Transcription
Okay. So do you remember last night we talked about the two selflessnesses, or the emptiness of the personal self and the emptiness of phenomena? And their not really being separate kinds of emptiness -- it's the same emptiness, but just as a sort of pedagogical tool. Remember that? So tonight I want to start talking about personal selflessness, the emptiness of the personal self. And if you've been around these kind of circles for a while, whether it's in Buddhism or other traditions, too, you will easily have heard some form of the statement, like, "It's the ego that's the problem. The self is the problem. That's what brings separation. That's where the duality is," etc. So it's very easy to say that, and yet the depth of understanding or fullness of what that means can vary enormously. It's actually quite rare to really investigate it deeply and not just take it as a kind of platitude or truism: "Oh, yeah, it's the self that's a problem. It's the ego that's a problem." Actually really, really go into what that means and what's being said there.
In Buddhadharma, in the teachings of the Buddha, it's not so much that we are trying to destroy this self, this personal self, or somehow dissolve it and dissolve it into cosmic consciousness or something like that. Although that may feel like it happens meditatively at times in deep meditation, that's actually not the project. The project is we want to understand this self. We want to understand this experience of self. And 'understand' means understand its emptiness. We want to really understand and see the emptiness of the self, which is different than trying to destroy it or dissolve it.
So if we take a step back, actually, and in a way, a step back from this whole retreat and the project here, the fundamental question in the Dharma, the fundamental sort of guiding question is really, as the Buddha would say, what leads to suffering and what leads to freedom from suffering? That's actually the fundamental question. And questions of emptiness or selflessness and all that stuff are kind of part of that question. Why I'm saying that is because, as human beings, sometimes -- in fact a lot of the time -- it's totally appropriate and totally helpful to speak and think and choose in terms of self. Not always bashing everything on the head with "It's empty, it's empty, it's empty," and thinking in terms of no-self. It's actually really, really helpful to see in terms of self and feel in terms of self and acknowledge and communicate in terms of self.
For instance, if, you know, I'm friends with someone, and something happens between us, and we have a disagreement and argument -- it's Michelle, and I say, "Come on, Michelle. Get over it. There's no self." Basically she's going to want to wallop me one. [laughs] In most situations, it's not an appropriate way of dealing with two human beings having a difficulty. It may not be respectful. It may not be caring. Also in terms of sometimes the choices we make in life, in terms of taking responsibility -- it's a self thing. One feels the self taking responsibility. It's completely appropriate. And the Buddha talks a lot in those terms, that kind of way of seeing and way of feeling and conceiving. Completely appropriate. Really, really important.
And similarly with ethics. It's the self taking responsibility, taking care in relationship to how we are with each other. All self, and all actually really important. So self and not-self are kind of two -- what can you say? Avenues? No, two ways of conceiving, two ways of working underneath the umbrella question of what leads to suffering and what does not lead to suffering. We pick up either the self or the no-self at different times depending on what's the most helpful, our sense of what's the most appropriate and helpful. So there is much, as I said, in our life where the language of the self and the conceiving of the self and the feeling of the self and the communicating of the self is actually really important, and working in terms of trying to decrease our suffering in life, in terms of the self.
So, you know, nowadays, there are so many different kinds of psychotherapy around. I don't think anyone even knows how many kinds there are probably, let alone understands what all the differences are. But many of them deal and work -- and again, quite appropriately -- in terms of self. That's healing and appropriate. I think, you know, what I see, and I've seen it for myself in psychotherapy, and I've seen it in others, is working with the language of self and the conceiving of self, a lot can be learned, an enormous amount can be healed. I think for myself, learning a lot about needs of the self that I was actually unconscious of. I wasn't in touch with what I needed. Relearning what it is to feel a need, to recognize a need, and to express a need, needs, and that whole area of communication, this self to that self, expressing emotions and needs, and all the rest of it that goes with the self.
