, or we can understand a certain teaching, as if we're trying to explode the sense of self or dissolve it or kind of merge it into some cosmic substance or something like that. This, again, is not the Buddha's teaching. That can happen as an experience, but as an end point, it's not really where we're heading. We're not trying to eliminate or dissolve the self. Rather, and this is where the Buddha's amazing subtlety of teaching comes in, it's that we want to understand something about this sense of self which we take so much for granted. We want to understand something about it that leads to freedom. So see it and know it in a different way, so that that understanding frees and removes a sense of burden, the burden of self, in a way, and the imprisonment of self.
[9:27] So today, that's what I want to go into a little bit, the different approaches. And there are many different approaches. I don't know how many we'll get to. I just want to go into that a little bit. Another sort of first thing, in a way: sometimes we hear these teachings and oftentimes for people it's very puzzling, which is understandable. Sometimes it brings up quite a lot of fear, and that's also understandable. I'm going to talk about that later. One other objection that people often have to this kind of teaching about no-self is that they say, "I need to have a self before I let go of it. I need to have a self before I get rid of it." Very understandable objection, but I think based on a slight misunderstanding. Usually someone who is saying that or feeling that, it's not that they don't have a self. What's actually going on is there's a lot of negative self-view, a lot of self-criticism, a lot of lack of self-worth. The self-view, the self-sense, is actually quite strong. It's very strong and very tight and very bound up with negativity. It's not actually that they don't have a self. To not have a self would be probably some quite extreme form of schizophrenia or something, is my guess. And it might be for that kind of person that they do need to open up that self-view and rebalance the self-view and then let go of self-view. It's a different proposition.
Okay. So how does this happen? How do we move towards this understanding? This is a monumental task in life, to actually move towards a lived and felt understanding of freedom from self, from the imprisonment of self. One of the ways is by cultivating love in our life. Some of you know this mettā practice, loving-kindness practice. Actually developing a heart that moves out in a boundless way to care for other beings, moves out in deep friendliness to embrace all beings. Something happens in the course of that practice that begins to loosen and kind of make malleable the whole structure of self. One begins to feel either a little or a lot less separate from other beings. This is the beginning. And that practice of loving-kindness, which is a whole sort of path in itself in a way, can be cultivated and cultivated very, very deeply as a way into this understanding of anattā, of selflessness.
Another one is just the humble practice we have of watching the breath. You think, "Well, where is that going to lead?" But again, it's one of these practices that gradually, in a very non-linear way, deepens and deepens and deepens in calmness. And what's happening when we're calm is that the hyperactivity of self, the problem of self, is kind of put to one side and just, "Okay, you just go to sleep for a little while." We get familiar with, in a way, descending into a state of being where the self is just not kind of running the show, less and less and less and less. There is an opening there, and we get, as I say, familiar with this, moving in and out of a sense of self and not-self. So this practice of just being with the breath and letting that deepen in calmness, over the years -- it really is a, I think, maybe a lifetime practice -- is leading in the same direction.
So there's the cultivation of love, and taking that on very fully as a practice and as a way of life, beginning to dissolve the boundaries a little bit between self and other. There's the deepening of calmness, again over one's life. Sometimes -- and it's understandable -- I think we can put all our eggs in the basket of meditation practice in the sense we expect meditation, and perhaps even just mindfulness, to kind of do it all. "If I just show up on the cushion, on the chair, on the bench, and I'm just mindful enough, then everything will be seen and everything will be released, bada-bing, bada-boom, it's all done." The Buddha talks a lot about the way we act in our life, how are we actually living and acting. So one of the things I want to go into a little bit later is the quality of, for instance, generosity and service. So this is a movement in our life, and it's a practice, a practice off the cushion, of giving, of opening the heart in giving. Again, it loosens the tightness of the structure of self, the tightness of the self-sense when we practise this generosity or service.
So I want to go into that later this afternoon. And then of course there is what we call the insight practice, and really beginning to question, in the formal meditation practice, as the practice deepens, question this sense of self. I'll go into that this afternoon as well. The Buddha talks a lot about, as I said, not making any metaphysical statements but about practising in a way of seeing experience as not me or not mine, not-self. I'll explain what that means later.
I think that's probably enough talking for now. I'll fill this out later on this afternoon. So if you want to stretch your legs, because we'll do a sitting meditation together which I'll guide through.
