The Self and the World

The theme I'd like to explore a little bit this evening is the self and the world. Oftentimes, in Dharma settings, we've had some exposure to the Dharma teachings and the practices, etc., and we hear about this teaching of no-self or not-self. And it can be very intriguing or perplexing, exciting. And both Christina and John -- it has come up last night and this morning in the instructions, this aspect of not identifying with the body, not identifying with the mind. So it can be quite a charged concept. It can bring up a lot for people.

But I think it's very important for us all to remember that the fundamental Dharma question is not actually about self or no-self or whatever. It's actually about suffering and the freedom from suffering. It's about suffering and freedom from suffering. And we can very easily get pulled into regarding other things -- for instance, self or not-self or no-self or whatever -- as the fundamental question. And for me, I think it's an expression, a sign of the Buddha's compassion that he phrased his teaching, he formulated his teaching that way. He conceived it that way. He framed it that way. It's directed towards the end of suffering -- very, very simple, very, very compassionate. And certainly, as I practise more and more, I realize the skill of that, in all kinds of ways -- all kinds of ways how, actually, what genius it was to do that.

So the fundamental question is about suffering and freedom from suffering. It's not the question, "Is there a self, or is there not a self?" -- which was actually a question the Buddha refused to answer. He just didn't go there: "Is there a self? Does the self exist, or does it not?"^[1]

Also definitely not the case that we're trying to kind of get rid of the self, or explode it, or dissolve it, or merge it into something. And I would add: it's also not the case that we're always looking in terms of not identifying. So again, both Christina and John have spoken about that hugely important part of the practice, and I'll speak about it tonight: not identifying with the body, not identifying with the mind. But it's not even that we're always engaged in doing that, that that's the point either. It's what leads to suffering and what leads to freedom from suffering.

So we can pick up the language, the view, the framework of self, and use that. And we can also pick up and use the language, the framework of not-self, of non-identification. And perhaps, maybe it's true that, in a way, different sets of freedoms or openings or healings come from each. And they're both appropriate, and they're both absolutely indispensable and useful in my journey. So it may very well be that we are having difficulty with something, we're disconnected from something in our life, emotionally or psychologically, whatever it is, and the story, the self-story of the past can be very helpful, can be very helpful, that way of seeing the past. If we're using it skilfully, if we're using that story skilfully, can be extremely helpful in terms of healing, in terms of reconnection, in terms of just understanding ourselves.

[4:24] I have a good friend, and when she was young, her father was very abusive to her, and said, "You're worthless. I wish you'd never been born. You're a parasite," etc. -- endless, endless, very, very harsh, when she was very young. And this self-view -- how could it not kind of crystallize? And how could she not, despite her best efforts not to, see herself that way? So a child, when the child is growing in very early years, the child's sense of self is emerging. It's emerging, extremely open, extremely pliable, almost without rigid defences, and is shaped by what comes to it from the parents, from the education system, from peers, from all kinds of factors. It's very, very malleable, and it is in a state of emerging, and will be shaped and influenced by that.

So some of you may be very aware -- it's at least twenty years old now -- but in certain psychotherapeutic modalities, the work with the inner child can be, for some people, extremely useful, an extremely healing approach: connecting with that part of ourselves that still lives and exists inside of us as a child, and relearning the poem Christina quoted: "to show a thing its loveliness, to reshow a thing its loveliness."^[2] Now, in a way, part of the inner child work is listening to that, and really re-seeing, seeing again, so that we can cherish that child. It's not for everyone, and it doesn't even work for some people. But for the people that connect with it -- extremely powerful way of conceiving of self, and the story, etc. Very, very healing. So that is a helpful self-concept that can dislodge harmful and encrusted self-concepts, can actually dislodge them and replace them with a kind of inner cherishing, a cherishing of oneself. It can do that.

[7:03] We can also think in terms of -- a person may not be skilled yet at relating in terms of self, in terms of setting boundaries with people, or standing in one's truth, or being clear, speaking up for what needs to be spoken up for, or feel very inhibited, constrained, repressed in one's expression of one's uniqueness. All this is very common human stuff on the psychological, on the emotional level. And it might be that, in that, taking up the language of self, the view of self, the story of self, is extremely healing, extremely appropriate, and nothing unspiritual about it.

So we have these two approaches: we have the self -- the approach of the self -- and we have the approach of the not-self. We may ask ourselves, "What's my tendency?" What's my tendency? Is there a pattern in me that I want to just ignore the self, and do away with it, and I'm not really comfortable kind of inhabiting myself and owning myself? Is that my tendency? Is it coming out of fear? And so I gravitate out of that fear towards teachings of no-self and emptiness and all that.

Or is it the other way around, that I'm very comfortable with self, and all that, and these teachings of not-self and disidentification, and letting go of identification -- just, "Oh, no, too scary"? What's my tendency? Perhaps, I would say, maturity in practice -- if we talk about such a thing, maturity -- a mature practitioner is able to actually dip into one and dip into the other, and use one and use the other, in a free way, in a fluid way. What's the best response? What's the most helpful response?

It's a little bit of a red herring, anyway, just at one level, anyway, because one aspect is -- someone who's deeply gone into letting go of identification, actually there's a lot of freedom to express their uniqueness. There's no fear. There's no "What will they think of me?" or "Will it be okay?" There's a freedom to express this or express that, or be silly or be serious, or be firm or be light, or whatever it is. So again, this not-self, this letting go of self does not lead towards the greyness. Rather the opposite: it allows colour. It allows that. We're free. We have nothing to be afraid of.

So in meditation, when we come to meditation -- and as I'm sure, already at this stage in the retreat, you've experienced maybe just a few moments, maybe longer, maybe a few moments, when there's a quietening. There's actually a quietening. The mind gets quiet. The verbal apparatus gets quiet. And the whole story-mind gets quiet. And it's not that we're forcing that to happen or anything. It just gets quiet. And then, when the story goes quiet, who am I then? Who am I when the story is not around?

[10:45] One might also reflect back on one's life or in the course of the retreat or whatever, how the story that we tell ourselves or hear about ourselves is different at different times. If I think back about the story of my life -- well, it's different now, telling the same period X years ago than it was a few years ago. It changes. It changes depending on the mood. Which is the real story? We talk about "my story." Which is the real one?

So again, remembering that first point: the point is suffering and the end of suffering. It's not about dissing story and dissing self and elevating emptiness and all that. It's just, where's the suffering? Where's the freedom from suffering? And just trying to shed a little light on this, and shake it up a little bit, and look differently.

What are the kind of concepts that we have of our self? I was working recently with a practitioner who was not on a retreat, and just meeting with him outside of retreat. And he wanted to explore this area of self. So one of the things he was exploring was the kind of images or self-views he had, the kind of concepts he had of himself. And so, he went away and came back, and he was talking about this, and he said, "Well, one of the things I realized is," and he lived in London; he said, "I realized that I see myself as a kind of -- the way I dress in relationship to other people, I'm like, urban and sophisticated." [laughter] And there was also some judgment of others, which was funny, because I was sitting there, you know, anything but sophisticated. [laughter] "Urban and sophisticated." And then he was about that age -- was about my age as well -- and he was wondering whether he could put "young, urban, sophisticated." [laughter] He wasn't quite sure about that. And then he thought, "Well, the other thing is, I wear organic cotton. So I'm actually ethical, perhaps young, urban, sophisticated." [laughter]

And as he reflected on this, this sort of sense of lightness came into the whole thing. And what had been quite tight and judgmental of others -- actually a bit of lightness, a bit of loosening came in. And that's a lot of what the Dharma is pointing to: lightness, relief, loosening, loosening of the rigidity, the confines. And some sense of liberation came in, to a degree. And then we were talking, how would he dress if it was 1972? You know, there'd be the flairs and the whatever. How would he dress if he'd grown up in a little village in, I don't know, South Yemen or something? Would be completely different.

So in the course of this, there was this beginning to loosen the identification. But it doesn't mean that when we let go of identification that we actually stop doing whatever it is that's identified with. So we can actually not be identified with mindfulness, with generosity, with all the beautiful qualities that we're cultivating. Doesn't mean that we stop cultivating them. One can not be identified and actually keep going. It doesn't mean, in this case, that he would dress any differently. You know, "We're all supposed to dress like monks or nuns" -- it's not saying that. And actually, one of my teachers was a monk and was recalling a story where one monk was a riding a bicycle and got his robe caught in the chain, and it ripped the robe. And about three other monks kind of descended like vultures and begged him for his robe, because they wanted to wear a torn robe so they would look really ascetic. [laughter] So that's completely identification with that.

On retreat, one of the things we keep emphasizing is continuity of mindfulness: keep, you know, from the sitting to the walking, and all day long, the whole day is an arena for mindfulness, is an area for discovering wakefulness and attentiveness. And what happens -- and surely we've touched this, at least, so far, in the days -- this continuity is there, and we may come into the retreat with a view: "I am an angry person. I am a depressed person. I am this." Or "I am joyful. I am a happy person. I am happy-go-lucky." And something about the continuity of mindfulness, because it's continuous, we begin to see the gaps in that view, that I cannot possibly be angry all the time. I just wouldn't have enough energy to be angry all the time. I can't be depressed all the time. I can't be happy all the time. And the continuity of mindfulness allows this puncturing of the view, of the self-view. Am I always like I say I am, like I think I am, like I believe I am?

[16:20] Now, what could happen -- this is a stage -- is we see, "Oh, well, actually, I'm not so bad after all. What I see is I have some good stuff too. And hey, everybody's got a bit of bad and a bit of good." And that's nice, you know. It's definitely a step freer than, "I'm really bad," definitely. "Everybody's got a little bit of everything." It's better, but it's not the kind of radical freedom that the Buddha was pointing to. It was something deeper.

When we were talking about patience the other day, we were talking about how getting too caught up in thoughts of the future and thoughts of the past, how that actually builds up a situation to seem like really huge, or something that we were struggling with and feeling impatient with, and it actually builds it up -- too much thinking of the future, too much thinking of the past. It's the same with self. A lot of the self-sense and the self-concept is dependent on my sense of story in time, past and future, what I was in the past and what I will be in the future, and how it's going to unfold for me, and how it has unfolded for me, and my whole sense of story moving there.

And again, there's no problem in that, but it's to see, the insight is that the time-sense -- getting too involved in past and future -- builds this self-sense. And if, again, with the mindfulness and the attention, I can come and really just snip off the past and snip off the future, and really be attentive in the present moment, it's almost like there's not enough space for the self-sense to build much on. It's just this moment. So who am I in the moment? Who am I when the mindfulness is really keen and really there in the moment, really present? Who am I?

All of that, what we've said so far -- in a way, it's letting go of the habit and the compulsion we have to define our self, and the rigidity of that, or what can be a rigidity of that. Again, sometimes it's great and lovely and appropriate and helpful to do that. But sometimes it's worth checking out what happens when we let go of that. So all of this is less in the service of finding another definition, which the Buddha very much shied away from, and rather in terms of practices and, so to speak, strategies that bring this sense of loosening, of freedom, of 'unbinding,' which is the Buddha's word -- 'unbinding.'

The Buddha goes into this even more carefully. What are the ways, typically, that we conceive of our self? He said, typically, typical to the human consciousness, regards the body -- one way to conceive of the self is regarding the body as the self: "This is me. This is me. This body is me." Or, could regard the self as possessing, as owning the body: "This is my body. This is my hand." Or, could regard the self in the body. Again, that's that kind of sense we have sometimes of, "There's a self somewhere in here," like a little homunculus in the brain or something. Or, can regard the body in the self. What would that mean? It would mean some kind of bigger sense of soul or God or awareness in which the self -- the body -- kind of exists. So body as self, self possessing body, body in the self, or self in the body.

And he goes through with the other -- what's called the 'five aggregates,' which have already been talked about, what comprise the human being. And they were actually just mentioned in terms of the mind. So you have the body and the mind. And the mind involves vedanā, these feelings, unpleasant, pleasant, neutral; perception; mental formations, which are thoughts and moods and what we talked about this morning, mental states, intentions, that whole bag of mental formations; and consciousness. Body, vedanā, perception, mental formations, consciousness: five aggregates of the human being. He goes through the same way of conceiving: either the feelings are in the self, or the self possesses feeling, etc., and all the permutations.^[3]

And so it's a little sort of, you know, a tight, logical framework. But it's actually worth considering, "How am I conceiving in these ways?" And we do. These are actual ways that we conceive of our self: "This is me." Absolutely, we talk that way. And we talk in the sense of owning the body. It's worth questioning some of them. If this was me, then every time I have a haircut, I would be losing something. Or if I really possessed the body, it would completely obey my wishes and my control. It would be completely in my control. The self in the body -- well, where is that? Where is this self in the body? I can't find it. So it's worth just going through this and actually probing a little bit, finding out: how is it? What is the way I conceive of it? And can I uproot it a little bit?

But actually, the Buddha doesn't stop there. He goes on to say something. He says that's the typical way of seeing. That's the typical way of conceiving of oneself. But one who is skilled in the Dharma, one who is skilled in the practice, does not regard the five aggregates any of these ways. And so we might be perplexed, and it's like, "Well, then, how is my self, if it's not any of those? Where is my self? How is it that this self can seem to reap the fruits of my past actions? I behave this way, and I feel the results of that." And it's interesting. Again, the Buddha does not substitute another concept. So sometimes, even this concept, even in the Dharma, of a continuum of moments, of mind and body moments arising, passing, arising, passing, arising, passing, and that's somehow what the self really is: a continuum of arising and passing of mind moments.

I can't find that anywhere in what the Buddha said. And interestingly, in this passage, he says, when someone asks, he says: "No. How you should regard it is, all these, all these five aggregates," as Christina and John were saying, in terms of the mind and the body, "not me, not mine."^[4] So again, it's a strategy. It's a meditation strategy that we can develop, we can practise, and we can actually become very skilled in it, using this way of seeing experience, getting familiar and getting skilled at a way of seeing, for instance, bodily sensation, or unpleasant vedanā, or pleasant vedanā, or a thought, or a mind state. It's just an event happening. It's not me, not mine, not-self.

[24:35] So it's not so much about substituting any conceptual definition of self. It's a strategy of seeing experience in the moment. And as such, it's a strategy that we can pick up, develop, and get skilled at, and put down, and then pick up the other option of self. You could call this "not me, not mine," you could call it a kind of negative concept, because actually, there's still a level of conceptualization going on. There's still the concept of something happening: "This pain is not me. This mental state of dullness or agitation" -- it's still a concept of that happening. We could call it a negative concept.

Okay. So all that so far was probably the most common way the Buddha went about relating to this -- developing, rather than giving definitions and conceptions, actually developing a skilful and simple strategy in the present that led to freedom, that led to ease, peace, joy, liberation. And that's something that we can cultivate. We can develop that, just a skill.

But there's another approach that he used sometimes, and it has to do with seeing the way that we conceive of our self, and the way that we conceive of the world, seeing that they arise together. They arise together. So we could conceive of ourselves at times as a victim. And that conception needs something in the world to be the victimizer: someone or some group or whatever, the victimizer, the oppressor. I'm the victim; I need a victimizer. I could see myself as powerless. And again, I'm powerless in the face of someone or something. Or I could see myself as powerful. I'm powerful over something. Even if I say I'm powerful in the world, it's still in relationship to it. I could be irritated. This is the one that is irritated, and I am irritated by, by something in the world.

Any conception of self, or any sense of self that we have, arises with a corresponding sense of the world -- very typical, again, human consciousness, or any consciousness, way of conceiving. And there's no judgment in this at all. It's just part of how consciousness works. It's seeing, conceiving of the self as a centre of acquisition, a centre of getting. This self can get something from the world. Maybe it will get something that it wants, and maybe it will get something that it doesn't want. And so the world is a field of getting -- something to get, something to avoid.

[28:06] Even more subtly could be to conceive of the self as an experiencer. I am experiencing the world. Or the knower knows the known. Self is the knower. The world is the known. The subject and the object. And they come together. They arise together: subject, object; experiencer, experience; knower, known. At whatever level of subtlety or grossness, they arise together.

If we go back to the story of the self, any story that we have of the self must include, either explicitly or implicitly, it must include a conception within it of how the world or others are. It's part of that story. You can't have a story in isolation from the world. So just to point that out, and to see it. And is there something there that's worth pursuing, that's worth exploring? It's what I want to go into a little bit.

First question, to go back to this fundamental Dharma question. Okay, this is true. Which ways of conceiving the self's relationship to the world are helpful? We can have a, I mean, huge array of ways of conceiving of the self's relationship to the world. We could conceive a very beautiful way: giving to the world, healing the world. In the Jewish tradition, there's this concept*, tikkun olam*. It means 'to heal the world,' to pray for the world, to heal the world. And that's the soul's work, so to say, is the healing of the world -- beautiful concept -- to serve. Could be to take pleasure from the world, getting pleasure. Could conceive of the self as connected to the world, or participating in the world, or a victim, etc. -- countless ways that it can be conceived. But the question is, which ways are helpful, and which are not? And that, again, is the fundamental Dharma question.

We might also ask a sort of almost as fundamental question: which are true? Given that whole range of possibilities, which are the true ones? I think it's appropriate and beautiful, very deeply beautiful to ask, "What can I give to the world? How can I serve the world?" And that's a deeply lovely question to ask of oneself. And it may be that a sense, again, of cherishing oneself, that sense of one's own preciousness, in a way, is actually necessary before one can really give to the world, serve the world, maybe.

Just a slight aside -- maybe not really an aside, but -- talking about concepts and conceiving, it's not that we're trying to get rid of all concepts. It's not that we're trying to get rid of all concepts -- at least, not for 99.9 per cent of the journey. Some concepts that we use, that we pick up, lead to entanglement. They lead to suffering. They lead to dukkha, this unsatisfactoriness. Some concepts that we pick up lead to compassion. They lead to peace. They lead to freedom. So for example, we're suffering. Something's difficult. We have a pain, an emotional pain. And we can very easily get into -- sometimes without even realizing that we're doing it -- we can get into a belief: "I'm the only one who has this. No one else experiences this." Sometimes that thought, that concept is operating almost at a subliminal level, versus reflecting on -- and this can be done very deliberately -- reflecting on, how many people in the world, perhaps even right now, are experiencing something very, very similar? How different can it be? Or, in the course of humanity, have experienced, will experience something very, very similar? I remember doing this as an exercise when I lived in the States, and my teacher suggested it.

What happens, then, when we begin to reflect on the commonality and the shared humanity of the experience? The suffering, the sense of suffering can actually soften, it can die down a little bit. It changes its heaviness because we're not compounding suffering with a sense of isolation, a sense that it's only me. And then there can be a softening, and a sense of release there, or at least of holding. So that concept of commonality leads to freedom. The concept of isolation -- again, which might be going on without even realizing it -- is leading to more suffering, more entanglement.

John spoke the other night of the Four Noble Truths. That's a concept. It's a conceptual framework, but it's a conceptual framework that leads to very deep freedom, extremely deep freedom. It's worth picking up that conceptual framework. It's worth learning to see experience through that, through those lenses, through that conceptual framework. Or this 'not me, not mine' that the Buddha suggested practising, getting familiar with -- that too is, as I said, a kind of negative concept. It's worth developing, because they're concepts that lead to freedom.

So we can sometimes demonize concepts, or we hear, "Get beyond concept, and get beyond thought," and all this. We have to very careful because concepts operate at way deeper than a verbal label, way deeper. And if we just say, "I'm not going to have any concepts," most of the time, what's going to happen is we're going to fall back on our default concepts: "I'm here. You're there. We're listening to a Dharma talk, and it's, you know, such-and-such a time, da-da-da. And we're in Gaia House," etc. So when I say "concept," when we're talking about concepts, it's not so much about intellectual theories and big structures of, "Oh, it's like this," or "It's like that," "No, I think this." It's not so much that. They're quite subtle. They're actually going on all the time. One of the deep thrusts in practice is actually to uncover, what are the concepts? How am I looking at the world? How am I looking at myself? How am I looking at experience? And can I actually work with that, very deliberately, very carefully, very skilfully, very caringly, to discover?

So as I said, there's a vast array, a vast range of possibilities of how the self and its relationship to the world can be conceived. And some may be helpful, and some, much less helpful, some really actually problematic, causing problems. But is there even a limit to that, to the ways that we conceive of self and the world, its relationship to the world, whether it's through a story or even through very subtle concepts? Perhaps any sense of self in relationship to the world as being something really, truly, inherently real -- any concept will invite a sense of threat: this self is threatened by the world, what is not self, what is other, just by virtue of having any concept of that duality.

Even if we're quite quiet in the meditation, etc., or just quiet in our daily life, and just going through our day, what it seems very difficult to get away from, what seems most obvious to us, most intuitively obvious, completely the most obvious thing in the world, is that here is a self, moving in or through the world in time. That seems the most taken-for-granted thing: I am a self, you are a self, moving in or through the world in time. It's basic, basic to our sense of life. But the Dharma goes even deeper. It's like, is that true? And again, the most fundamental question: is there some dukkha, is there some unsatisfactoriness in even conceiving that way, on a subtle level?

So again, and perhaps some of you have tasted this, the mind can get quite quiet sometimes in the little moments or stretches of time in the meditation, or in nature, or whatever. It can seem, sometimes, can occur, that we have this sense of sort of watching the river of experience flow by, and the witness is almost sitting on the banks of the river of experience, and watching it flow by. And so there are sensations, and there are sounds, and there are moods and thoughts, and it's all just part of this river flowing by. It's all just coming and going, flowing by -- very beautiful sense, and just kind of stepping back and having a bit more space, and being less identified, and just sitting on the banks of this river, and watching everything flow by.

Sometimes the sense goes even more than that for some people. The mind really deepens. Can be, or it's even possible to develop this (and I'll actually mention it tomorrow morning), that the world, the world of experience (that's what the 'world' means, is our world of experience), it seems to kind of arise in the space of awareness. Rather than a river flowing by, it's as if everything's just popping up and disappearing in this big space of awareness -- quite calm, and quite spacious, and everything's just appearing and disappearing. Sight comes out of the silence, and sound comes out of the silence, and disappears. And a thought pops up and disappears. And this, and that, and it's all just coming and going. And the awareness kind of embraces it all, contains it all in this, sometimes, what could feel like really, really quite vast spaciousness. And that awareness or witness consciousness or whatever you want to call it -- it can feel like it's just there, and it's kind of untouched, unfazed by what's going on. Similarly to the witness being on the bank, everything's just passing, and the witness is separate and just watching. Or this awareness is just there, and everything is just arising and passing, and that awareness is still and serene and vast and untouched, unfazed.

Now, both of these -- both the sort of riverbank scenario and the big awareness scenario -- beautiful, beautiful, you know, a relief from the kind of hurly-burly of being too entangled and too caught up in the identification. And again, it's not that we want to spend all the time there, or that we even can. But a relief from that -- beautiful spaciousness, beautiful sense of ease, of freedom and peace there. And as such, there are actually experiences, etc., that slowly, over time, a dedicated meditator will actually be very interested in cultivating and developing that, so actually having that sense more and more, hanging out there.

But two things: one thing -- remembering what was mentioned both last night and this morning and again in this talk earlier -- awareness, consciousness, knowing, as the fifth aggregate, is not-self. The first thing is, we can't identify with that witness or that big awareness. Or it's possible to actually not identify. We can practise letting go of that identification. But secondly, and what I really want to get to tonight is, the witness, mindfulness, awareness, consciousness, whatever, always, always, always exists together with factors -- factors of consciousness, factors of mind -- that, as John said this morning, that colour and shape and fabricate our experience. They fabricate what we experience. So there's always something, as John was saying this morning, there's some mood or something that's colouring the experience. And this gets very, very subtle. What's in, what's with the consciousness? Consciousness cannot exist by itself. The experience is always being coloured, shaped, fabricated by whatever else is with consciousness.

So this word saṅkhāra that was mentioned earlier, saṅkhāra has a couple of different meanings. One of them is 'to fabricate, to concoct, to compound.' And as such, our experience, our world of experience is fabricated and compounded by thoughts, by mind states, by reactions, by view -- even the view of a self experiencing this is enough of a view to compound, fabricate -- and by intentions, all kinds of intentions. Some of it's extremely subtle.

One time -- I'll paraphrase the story, because I couldn't find the reference -- one time the Buddha was hanging out with a group of monks. And he said, "Listen, monks. Listen." [laughter] I'm paraphrasing. "If you have a walking stride that was as long as India, from the Himalayas down to Sri Lanka -- you have, you know, a walking stride that was that large, and you walked for a lifetime, a hundred lifetimes, a thousand lifetimes, you would not come to the end of the world." I'm paraphrasing. "You would not come to the end of the world. But, I say, who does not see the end of the world does not know liberation, does not know nibbāna." And then, apparently, he went into his little hut and closed the door, and could be heard softly giggling there. [laughter] And it was left to Ānanda, his cousin and attendant, and the other monks said, "Um, can you explain that?"^[5]

So what's he getting at there? Sometimes, again, when the mind's relatively calm, there's a kind of open awareness. We can actually see, we can see at different levels, we can see this process of fabrication going on. We can see this building up of a thing, an experience, an event, building up of the world. We can actually see that in meditation. And what's even more amazing, we can actually let go of that building. So the word translated from saṅkhāra -- 'concoct, fabricate' -- actually implies, those words in English imply something not quite real. 'Concocted, fabricated,' like 'prefab,' you know, like 'put together.'

For example, we're in our day, in meditation or whatever, and there's a lot of proliferation. There's a lot of story about myself and about something. And it's very complex. There's a lot of building up of both the sense of self -- when that's going on, we've really gotten into a stew about something -- a lot of sense of self. There's also a lot of sense of thing, of situation. Both the world, the thing, and the self are built up. And the encouragement in this practice, when that's the case, and there's all this stress involved with that, to actually let go of the story. And one can see, and you know, you may have tasted it, can see that the story dies down a little bit. The sense of the self gets just a little bit quieter. And also the sense of the thing, the prominence of that thing in consciousness, the sense of the world, the world of experience, gets a little bit quieter.

Now, this is a continuum. This is a continuum. So that's one degree of letting go of self-identification, you could say. We could go back to this business of letting go of identification with the body and the mind and the aggregates, and start practising that way. And again we notice, when we do that, when I don't identify with what's going on in the body, in the mind, sensation, the vedanā, the thought, etc., similarly, the sense of self can die down a little bit. And also the sense of experience correspondingly dies down. The sense of the world dies down as well. One can go deeper and deeper into this. One even lets go of the identification with consciousness, which is a very subtle thing to let go of identification with. And there's really very little happening. And as I said, it's a continuum: less and less happening when there's less and less identification. And we can get to the point where actually nothing happens, nothing arises at all. Less self, less world.

Or we can also approach it via this letting go of this push and pull that we were talking about when we talked about vedanā: struggling with what's unpleasant, pushing it away, and pulling towards us what's pleasant, being constantly engaged in that struggle with the world. Through practice, through becoming aware, I can actually learn to soften that struggle. And again, one notices, through softening that struggle, through relaxing it, there's a letting go. There's a fading, almost, of the sense of self. And there's a fading of the sense of the world -- so much so that even the sense of a present moment can go. Even the sense of time can go -- past, future, present as well. What do we see? What does this mean? It means that the self-sense is, we say, "empty," dependent on me pushing and pulling. The more pushing and pulling, the more struggle I have with experience, the more my sense of self. We can see this in meditation. It does get very subtle. We can see it on just a very everyday level: the more the pushing and pulling, the more the sense of self. The sense of self depends on that pushing and pulling. The sense of the world, the experience of the world also depends on pushing and pulling. So the self is empty, and the world is empty.

[48:59] And what the Buddha was pointing to, we can let go so much of the identification or the pushing and pulling that actually, the whole sense of the world or the self just is not there. And what is there can only be called Unfabricated, Uncompounded, Unborn, Undying, nibbāna.

So this, what I really want to stress is, this is a continuum. This is something that we can all experience. To some degree, we can go on this journey. We can explore. We can play with this and notice this. It's really something that's available. Buddha said:

When we see the origination of the world [in other words, how we build the world, the world of experience, when we see that] as it actually is, with right discernment [with wisdom, with insight], non-existence with reference to the world does not occur to one [doesn't occur to one that this is completely not real, it doesn't exist]. When one sees the cessation of the world [this ending of the world, this dying down of the world, the world of experience] as it actually is, with right discernment, existence with reference to the world doesn't occur to one [can't take it as something really real].^[6]

This isn't nihilistic. It's not something that, as we begin to go on this journey, it's not something -- again, it's not something grey. And it's definitely not something that leads one to this state of existential kind of confusion, like that we're supposed to be just really confused about what's real and what isn't and what's what. It's also not frightening. It's something that, as we move on that journey, something we can all do, there's a reverence. Actually, it opens up a real sense of beauty, of awe, of wonder. There's a real bowing to something that really can't be adequately put into words.

One time, a cosmologist visited the Buddha -- they had these Brahmin cosmologists, people who had theories about how the universe was. And he said to the Buddha, "Does everything exist?"

And the Buddha said, "That's the most common cosmological view."

And he said, "All right. Does everything not exist?"

He said, "Well, that's the second most common cosmological view."

And the Brahmin said, "Is everything one? Is everything a oneness?"

And the Buddha said, "That's the third cosmological view."

"Is everything a plurality, a multiplicity?"

"That's the fourth cosmological view." And the Buddha said, "These are all views. These are all extreme views in one way or another. What I teach is dependent co-origination" -- what we've been talking about, this co-arising of the sense of self and the sense of the world, dependently co-originating. He explained it to this cosmologist. He said that's the Middle Way. It's not an extreme view. It's not a 'compromise middle.' It's something that actually transcends those views. That's the Middle Way Dharma. And it says the cosmologist rejoiced and was delighted in the Buddha's words. He bought it.^[7] [laughter]

What we see is, the self actually isn't inherently any particular way. As I said earlier, we have this tendency to want to define ourselves or others, selves and others. It's not inherently any way. The world as well is not inherently any way. So the world is not fair or unfair. When I grew up, my mother kept telling me the world was unfair. But it's not fair or unfair. It's not benevolent or cruel or even indifferent. The world is not benevolent or cruel or indifferent. The world is not separate from us. It's not one with us. It's actually even beyond interconnectedness, beyond that. And as the Buddha said, you can't even say it exists or it doesn't exist.

So this isn't supposed to be baffling or confusing or frightening or grey or nihilistic or anything like that. It's actually, as I said, something we can begin to move on this journey -- absolutely, we all can. And we can just go deeper and deeper with it. And what its fruit is, is a sense of freedom. To the degree that we go on this journey, there will be that sense of freedom, of opening up, of what the Buddha called 'unbinding.' That's one translation of the word nibbāna: 'unbinding.' We're 'unbound.' The way we conceive and see things, the way we define things, the way we even experience things and ourselves begins to be unbound. So the more and more we see this and sense this and explore this, the more and more freedom there is.