There was also -- and people have, obviously, given the range of psychotherapy, very different experiences -- but for me there was something of a kind of reparenting that I felt like I went through, sort of discovering how to parent myself in a different way. And I felt like that was incredibly healing and incredible valuable at the time. Rediscovering also a way of feeling and experiencing, communicating to myself tenderness and kindness. I thought then I was perfectly fine in my early twenties operating in the world, but actually there were lots of problems, and certain things, those connections hadn't been made yet properly, or they had been made in not such a healthy way. Learning about the whole realm of my inner emotional life, which I had quite a strong emotional life that I didn't really understand. Learning also -- and I'm just sharing my experience -- to, in a way, cherish myself and to rediscover my own beauty. That had nothing to do with the ego at all. It wasn't a big puffed up thing. It was something very natural. In a way, a healthy parent, when it's with a child in a healthy relationship, sees that child as beautiful, unconditionally beautiful in a way. And healthfully, we absorb that sense of cherishing myself, celebrating our own uniqueness, our existence, our beauty.
All that's in the realm of self, and to me it's something quite lovely in the realm of human experience and healing. With this experience of self, what we notice goes with it is a sense of the story of our self, the narrative of our self, my story, my journey, my narrative so far through life, the way that's unfolded. Sometimes you hear people, it's like the story's really, really important. It's like, "I need to hear your story. I want to hear everyone's story." Beautiful. Sometimes for other people it's that the story is something completely to be dismissed -- so a very hardcore sort of Buddhist line. It's like, "Story is irrelevant." The question I have is: really, is the relationship that we have with story at any time helpful or not helpful? Because I can have a relationship with my narrative, my life narrative, my story so far, in a way that ties me up in knots, completely imprisons me, that casts me as the victim, that disempowers me, or I can have a story that feels like it's something quite precious and quite beautiful and quite noble.
One of the interesting things about the story, following on from this, is it's actually malleable. Our story, the story we tell ourselves and others about our life, is malleable. It's not set in stone. Sometimes we believe -- in fact often we believe -- that it is. The story we tell ourselves is malleable. Sometimes I like to just wonder, think about the Buddha, if you know the classical story: he could have said, shortly before his enlightenment, "Grumble, grumble. My mum died when I was really young and my dad was really controlling. He wouldn't let me express myself, or he really wanted me to be the heir of the kingdom, and I ... grumble, grumble. I finally escaped, and I found this team of five other guys, and we were meditating together, but then they abandoned me because I wanted to do something different. No one understands me." [laughter] "Grumble, grumble." He could have seen himself that way, but obviously he didn't. At least, if he did, it's not recorded in the texts.
Instead, when he speaks about himself, he speaks about himself, when he speaks in terms of self, it's as a hero. He's a heroic warrior, a seeker. He is a champion in the sort of classical Greek sense almost. The story is malleable, and he's casting it a certain way. Actually we can do that, too. So in a way, we choose our identity to a certain extent. There's much more leeway in this than is immediately obvious. What happens though is we get locked into certain identities. When we get locked into certain identities, it affects how we then see our life and our experience unfolding. So yesterday I was sharing about that person who didn't have a job right now, etc., in a certain mind state of being used to -- I don't know -- succeeding in the world in the sort of more conventional sense, which there's nothing wrong with at all, but it's a certain way of identifying. And then according to that identity, something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. But if that person recasts their identity as a seeker, "I'm a spiritual seeker," then this gap in job, etc., looks very, very different. It actually comes to have a different meaning. The priorities shift. And it's not actually that one is inherently better or worse or whatever. The point is more that there's some choice here, and with those choices go certain perceptions and certain senses of how we are doing in the world.
So when we talk about (how to say?) the identification with the personality level, part of the talk tonight, it's what I want to go into, the psychological self or what we call the 'personality level' of self. In our culture, for different reasons, most of the suffering around self is actually tied up at that level. It's interesting. It's around the personality, and "What do people think of me?", and "What do I think of my personality? Do I like myself? Do I not like myself?", etc. I think that's -- I'll touch on this again -- a factor of our culture. Some people don't have this at all, but for many people this is where a lot of the suffering is, tied up with self. So I want to address it a little bit in this talk. It's not, if you like, the most (how do you say?) deepest level of self-identification; it's not that. It's more like if the self-sense is like a poisonous tree, to borrow the Buddha's analogy, it's a bit like the psychological self is like the branches with flowers on that are giving off some kind of poisonous fumes or something.
So to address identification at that level is like chopping the branches or taking the flowers off of this poisonous tree. The roots are actually much, much deeper. But because there's so much suffering at this level, I think it's important to address it, and I'm going to speak about it. So the question is, or one question is, am I locked in this story that I keep telling myself about myself and my life and I keep telling others about my self and my life? Have I noticed that that story -- if you ask me about my life (I'm in my mid-forties now), you know, in a way, I could give you a different story partly depending on the mood. You might have noticed this for yourself. Partly depending on the mood. Partly depending on what feels relevant. I feel like just in terms of work, I've done a lot of different things, and depending on what context seems important, you're going to get quite a different story about my life.
Right there, the story -- again, it's dependent, it's empty. It's not inherently "This is my story." But what happens is we get stuck in beliefs and self-definitions about our personality. We touched on this a little earlier. We define ourselves and lock ourselves, bind ourselves with certain definitions about our self at a personality level. And this is something we really, really need to investigate. We really need to have a look at what we're doing and how we're doing it in that sense. What are the conclusions we are making about our self? What are those definitions? What are the assumptions we are making about our self and the images we hold about our self? Because they bind us, or we bind ourselves with them, again without really realizing it. And when we do so, when we bind ourselves, the possibilities get drained out of life. The possibilities of our story in its unfoldment in the future, the present and the future, the possibilities of our existence, the creativity all gets bound and locked in with that binding of the self-definitions.
And we do this to others, as well. Not only am I like this, but you're like that. We lock someone else this way. In that locking of another, we may fear that other. We may be infatuated with that other, projecting all kinds of things and in infatuation with that other. We may be measuring. And how often this happens -- in the self/other dynamic, measurement comes in. How am I doing in relation to them? My definition of some facet of my personality in relation to that facet, my measurement of that facet in them. In the measurement, what can brew there? Jealousy, competition, etc. And all of these mutual self-definitions affect enormously the dynamic, the climate, the field between two people, between self and other.
So what do we do with all this? We want to start puncturing, puncturing some of these beliefs, puncturing the solidity of it. One place that's actually quite interesting to start is to just consider, to really consider, how do I tend to define myself? And actually ask that question. How do I define myself? Or rather, what are the ways that I define myself? Because one of the things we realize, it's not just one way. And begin to notice how I define myself. It might even be that I want to start listing all the ways that I define myself. There's something about listing, because then you've got it almost externally, and you can kind of have a look, "Look at that." [laughter] And then the second thing that goes with that is, am I really that? These are the definitions. Am I really that?
So before the retreat someone was saying, was in an interview, and we were talking about emptiness of self, and they said, "Well, if there's no self, then ..." a whole bunch of other stuff, "what's the point? Everything's meaningless. And how can there be love? And what am I then? If there is no self, then da-da-da-da-da." Very, very normal reaction to hearing teachings about emptiness. But there's a different approach too, which, for a lot of people, is perhaps more helpful, which is rather what I'm talking about now. Is this thing or this aspect, this characteristic, whatever it is -- fearfulness or depressiveness or anger, whatever it is -- is this that I'm identifying with really me or really mine? It's turning the question around. It's asking a different question, rather than jumping to the "There is no self." Is this that I'm identifying with really me or mine?
And secondly, is it suffering to identify, to define, and to believe that definition? Can I actually feel the suffering of it? Or just to ask, is it suffering if I bind myself that way? And then, how does it feel, or how might it feel, to let go of that identification? Just that bit of identification -- how might it feel to let go of that? And might that be possible? So that's approaching it in a much more kind of gradual and gentle and sort of relevant way, realistic way. And then if it's possible to let go, actually sensing the freedom that comes out of it. There's some sense of freedom that goes with letting go of just that definition. We can feel, ahh, can breathe a bit more because I'm less bound.
And it's not this big metaphysical jump into kind of imagined non-existence: "Who will I be then? Who am I if there's no self?" Slowly, with that, there comes confidence, confidence in letting go of definitions of our self, and confidence in emptiness. And that's crucial. Because rather than fear -- "Who will I be? Means it's meaningless. There's no love," da-da-da -- rather than all that, actually we get the sense this is the right way to go. I feel it.
So similarly with what we were saying last night, a function of mindfulness, a function of being on retreat, is to see gaps. And we begin to see gaps in these definitions we have of ourselves. So say, "I am a depressed person. I am always depressed. I am an angry person. I'm a fearful person." After a while on retreat, because of the continuity of mindfulness, you actually see: "You know what? There are times when I'm not that. There are times when I'm not fearful, depressed, or angry." This is really important to notice. There are gaps in the self-image. If I was really this, whatever it is, I would have to be that all the time. And clearly, it just takes a little mindfulness, a couple of days, to actually see it's not the case. Again, we join the dots, as I was saying last night, and give a solidity and substance to something it actually does not have.
We also notice, just with sustaining mindfulness, that something -- for instance, like fearfulness or whatever -- it seems like, gosh, 70 per cent of the time I'm fearful. Okay, maybe not all the time, but 70 per cent. But actually, when you look closer, it's more like 10 per cent, that the mind has somehow felt like it's 70 per cent of the time. And again, with enough mindfulness, begin to look and check out the definitions, and we see at different times, even different times of the same day, I have opposite definitions of myself, contradictory definitions of myself, different definitions. How could they both be real? Which one is real? Which one is true?
So it's interesting. This personality level of self is a social animal. In other words, it's contextual and socially contextual. It's relational, the personality. It's relational, and it's embedded in a social context. So we find our niche, or this personality self finds its niche socially and in different social environments, and we repeat these definitions that we have of ourselves. We repeat them to others. Not just to ourselves -- we repeat them to others. You may find yourself or notice that you actually do that, or see it in someone else, see in a group, they always say, "I am like this," or "I am like that." Of course, sometimes it comes up much more subtly, but presenting this personality like this or like this, and finding that niche, even when it's actually self-demeaning, even when it's painful to have that self-definition. Somehow we want the niche. The niche is comfortable and familiar. And even if I'm the loser, well, at least everyone knows I'm the loser. At least everyone knows I'm the failure. At least everyone knows I'm the hopeless case. Sometimes it's done, that's communicated, this self-demeaning, self-depreciatory self-image is communicated in a way that's kind of cute and endearing and funny, and there's still pain in it. And sometimes it's communicated in a way that's just downright painful. Something about the familiarity of that the self seeks, the personality self seeks at times.
Julia and Tony, we were having a Dharma discussion a while ago with the coordinators. There was a number of people in the group, and some people said that their self-image, they took their self-image from what people said about them. Some people in the group saying, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, definitely." And others couldn't, just couldn't -- "Really?! That's so interesting." Of which I was one, actually. All this Dharma teaching I've done, and I never had heard that before. Of course I can see it for an infant, but I was quite surprised. That was quite interesting, too. The self puts something out socially, but also takes something socially in terms of its own self-image.
Now, all of that, of course, we bring to the cushion. We bring all this to our practice, to our spiritual life, to our meditation. We absolutely bring it. And what happens often -- especially when the self-sense has some ... you know, it's not really healed fully, let's say -- is we bring: a lot about spiritual practice, meditation practice, becomes about improving the self, about somehow perfecting the self or getting a more perfect self. And how easily that creeps in, and how common it is. Sometimes a person hasn't even realized it. So we're going to see very much many of the same patterns in meditation that we play out in life. It's just a microcosm of something.
For instance, this morning we were talking about samādhi, and some people using the word 'joy,' and other people, and then we had the word 'ease' or 'bliss.' But how easily the self makes something of that word in relationship to itself. So if I do have bliss, if I do have an eruption of well-being or a pervasion of well-being, how very easily the self takes it as saying something about itself: "Well, look at me!" Or if I don't have it, how easily the self says something about itself because it's not there: "I'm a real ... I can't do this. I'm a failure. I'm a loser," etc. That's actually much more common. Rather than, if it's there, enjoying it. You know, it's not about the self. But the self has a way, or rather a habit, the self has a habit of always self-referencing everything -- everything has to do with the self, everything has to do with me, me and the measuring of me, self-referencing. Always the star of the show. Everything revolves around me.
So that's not something to judge; it's something to realize. It's a way of seeing the world that goes with the sense of self to a degree. Now, this judging self, this self-judging self, this inner critic -- extremely, extremely common in our culture. Probably the most common dynamic that I encounter listening, obviously, to hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of people. Extremely common, so common. And oftentimes, when that's there, how it plays out in the meditation practice is it's just like we cannot engage effort because the engaging of effort and doing in practice just brings up that inner critic. And we just, "No." It gets too contracted and too painful. So a word like 'striving,' which is actually a word that the Buddha used a lot in the texts, if you look in the original texts -- strive, strive, strive, strive, strive -- actually lands in completely the wrong place and cannot even get off the ground.
So this is a hugely important area and really interesting. I'm not going to say too much about it. Again, to reconnect with something I said before, I very much feel it goes with our culture. I could be wrong here, but around the Renaissance period, around the Enlightenment period actually, the world-view, the zeitgeist, kind of changed in Europe, and moving much more to a culture of the individual and a secular culture, and with that, slowly, in time, the sense of the individual self and a person's sense of their individual self and their individual story and all that, it got raised in human consciousness, and even more so in the Romantic era, etc. All of that, of course, had beautiful and very beneficial effects, but it came with that, too. Sometimes I feel like we're dealing with the painful side of all that, the echo side, that we don't see ourselves so much embedded in community or in a more mystical context or religious context. That's a side issue, but it seems like, again, this has its roots in social and cultural phenomena.
Actually just another -- about this inner critic thing. Sometimes people say, when they hear teachings about the emptiness of self, sometimes they say, "Well, surely you need a self before you let go of the self. I feel like I don't have one, or I feel like this person needs to get their self" or something. And usually what they're talking about, usually, is someone with a lot of self-judgment, a lot of inner critic. And it can seem like that's true -- "Boy, they really don't have much self. They really need to get a self" kind of thing. But actually the inner critic is an extremely dense sense of self. There's an enormous amount of self there. It's just it's all very negative. It's really bound up in a lot of negativity. It's not that there's no self. There's a lot of self, but it's very negative.
What we see as human beings, but even more so as meditators with all this, and this is really quite important, is actually when we feel into our sense of self, experientially there's a spectrum. There's a spectrum of self. So what I mean by that is, let's take something like the inner critic when it's really firing on all cylinders and it's beating you, haranguing you, and aggressing you, etc. Or it's not to do with you; it's something in the world. You're really upset, you're really in a tantrum about something, almost. Those, both of those, the inner critic or the tantrum, are examples of a really, really -- we could say it's one end of the spectrum of the self-sense. The self-sense at those times is extremely solid and extremely big and built up. There's a lot of self. When we're very involved with our story or very identified with the story, there's also quite a lot of self there. Other times in life, we're not really thinking about the story. Maybe you're in nature, or you're with someone, or just whatever it is, or meditating, and the story, the sense of my history and my journey and all that, is just not really there. Progressively less and less self-view.
Sometimes meditation goes deeper, and it's even less than that, and even less than that, and even less than that. So as human beings we have actually quite an extraordinary range of the sense of self, the experience of self. And a very, very subtle level would be just the bare sense of consciousness, just the bare sense of awareness and the objects of awareness. That's pretty much the most subtle sense of self. There's no story, there's no personality, there's barely anything happening. There's just a sense of awareness, not even really a sense of 'me,' just awareness and an object. Very, very subtle sense of self. And all the way at the other end is you've got the inner critic going kind of crazy. So it's a spectrum here.
Sometimes people talk about selfing. Selfing. It's come into the Dharma world. It's quite a helpful concept. When am I selfing? Can I notice when I'm selfing? That's a helpful concept. But oftentimes it goes with a kind of more gross manifestation of this spectrum, the grosser end of the spectrum. So when there's some kind of storm about something, when the inner critic is bashing you up, when the ego feels really strong, that's all selfing. And when that's not there, the implication is we're not selfing, and therefore things are not a problem. But again, on this retreat -- that's all good and fine at a certain level, but actually we're saying it gets much, much more subtle than that, and there's a much wider range that we actually really, really want to be interested in.
I remember when I lived in the States, and I went along regularly to the urban center we had there in Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cambridge Insight Meditation Center. One time one of my teachers came, and he was giving a talk about self and not-self. I asked a question at the end. It was about this. This was years ago. And I said, "It seems like there's a spectrum," similar to what I just said, not quite so refined probably, but ... well, actually two things. One thing, I said, "How do we move to the nicer end of the spectrum where things are a lot more light, etc.?" And he just shot back, "Appreciation." Which was, "Oh. That's interesting." In other words, appreciating the times when there's less self there actually helps the consciousness get more familiar and ease into that direction more. So appreciation.
And then we were having a little bit of a dialogue and I said, "Well, on one extreme you've got, you know, obviously this really built-up self in some form or another," and then there was a pillar between us, and I said, "On another extreme you've got just 'I see the pillar.' There doesn't seem much suffering there. It's just I see the pillar. So what?" And he actually said at that time, "Yes, that's right. 'I see the pillar' is no problem." But again, for this retreat, we want to be more complete. 'I see the pillar,' still a level of problem there. It doesn't feel like -- suffering is way too strong a word, way too strong a word. I don't have any opinions about this pillar. It's not a problem. But there's still something on this spectrum of self that I need to penetrate, go deeper than, and understand.
So even just the appearance of subject and object as somehow inherently existing -- that will be a seed of dukkha, a seed of dukkha. I need to understand all of this. So much more than just ego games, and we're not just interested in the side of things that has to do with ego games and kind of puffing up with grandiosity or hyping up the self or denigrating the self or the self critic or looking good, all of that kind of gross manifestation of self. That's important. But also as meditators, being interested in when it gets more quiet, and the different experiences of self when things get more quiet, more open, more lovely, more refined.
So for example, in loving-kindness practice, in mettā practice, sometimes a person comes in for an interview and says, "The 'I' has gone. The self has gone. I've been doing mettā practice and the self has gone" -- which is great, and to be encouraged and appreciated. However, if we look more carefully, it's not that it's gone quite yet. It's that it's just more light. The sense of self, the experience of self, is just more light, more refined, more open. It's just that the gross sense of self, the everyday sense of self, certainly the problematic sense of self, that even the everyday sense of self has kind of lightened and evaporated, if you like, and we're left with what at first seems like there's no self there. It's actually a more refined, more light, more open sense of self. This is important.
Sometimes people ask -- in fact, I think even this morning someone was asking -- "Well, if I say in mettā practice, 'May I ...'" -- this is just a by the by -- "'May I be well, may I be peaceful, may I, may I,' wouldn't that be reinforcing the self?" Usually not. Usually mettā practice leads in the direction of softening the self. It softens the self, even if I'm using that language.
As meditators, and specifically as meditators interested in selflessness and all this, we want to really start watching and getting very, very familiar with this range of self, the range of the experience of self, from the very, very gross, to the normal, all the way to -- getting really, really interested and familiar with that. In Gelug Tibetan teachings, when they begin teaching about selflessness, a personal self, sometimes they say you have to really get a sense of this. So you imagine you're in a crowd of people in some kind of social situation, and someone suddenly points at you and goes, "Thief!", or something like that, and everyone turns and looks at you. That experience of self in that moment, if you can imagine it, or you're somewhere and not adequately dressed or whatever it is, if you've ever had that dream [laughter] -- when I was really ... I remember ... well, you don't need to know. [laughter] That is actually quite a gross sense of self. It's quite a gross sense of self. But the more we meditate -- and I'm aware some of you are very aware of this already, this spectrum -- the more familiar we get with the sense of self.
A little while ago, a friend who had begun teaching recently was teaching here, and did an interview with a yogi. This yogi was a new yogi. So relatively new teacher, relatively new yogi. And the yogi had experience -- I've forgotten what it was -- some sense of difficulty and then an opening and a release of the difficulty, and they were talking about it. And then the new teacher friend said, "And how did that change your sense of self?" And the yogi just looked at her and was like, "Huh?" Because that's what we deal with when we meditate, we get quite used to noticing how the sense of self feels, but maybe for a lot of people in the world it's not actually something we pay much attention to. But as meditators, we want to be very, very interested in it.
So whether it's through meditation, or whether it's through psychotherapy, or different practices or whatever. For instance, I was working with two interviews recently, and one person was working a lot with body sense, just really body awareness, body awareness, body awareness in different ways and quite creative. And came into a couple of interviews with very different senses of what was going on in the body, and at first quite afraid because it felt like a lot of what he interpreted as anger. It turned out actually to be just a sense of power, like vital power, not really anger or directed at anyone. And letting himself feel into that, this different sense of the body that opened up, actually what came with it was quite a different sense of self. It's almost like the self was growing into an area that he hadn't been familiar with, that he wasn't really calling himself until then. In other words, different body perceptions can bring different sense of self as well.
Now, this happens, as again we were talking this morning, this happens with samādhi. I talked about, as we go into samādhi, at some point, to some degree or another, the body perception changes. And with that also the sense of self can change. But what also happens when there's samādhi, when there's less thought, it also starts affecting the sense of self. Who am I when I'm not thinking? Who am I when I'm thinking much less? A lot of the sense of self on a personality level actually is supported by constant thinking. Constant rehashing of this and that belief about ourselves and the world and da-da-da-da. Who do I become, who do I feel myself to be when all that starts to go quiet? Who do I feel myself to be when the emotional life starts to go quiet? Again, the emotional life can be quite active a lot of the time. Sometimes in meditation, it just settles into a place of calm or equanimity; there's not a lot happening emotionally. For some people it takes courage to let themselves inhabit that space, that new sense of things. Who am I when I'm neither thinking a lot nor feeling a lot? Who am I when the body begins to dissolve and to blur its boundaries?
So what's happening, one of the things that's happening with samādhi, is consciously we're beginning to let go of definitions and ways we feel the self. And as I said in the talk on samādhi very briefly, we're actually fabricating the self and the world less, and just getting used to that. There's a lot there to understand. But we're just getting used to not doing that so much, getting used to not defining ourselves like that.
If we go into this a bit deeper, there's a range of ways that we can notice that we feel and conceive the sense of self, how we actually sense and feel and conceive the sense of self, whether that's consciously, intellectually, philosophically, or just kind of viscerally and primally. Most of the time, for most people, perhaps the default way of feeling the self or conceiving of the self -- and again, it's not like we have this as an intellectual idea, "The self is this" -- but we kind of feel like, it seems like, it seems to us, as if the self is a kind of controller of the body and the mind and the elements of the mind, controller of this stuff. And somehow that controller is somehow within this body and mind; somehow it's within here somewhere, within the body and mind, but somehow it's a bit separate, and it's somehow controlling the rest of it. We don't really think this consciously; it's just the way that, a lot of the time, we feel the self to be.
Jeffrey Hopkins, a wonderful teacher in the Tibetan tradition, said it's a bit like a head salesman in a group of more junior salesmen.[1] So it's somehow among all this; it's the same kind of, somehow, stuff, but it's somehow controlling that. Sometimes we call that the 'innate conception of self.' It's the kind of default conception, very deeply embedded in our consciousness. That's the way we feel ourselves to be. And that kind of self, feeling it that way, feels like it's what we call, in technical language, 'self-sufficient.' It seems, it feels (we're not talking about an intellectual position here), it feels and it seems that the elements which make me up -- the body and the thinking, intentions, all that stuff -- they somehow depend on the person. In other words, first there's me, and then there's this body that I own or that I control. If you think about this a little bit further and just play with it, it's like, how many people would be happy as they get older to swap their body for a younger one? [laughter] Or at least large parts of it. And similarly the mind. Swap the mind for one that's fresher or more able, better in some way.
What's going on there? We somehow feel that this is somehow in here somewhere, and yet we'd happily swap bits of it. Sometimes it seems like the self, the sense of the self, is actually the collection of all this, body and mind and consciousness, etc. Sometimes, in different ways, it can seem completely independent of it, like all this is here, and the self is somehow 'other.' There's a sutta of the Buddha's, and I can't remember where it is; I apologize. But he actually goes through four possibilities of ways of conceiving the self. He says (1) you could conceive of the self as the body, the mind, and consciousness. Body, mental factors and consciousness. And you can say the self is that. (2) You could say or feel or conceive the self possesses all that -- I own all this; the self is something that possesses body, mind, consciousness, etc. (3) You could say or conceive or postulate the self is in, somewhere in the body, mind, consciousness. (4) Or you could say, perhaps more mystically, the body, mind, consciousness is in the Self somehow, and then usually the Self has a capital S, in God, or capital-S Self, or Awareness or something, and it feels like this is in that, and that can be a very meditative experience, too.[2]
The conceivings of the self can get much more even sophisticated and subtle than that. These are quite Buddhist ones now. Sometimes you hear a teacher say, "The self is the continuum of what are called the 'aggregates'" -- we'll go into this again, but the elements that make up; so it's the continuum of moments of consciousness and feeling and perception and thought. It's the continuum of that. Or the self (and you hear this in different spiritual traditions) is Awareness: "You are the Witness. You are Awareness. That's your true identity." Or sometimes, again, "The self is the result of an infinite web of conditions. There's the self: this infinite web of conditions." Or similar to what I said before, actually, "There's some kind of oneness, a cosmic self. That's the real self, is a cosmic self."
So actually, when the Buddha listed all these, he said actually, none of them are true, and to hold or grasp, either intellectually or in a more primal way to any of them, will be dukkha, will be a mistake.[3] All those examples I gave, they all, somehow hiding within them, implicit, is the sense of the inherent existence of self in some form or another, and so it's a problem. It's a problem, and problems will come out of it. So remember, as I said at the beginning, it's not that we're trying to get rid of the sense of 'I,' the sense of 'me'; only the identification and belief of the self, of the 'I,' as self-existent, as established from its own side. So it's something 'dependent,' we say. The self is a dependent arising.
Thinking, for example -- there cannot be thinking without a thinker, really. There cannot be thinking without a thinker, but that doesn't imply that the 'I' that thinks is a permanent or independently existing self. The teaching is very, very subtle here. So again, conventionally, it exists and functions. So you're looking at me -- I, Rob, am obviously here within this area of body, and I eat and I go to the toilet and I sleep and I'm talking. But actually, when you look for me, I'm unfindable, and when I look for you, you're not findable. We're going to go into this unfindability later in a lot of detail.
So these are the sort of default ways we tend to see the self. The question is, or a question is, is it possible to practise seeing in different ways? Is it possible to practise seeing and feeling the self in different ways, different ways of looking at the self? As I said earlier, usually the self casts itself as the star of the show. Usually; not all the time, but usually. It takes centre stage. