The Self and Its Search for Security

This talk investigates some of the ways the ego mistakenly seeks security in different places, particularly exploring our complex relationship with money, and with self-view, and then also inquiring into the very structure of that self.

I actually just wanted to say how much I am appreciating everything that everyone is bringing to the practice. This feels like a lot of sincerity, and dedication, and honesty, and integrity, and I just am feeling touched by that.

The theme I'd like to explore tonight is the self and its search for security. One of the most seemingly obvious and basic facts of existence is the sense of self, that we feel that "Here I am," somehow. "I am here, and others are there. I am here" -- the sense of self. And with that sense of self, as I just said, there comes the sense of other. And this sense of self feels itself to experience pleasure and pain, and lovely things and difficult things. And feels, in a way, vulnerable to all of that, and all the movement in all of that, the unknown in all of that, the shifting in all of that -- what is pleasurable may become painful; tomorrow may be painful. And at the end of it all seems death. When the self seems real and solid, all that seems real and solid. Death seems real and solid. And so the self feels vulnerable, and its -- almost, you could say -- its nature almost is a tendency to self-preoccupation in the field of all that.

We talked yesterday about the default kind of sense of self -- not that it's always that way, but the default sense is a kind of centre of acquisition within all this pleasure and pain and "what can I get?" And so, quite understandably and normally, this self looks for a sense of security. It looks, at a very deep level, looks for a sense of security. And this has enormous significances for us as human beings, and for us as practitioners. This is what I want to explore.

Some of you, I don't know, you may be familiar with the writings of David Loy. He's written some quite interesting books recently. He's a professor of something or other, and a Zen teacher. And he looks at it a certain way, which is that, actually, the self has no real existence, and we sort of know that, and so we feel kind of groundless. We feel very unsure in ourselves, because it's actually something that doesn't really exist. This groundlessness makes us feel uncomfortable, and out of that discomfort, we seek a kind of ground, and seek to kind of substantialize the self. And he points to a few ways that we do that. He talks about money, fame, romantic love, and power as sort of four main ways that the modern self looks to substantialize itself.

I'm not sure that I totally agree with that way round of seeing it, but that's fine; it doesn't matter too much. For me, actually, the sense of self is part of what the Buddha would call the fundamental delusion. We actually do have a solid sense of self, and from that taking ourselves to be real, then, as I was saying last night at one point, we see the world from that, and we act and we choose in the world from that place of this [self] seeming real. And that has certain consequences.

But anyway, these four things that he points to are quite interesting for us as modern human beings. We use these four -- among other things -- we use these four to try and get a sense of security. None of them are bad in themselves. There's nothing wrong with money. There's nothing wrong with fame or power, even, or certainly not romantic love. Nothing wrong with them in themselves. It's just that somehow, the self, in its delusion, looks at them in a certain way, and uses them in an unskilful way.

I don't have time to go into all of them, and I just want to talk about one. And actually, that one is money. Now, of course, this relates very much to parts of what I was talking about yesterday with generosity. And partly the reason I'm choosing that is because we talk about it very little in Dharma circles. But also, just personally, I've become very interested in money in the last few years -- just for myself, but also in terms of the 'credit crunch' and all that, and what's kind of going on in this collective, I don't know, insanity? Concern, collective concern.

So the way we are with money, and what's that got to do with the self and its search for security? And this, to me, this doesn't apply just to a certain segment -- like, I may feel myself to be rich, I may be perceived by others to be rich, I may feel myself to be poor, or be perceived by others to be poor; in a way, it covers all of that. And money is very interesting for almost everyone, I would say. It's something that's very challenging -- even if it doesn't seem so obviously, at an obvious level. [6:43] As part of our modern human experience, it's one of the challenges. It's a real challenging and demanding aspect of our experience. And in a way, our relationship to money, it's part of what sets our course as a human being. It's part of what sets our course. How we are with money, at a certain level, says a lot. It indicates a lot and it creates a lot, in terms of our course.

Money -- and again, whether we think it's a big deal or not, it has become something that hooks and seduces us very easily. And to me, it's a fascinating area. It's an area that can be one where we are hooked and seduced, and kind of wrestling with difficulties and problems in relationship to it -- not a free relationship. But it can also become an area that's actually a tool and an ally in our growth, in our transformation, in our movement towards freedom, that very thing itself.

So I've read a beautiful book recently called The Soul Of Money by Lynne Twist. And I'll actually come back to her, but just to read a quote from that, she says:

Money travels everywhere, crosses all boundaries, languages, and cultures. [I actually slightly rewrote her, so if she listens to this and gets offended, but ...] Money, like water, ripples at some level through every life and place. It can carry our love or our fear. It can flood some of us such that we drown [in it, or are slowly, almost imperceptibly, poisoned by its accumulation or hoarding]. It can nourish and water the principles of freedom, community, and sharing. Money can be used to affirm life or it can be used to demean, diminish, [or] destroy it.^[1]

And when we think about our relationship with money, it's actually possible that we get into different kinds of problems with money. And again, we may be aware of this, and we may be less aware of it. So I'm not just talking at a crass level -- someone rolls up in their Rolls-Royce with a cigar, etc. I'm not just talking about that, the kind of money as a tool to impress others.

So at a crass level, impressing other people, the prestige of being rich, etc., or seeming to be rich. That's one very crass level. But it gets a lot subtler than that. It's interesting: we work, and we work for money, and how easily money becomes a measure of respect. I put my effort into something. I put my time, my energy into something, and I get given a certain amount. And in a way, that gets taken as a measure of what my self is worth, and my dedication is worth, my skills are worth, my effort is worth. And that's subtler, because we react to that at a different level. And I'm not saying it's bad to want to be respected, but it's just that's one of the ways that money a little more subtly gets problematic. It's not that we want a lot of money, it's just that we want to feel like we're being respected for what we put forth in the world, or respected appropriately for what we feel it's worth.

Money can be tied up with security and the future, and "What will happen to me in the future? And how will I be? And will I be okay?", and of course a safety cushion for that. And if one is a parent -- someone, a number of people have said to me, "You know, I feel bad if I can't put my son through college. I feel like I'm not fully a man." So it gets very loaded with all kinds of other burdens, in a way. And people have said to me, as well, "It's a survival fear." I think I touched on this last night. "My relationship with money, I have fear around that, and it has to do with my very survival as a human being."

And as well I've heard -- and unfortunately, often from people who've done a lot of practice -- "Now I'm practising taking care of myself. And so I have a different relationship to money and the accumulation of money." Or perhaps, "I've done renunciation. I went to India in the seventies, and I did a retreat there!" [laughter] "And now I'm into -- worldly is the same as spiritual." [laughter] And more. I'm just outlining some. Most of us will have something that's not quite fully open and conscious and free in relationship to money. [12:31] So you might be hearing this and think, "Well, I don't have any anyway, so it doesn't really relate to me." Yes, it does. [laughter] Or you might think, "I don't really have a problem with money. I'm pretty okay with it." I think there's more to it than that. So again, like yesterday, I don't want to be in a position of preaching. I don't actually feel in a position of preaching. I would rather offer something for all of us, for our reflection.

I read a sociological study. It said 1961 was the last year in America and England that having more stuff corresponded with being more happy. 1961. And actually, since then, the economic growth curve has been completely mirrored and shadowed by the rise in depression, etc., and indicators of a lack of well-being. The word 'wealthy' comes from the Old English word 'weal,' and that means 'well-being.' It's an Old English word for 'well-being.' And yet, somehow, they've sort of parted ways, but in the mind, it hasn't. And money has sometimes come to mean something in itself, almost more than anything else.

So it was interesting -- I can't remember when it came out. I think it was either 2007 or 2008. Perhaps you remember: the Stern report. Now, I don't know, I could be wrong here, but it seemed to me that the British government's relationship with climate change was kind of, "Don't want to deal with it as an issue." The Stern report came out basically saying that if we don't get it together with climate change, it will cost the British economy -- and then there was some astronomical figure. And then suddenly, there was this U-turn. That's how -- I don't know -- that's how it seemed to me, that what ended up being more important than anything else, even than the very planet that gives us oxygen, that gives us food, was actually the cost to the economy, and what has that come to mean.

Again, I don't want to bombard you with figures and things, but $265 billion was spent on preparing for the Y2K bug. Do you even remember this? [laughter] Do you remember all the fuss? Some of you are too young maybe. I don't know. $265 billion was spent on the Y2K bug, but we didn't even know, apparently, we didn't even know if it was going to happen. It was just, "We better really make sure that it doesn't happen."

We know about climate change. We know about basically the environmental devastation that's already begun, already taking place. And the UN Environmental Programme annual budget for 2008: 190 million, compared to 265 billion. Last James Bond movie? 205 million.

Michael: Oh, it was so good! [laughter]

Rob: I heard it was complete crap! I'll talk to you later, Michael! [laughter]

I'm partly saying these figures to kind of -- it's like, this is the climate, the environment that we are in the middle of. It's almost like the air we breathe in terms of assumptions and of what's important because of what gets invested in, etc. And as such, we're absorbing that message and that attitude all the time. I think it's important to really realize that and kind of wake up to something.

So early 2008, £7.1 billion pledged to the poor worldwide because of, if you remember, the rising food prices. And there was an increase in world hunger. And about 1 billion people in the world do not have enough to eat to sustain basic health -- basic sort of, you know, that they have enough health in the body. That's one in six people. So 7.1 billion pledged at the beginning of the year. By the end of the year, only 580 million was dispersed, had been dispersed. The UN, anyway, had estimated that it would cost about between 15 and 28 billion. So even then, the pledges were way short.

When the financial crisis came around, more than, in excess of £1,160 billion was dispersed in a few weeks. The UN Secretary said he found it embarrassing that the developed world worries about recession while many in the world don't even have enough to eat. So what's going on here that makes one thing more important than another? And it's in all the headlines, and it takes up -- and people buy in, we buy into it.

This quote I gave before from Lynne Twist, she wrote this book called The Soul Of Money. I found it a beautiful book. She's a long- term, I think for thirty-five years, more, forty years, she's been an international fundraiser for different organizations, and primarily something called the Hunger Project, but lots of other projects too. And she, in her work, meets the poorest poor people all over the world, both in developed countries and in developing countries. And also the richest of the rich, asking them for money. [18:49] She kind of looks at the whole relationship with money in this book, and she pinpoints what she calls three myths in relationship to money. And one is the myth of scarcity, what she calls the myth of scarcity: the feeling, the assumption, almost unconscious, that there isn't enough. And it doesn't just go for money.

But one of the things she points to is that in her travels -- all these totally different strata of different societies -- she says that she sees it also in individuals with excess amounts of money, and actually, sometimes vastly excess amounts of money, and in most cultures. She says it's a feeling that doesn't necessarily seem to be rooted in fact.

I was also, I was at another -- I don't think I'll have time tonight, but I wanted to tell you about this whole other day-long thing that I did, and we played this big game of Monopoly with different rules. It was fascinating. But anyway, afterwards, the person who was leading it was telling me, he also does work with kind of CEOs of big organizations, and rich people, and he was reflecting on the fact that the people who will just give a thousand dollars to help something are not necessarily richer than the people who don't give a thousand dollars. There's something interesting going on. It's more in the mind. And then reflecting, what actual difference does it make if a thousand dollars goes from the bank account? Now, for some people in here, even, I know, it would make a huge difference. But for a lot of people, it doesn't actually make that much difference. The figures go down, but it's actually money that's not really doing anything. What actual difference would it make? And yet, and yet we don't. Often, we don't.

So money and fear are very closely related. And I touched on this again last night, but there's something more about this. We make choices in life. We make a lot of choices every day. And a lot of the choices, we're not totally aware where they're coming from. And a lot of them, unfortunately, are coming from a level of fear that we're not even conscious of as fear. And particularly around money. We're not even conscious of a fear. That might be okay, but the problem is, it has consequences. When I choose out of fear, and I choose out of fear, and I keep choosing out of fear, I'm reinforcing fear, and I'm strangling other possibilities in my being -- also in life, but in my being primarily. Because it's kind of unconscious and it doesn't seem a big deal and everyone else is doing it, I don't notice the consequences. They don't register, the consequences of repeatedly making those kind of choices from that level.

I don't know if you saw Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth. He was talking about, if you -- I don't know why anyone would do this, but -- if you put a frog in a glass of boiling water, it will jump straight out. If you put a frog in a glass of cold water and heat it up slowly, it will just sit there until it dies or it's rescued. It's a similar thing with a lot of the choices we make in life. Sometimes we don't even realize we're making choices*,* and then at a whole other level, we don't even realize where they're coming from, what level of the being and what direction of intention they're coming from. And in a way -- it goes back to the opening talk -- so much of our life depends on that, and we barely see it.

So is it possible to move, is it possible to move from an outlook of scarcity? And actually to investigate this: do I even have that? Because it might not ring a bell. But we need to look at this, quite deeply. Can I move from an outlook of scarcity to an outlook of sufficiency? Can I encourage a sense of sufficiency? And that means reframing -- reframing my view of things with a recognition for, an appreciation of, what we already have. Recognizing, appreciating what we already have. And we're doing that also in the meditation too. I'm talking about that a little bit through the days.

So that, in my life, you know, at one level, we can speak -- there's a flow of resources, material resources, and different kinds of resources, and money. And instead of that being something I'm trying to kind of hold and build and stagnate, and maybe it's eluding me, or I perceive it as diminishing, and I don't want it to diminish, it's rather that I can perceive that, perhaps, I can shift that to perceiving a flow of nourishment. Rather than a flow of something I'm trying to grip on to and hold on to, a flow of nourishment moving through the life. I don't know -- it might sound not that different, but it's a whole other way of seeing things. It's a whole other shift in the view. [24:02]

And from that perspective, if that's possible, then in a way we are, so to speak, privileged trustees for right now, of these material resources, whatever they are, including money. To quote Lynne Twist, "stewards ... rather than gatherers." Stewards of this, and able to choose what we use it for. And then the relationship with money becomes more an expression of possibility rather than an expression of fear.

So there's, again, talking about a sense of abundance coming from affirming that we have enough, that there is enough. We have enough. And beginning to see that, and beginning to see it on lots of different levels in our lives. So one can see it at a very basic, elemental level: we are supported by the air we breathe, supported by water, supported by food and light. And to actually acknowledge that and tune in sometimes, as a meditation, tune into the way we're being nourished by that. Now, that may sound New Agey and hippie or, I don't know, but like I said yesterday, the other way of seeing -- "Got to grab, got to hold. There isn't enough. Wait, accumulate. What will happen?" -- that's a madness, a folly, from the perspective of awakening. It's crazy.

So this author, Lynne Twist, this fundraiser Lynne Twist, early in -- I think it was the late seventies, early in her work -- she often in the same day would move between seeing some extremely wealthy CEO, etc., and then going to meet with very poor people. And something happened in New York, and she went, made this movement. And in the afternoon, she went to speak to a group of people in Harlem in New York, in a church basement. If you don't know, it's a very poor area in New York. It's predominantly African American. And in the seventies, I imagine it was poorer than it is even now.

And she was raising money for certain places in Africa that were suffering with hunger. And she said she was sitting in this church basement, and obviously poor people in front of her, relatively speaking, and even the church itself was -- they were in the basement, and it was raining outside, and water was coming in through different places in the ceiling. There were buckets around, trying to collect the water. And so she spoke about it, and then she sort of made this request for money, and she was really unsure whether it was the right thing to do. And she felt a little bit uncomfortable; she was quite a novice back then. And she put it out, and there was just silence.

And then one woman called Gertrude, it turns out, got up. I just found this so beautiful, I just want to read it to you -- and Gertrude got up and she said, she said something like, "I like you and I like what you're saying." And then she said:

To me, money is a lot like water. For some folks, it rushes through their life like a raging river. Money comes through my life like a little trickle. But I want to pass it on in a way that does the most good for the most folks. I see that as my right and my responsibility. It's also my joy.... I ain't got no checkbook and I ain't got no credit cards.... I have fifty dollars in my purse that I earned from doing a white woman's wash and I want to give it to you.

And then she said, from that, then people just started streaming up and giving. Very beautiful. The piece I also want to extract is this idea of 'flow' that Gertrude spoke about. It's a flow. Money is a flow. And what sometimes happens in our relationship with money is that we think it shouldn't flow somehow. Money flows in and out, and it should do that. That's what it's for, in a way. And it's, we could say, it's an honour, it's a beautiful thing, it's a privilege to be able to actually direct that flow towards what one most deeply cares about, towards one's highest commitments. That's something beautiful. That's a whole other relationship with money.

That's what money is for. And it doesn't mean neglecting those that are dependent on us, or oneself. But that actually the whole way we're seeing money is different. And she said in her work over the years, that shift, she sees it, and just as much as she sees the myth of scarcity, she sees that shift and that possibility even in the poorest people in the world.

And talking -- interesting; in this book, she talks about her own kind of journey with money and working with others. And I've also seen for myself: it's almost like something that most of us tend to see as a kind of -- because everyone's agreeing on it, it's a tool for self-concern. It's a tool that's seen in terms of accumulating and depleting, and kind of the self-concern wants to watch that. And it can shift from that, being seen as an instrument of expressing self-concern, or concern for just a small group of people around us -- our family or whatever it is -- to something that expresses not just that, but a devotion to all life. It's moved. The very same thing, the very same tool or instrument has moved from this to something much wider, much different, and an instrument then that expresses love, that expresses a deep affirmation of life and the dignity of all beings. And in a way, it's the instrument through which and by which we share with life, with others, with the world, our deepest aspirations, our deepest dreams -- which turn out not just to be about me, if we really go deep in this question that I introduced in the opening talk. Turns out not just to be about me.

And so, in her words, when that same instrument is aligned with her soul, when it's aligned with soul -- we could speak a different language -- when it's aligned with soul, that realignment actually brings a sense of prosperity and joy and sufficiency, and not related to any quantity, of amount that I have or money in the bank or whatever. And in this way, used that way, expressed that way, directed that way, money, instead of fragmenting and causing divisions between self and other, and divisions in society and divisions globally, it becomes something that connects, has the capacity to connect. Whole different relationship.

So this is a practice. This is a shift in view that I'm describing. But in a way, to say something I've already said in different words, practice is practising shifts in view. Practice is practising shifts in view. Changing the view, not just once, but again, because it will keep going back to the default. It will keep going back to the old ways of seeing. And so we change it, and we change it and we change it, until that freer view, the new view, the deeper view, the more compassionate view, is consolidated, is deepened and set in place. And then, in turn, that can lead to perhaps an even deeper one.

So it's a practice. This is a practice I'm talking about. I don't think that's easy. I definitely know it's possible, but I don't think it's easy. But as all things, everything good in practice feeds everything else good in practice. So that kind of shift in attitude with something like money is helped by loving-kindness. It's helped by depth of meditation. It's helped by joy. It's helped by insight. And it also helps those things. Again, the causality feeds, goes both ways.

So getting back to security in a more general sense, have you noticed that oftentimes what we look to for security, what we build up to try for security, oftentimes -- or perhaps even always -- becomes a source of worry instead? What we try and build up as security actually becomes a source of worry instead. And in addition to that, if there's no wisdom, or if there's not enough wisdom in the search for security, then we end up with things like the financial crisis and we end up with things like climate change that may spiral out of our control.

So is there such a thing as a wise search for security, a wise search for groundedness in life? Oftentimes in the Dharma, we hear that there isn't. For me, the Buddha was very clear that there is a wise search for security. Sometimes we hear in the Dharma, "Nothing's in your control. It's all out of control. So just kind of go with the flow." I mean, the Buddha didn't say that. It also doesn't seem to me to be true that nothing is in my control. At the moment, I'm thinking quite carefully about which words to choose, etc. Some level of the being -- I can move my arm, etc. Something might happen that stops me being able to move my arm, and eventually I won't be able to move my arm. But basically, there's a degree of control, and to say that I don't have any is not realistic. And I can use that control, and inner control, as well, for good, and to perhaps cultivate something that's helpful. So going with the flow is a little bit not really full as a spiritual ideal. I saw a poster. It said, "Only dead fish go with the flow." [laughter] I thought it was quite good.

So what is it to search for security? What's a skilful, a wise search for security? Well, it depends on a couple of things. In what? In what am I looking for security? Where am I searching for it? And the place the Buddha said it's good to search for security is in the qualities of heart. So loving-kindness, compassion, generosity, equanimity, mindfulness, interest, depth of meditation, etc. All these lists, it's not that they remain constant as states of mind; it's more that they become habits of being that become more and more accessible, and we take them with us, whatever happens and wherever we go. There could be a complete financial collapse. There could be this, there could be that. If I have developed those as streams of the being, as habitual streams of the being, those are my inner resources. And that's a security for me. And it's not that it doesn't have waves in it, but that will become more and more a sense of something I can depend on inside. I can depend on a certain amount of equanimity, etc., a certain amount of kindness. [36:17]

But also, the question in terms of a wise search for security is, where is that whole search coming from? Because maybe, maybe the self can't actually be made secure, ultimately speaking. So oftentimes we are searching for security -- as I said right at the beginning -- from a sense of self, from the self-view. But there's a problem here, because self, for instance, goes with other. As I said at the beginning, self and other go as a duality, a pairing. And so, other, very often the search, it becomes, "What will they think of me?" And then we invest that, because it goes with self, 'self' and 'other' and 'what will they think of me' goes together, then we invest that with our search, and we want others to think a certain way of us, and we seek for security in that. And that's where the fame, money, power, etc., come in. Or we search for security kind of in the self-view. It's a strange thing, with human beings, we're kind of addicted -- or delusion, you could say, is addicted to defining the self somehow: "I am like this. I am that," and maybe we want to present it to others, but also to ourself.

Someone a few weeks ago in an interview said -- she realized, she said, "I can never be, I realize I can never be the idea or the fantasy that I have of myself. Whether that is a good fantasy or a bad fantasy, I can never be that. It's impossible." It's quite insightful. That's impossible. Or sometimes we look for, "What's the real self? Where's the real self? Who's the real me?" And we look at ourselves in different situations, and we see, "Well, I keep changing, and maybe that's dishonest. Maybe I'm -- you know, what's the real me in there?" But how I am in a situation is a dependent arising. So I don't know if you notice this. I notice for myself, I have different humour with different friends. And so with some friends I have a sort of very silly humour. With others, I have a very sort of, I don't know, fast, witty thing. With others, it's a kind of affectionate teasing. With others, it's just a kind of bizarre, zany, I don't know.

Also, teaching style is very interesting. It's very interesting giving talks, because it looks like I'm the one giving the talk. But actually we're all giving the talk. What I say, you know -- I have some lines here, and just, I mean, a few words. What I say depends on what you're giving me, or what I'm perceiving you're giving me. In a way, it's happening together. So the style of the teaching is a dependent arising.

You know, I think I told you I lived in America for fifteen years. Most of that time, I was a jazz musician. And I talked very differently then. [laughter] There's a whole sub-culture kind of language, that it just doesn't come out of my mouth now in these conditions. And probably if I was back in that environment, it would start. Now, was it that I was afraid of being perceived as some kind of English twit or something over there? No. Is it that I'm repressing something else here out of fear? No. It's a dependent arising. It just comes out of the conditions.

So there's no problem in that. And we say, "I'm looking for something authentic." Authentic is an interesting word. But it's rather like, rather than looking for the authentic self, it's rather, is what's happening now coming out of fear or not? That's the more important question. And am I changing, adapting myself because I'm afraid or I'm repressing something out of fear?

So I said the other day, really, really important practice, to see what gets expressed, what action arises, or non-action or speech, or how I appear, depends on the web of conditions that are there. And to see this is a practice. We need to do it over and over and over. Because, like I said the other day, I'm aware of, saying it, doesn't sound like, "Whoopee!" But right there, seeing that over and over is tremendous freedom. It's a shift in perspective. And again, we're practising shifts in view.

So have you noticed in a relationship dynamic -- it could be with a partner, or an ex-partner, if you remember back, or a friend, or an authority figure, or a teacher, or a therapist -- what comes out depends on what you feel like you're getting from them, what's being put on you? You might feel that you're being put under pressure. You might feel like you're being scrutinized. You might feel like you're being put in a box. You might feel like there are demands being put on you. [41:23] When there's a demand, pressure, a certain situation, it builds a kind of intensity and maybe a fear. And then something comes out dependent on that. And then we say, "I looked at myself in relationship, and I've got this problem," or "I'm like this. I'm stuck with this." And actually, it's a dependent arising.

So whatever we are in life, whatever we have come to be, is also a dependent arising. There's no such thing as the 'self-made' man or woman. It's dependent. You know, materialistically, 'self-made,' it depends on having a certain amount of capital, for instance, or property, that then rises in value, at the times when there was interest and all that stuff. Teacher/student -- it's just an agreement. We agree to enter into a certain relationship. So there's nothing inherently here that's teacher, and inherently there that's student. In this case, you know, me speak, and you, you shush. Me Tarzan, you ... [laughter] Being somebody, it takes conditions. It takes conditions. Without that? It's dependent on conditions.

On retreat, the beautiful thing about developing mindfulness and keeping that sort of continuity of mindfulness going is that what happens -- and I'm sure you've noticed this already at times -- the story subsides. Maybe just a little bit, maybe a lot -- at times. And with the story subsiding, the sense of self also quietens, softens, opens out, gets lighter. And we begin, through that, through going in and out of that, to question our belief in the story, and the story of our self and who I am.

So a retreatant a while ago had a dream, a while before she told me. And I was struck by it, and I asked her if I could use it, and she wrote it down both for herself and for me to use. And this is the dream. She said:

I was involved in some way with a court case and was being required to account for how I used my time. I started to give an account of my current life at great length: the things I do, the people I know and spend time with, hobbies, interests, family commitments, jobs, activities, etc. It went on and on, giving an enormous amount of detail. As I recall the dream now, I'm aware that there was an underlying sense of wanting to convince others. I was speaking with a fair amount of conviction and certainty.

Finally, I stopped and sat down, aware suddenly of a deep weariness. Then I heard myself say, "But none of this is true." There was a stunning silence. Everything disappeared. My whole life vanished in one instant. It's like I sat in the shock waves of that statement. The space around me was white and empty, and full of something I still can't quite articulate. The intensity of the experience woke me up, much as you'd wake from a bad dream because you can't tolerate the fear any more. Only I wasn't afraid. Just profoundly shaken, disturbed deeply on every level. I can still feel the reverberations of it in my body.

That was actually weeks or even months later, I think. The story is a way we solidify the self in time, in the past. We solidify the self in time, in the past, through the story. And the self will, in its way that it is, it will tend to want to see in terms of the story. So the story feeds the self, and the self feeds the story. Again, both ways.

Security, is a way that the self can tend to see the future. So we see the past in terms of story; we see the future in terms of security (or not). And in so doing, it solidifies itself. It also, unfortunately, solidifies a lot of other stuff. It solidifies a sense of future, by thinking about the future. But even having the notion of security brings with it the notion of insecurity. And the notions of future and security and insecurity bring with them fear. So it's almost like it's a game you can't win. The very notions themselves bring with them what will undermine them.

So when we practise mindfulness, and we talk a lot about 'being in the now,' one of the things that does is it just sort of chops off the past and the future, and the way that the self gets built up, so that to a degree, there's less self being built up, because it's not being built up so much in time. But actually, there's still a level of self being built up, and I'll get to this. But what we see, with practice and with inquiry into all this, is that the sense of self is, again, it's a dependent arising. The very sense of self is a dependent arising. So you may have noticed, and I think some people have already noticed even on this retreat, just a few days, the more reactivity there is, the more something is a problem or I'm tussling with something, or something is a big deal, the more reactivity, the more the sense of self, the more built up it is, the more solid it is, the more real, the more bloated.

Partly, doing these practices with the big awareness, what we're really practising -- and we're practising a lot of things through that expansive awareness; one of the things we're practising is non-reactivity. So when I say in the guided meditations, "Let it go because everything is impermanent, or it all belongs to the space, or it's just an impression in awareness," or whatever, that's doing a lot of things. But partly what it's doing is it's encouraging a non-reactivity through letting go. And then, as one will see if one pursues that kind of practice, and some people are discovering already, with the lessening of reactivity, there's a lessening in the sense of self -- sometimes quite strikingly and extraordinarily. Much less self, because there's much less reactivity.

And so it's possible in the beauty of the meditative life, and in the movement of that, that we experience, at times, the personality going quiet, the personality just fading. It's just not that present in our experience. We can't really find any, much personality going on. And we move in meditation, in dedication to meditation. One moves many times. And if we see this enough, the question is, "What's real here? What's the real me? Am I vast awareness? Am I just a kind of, you know, absence of personality? Am I personality? Am I a lot of personality? Am I a little? What's real?" Personality is a dependent arising, and it's built. It's built. It's fabricated.

Let's take this apart even more. Let's unpack it, untangle it a bit more. The self-view gets built -- partly, at a certain level; at a certain level, I'm talking about; the personality level, really -- the self-view gets built on selected memories. In countless possible memories in my life, certain ones are selected out of many, many more that are overlooked or forgotten. Why is it that some are remembered? And what happens with that? So why is it? Well, partly we remember some dependent on the mood in the present. If I feel lonely right now -- for instance, as an example -- if I feel lonely, I tend to look at the past and go, "Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah," and again, dot-to-dot: "I'm lonely. I've always been lonely. I will always be alone." It gets stitched together. Dependent on the mood in the present, we will find different things in the past.

But another piece here. So there's the mood in the present; there's also the intensity of the experience that we might be remembering. Unfortunately, difficult emotions, for most people, are their most intense experiences. That's partly what we're doing in meditation is kind of reversing that, partly. An intense experience makes more of an impression in consciousness. It makes more of a dent there, and so will tend to get remembered. But also, we remember stuff kind of influenced culturally, as to what is significant. So again, it's like, with romantic love, taking the idea of loneliness, and that gets such hype, and it's like you've got -- you see the adverts and the Hollywood films and da-da-da, and the whole hype. And if one isn't in a relationship, then one perceives it a certain way. What gets given significance to remember, and what gets given significance in the present moment, can sometimes just be culturally determined.

And then what happens? These factors -- the mood in the present, the intensity of the experience in the past, cultural factors of what's significant or not significant, and other factors -- all get shoved together. A self-view arises dependent on that, and then the self-view that's formed this way becomes the lens, the very lens through which we look at and interpret and feel present-moment experience. Do you see that?

So I'm looking at current experience that way. I'm feeling it that way. I'm interpreting it that way. I'm singling things out that way. If I feel I'm a loser, then the mind almost goes, "Where are the things that show I'm a loser? Oh yeah, I didn't do that. Oh yeah, I failed at that. Oh yeah." [52:45] It's singling out events dependent on the self-view because those are the goggles we have on. It's giving significance, again, to certain events, certain impressions in awareness, because that self-view is the very lens. And again, it's remembering something, some things over others. All that reinforces the self-view. Do you see? It's reinforcing the self-view and the whole process. And so it snowballs. And again, that's what we call saṃsāra, at a fairly gross level even.

Now, actually, in terms of self-view, we are always seeing the self and the world and the experience somehow. There's always a self-view there of some kind or another. And this isn't something we tend to be conscious of, or we tend to give much attention to. Sometimes, a lot of meditators think, "Oh, there was no self there" or something. But actually, even in the -- how to say? -- even when we feel like we're just being, there's still a self-view there. There's a view of self. It might be more quiet, more subtle, less problematic. There's still a view of self, of world, of time.

Are we conscious of how we are seeing the self at any time, what the self-view is? Or is that kind of underneath the radar? Because oftentimes, it is underneath the radar. We're not actually conscious of what we're bringing into the moment in terms of the self-view and the way we're viewing things. But everything hinges on that. Everything hinges on that, how we are seeing things. And that's why I go back to this: insight meditation is learning to see things differently in a way that brings freedom, and learning to change the view, and consolidate that view, and practise that view.

But if I'm always seeing the self in a certain way, maybe it's good to know which ways of seeing the self lead to freedom, or lead in the direction of freedom, and which don't. So that becomes quite an important question. And it may be, for instance, that seeing myself in some traditions -- we can't really do it in the West because of this inner critic that I talked about the other night, but seeing oneself as a warrior. I mean a warrior, not a worrier. [laughter] Unfortunately, too many people ...! Seeing oneself as a warrior, spiritually, seeing oneself as a hero, a heroine, can actually be very helpful, if it doesn't feed into the inner critic. It's a skilful self-view. Can be an immensely skilful self-view, if one feels that it's helpful. Or seeing oneself as a bodhisattva.

And at the same time, any self-view, any self-view to any degree, will also be a prison, and is also something that's fabricated, is not ultimately true. So Dharmically speaking, in terms of the path, it's not that we're trying to get rid of the self. That's not the project as far as Buddhadharma is concerned. We're not trying to get rid of the self. What we want, what we're moving towards, is an understanding, deeper and deeper, that the self, its nature, we say, is empty. It's fabricated. It's something that's built in the same way that I described the personality as built. It's a fabrication. It's a dependent arising.

So it's empty, but that still means that at times it's totally appropriate to see in terms of the self, to talk in terms of the self, to communicate in terms of the self. At times, it's the most helpful mode, way of communicating and relating to another. At other times, all it's doing is bringing suffering, to some degree or another. We see that it's empty; it becomes something that we can pick up and put down.

It's okay, but it's kind of easy to say, it's easy -- we hear talks and we read books, and it sounds nice, and it's easy to say, "Ah, the self is the problem. There is no self. It's just an illusion," etc., or something like that. But the habit of feeling the self and conceiving it to be real, feeling it as real, intuitively sensing it to be something real is so deeply ingrained, so deeply wrapped up in consciousness, that we can't just kind of brush it off with, "Oh yeah, it's an illusion, or it doesn't really exist." It's too facile. It's too easy. So it's totally wrapped up in the very fabric of the way we feel about life at a very deep level. And that needs practice. Practise -- again, I'll repeat -- breaking that view. So we deliberately break views in practice, and we shift into more open views, deliberately.

Something just came up in a group today. Sometimes we think of insight practice as sort of just being mindful and waiting, and an insight will visit us, and that's great. I'm not saying that doesn't exist. But in addition, there's a mode where one actually is deliberately seeking to crack open a certain view, in a certain way, and open to something else. Practising a shift in view, and consolidating it and deepening it, and letting it really take root in the heart, and change the very way we feel about life, and relate to life and death, over time, as it gets deepened and consolidated. And that takes repetition. We need to repeatedly break this view, repeatedly shift out of the view. That's why I was saying, seeing in terms of webs of conditions, seeing in these different ways, over and over and over.

So as I said, there's always a self-view. And in a way, we could speak, and it's quite skilful to speak, perhaps, about a continuum or levels of self-view. So we can talk -- as much of the talk tonight talked about -- a kind of psychological or personality view of self, and how we get kind of entangled in that and identified with that. And seeing that what gets expressed is a dependent arising. What is seen as the personality is actually a dependent arising. It's not really who we are. It doesn't really have that inherent existence. But in a way, there are other levels, too, just kind of deeper, quieter, you could say, than the personality view: just the view of the self as body and mind. And even more than that. I'll get to this tomorrow.

But in terms of the personality self, as I said: which is real if I see the whole spectrum there? I see personality. I see it fade. I see how it's built and fabricated, how actually it's built out of habits. And I also see that those habits can be disempowered, and it can be built in a different way. Seeing that, seeing this movement in the sort of appearance and disappearance of the personality, the rise and fall of the personality self, that becomes a doorway, a doorway to a whole different sense. Whole different sense of even life and existence. Freer, lighter, more expansive. And it's not that it's an end point, but it's an opening. You could say it's a beginning. It's an opening into something.

Let's have a little quiet time together.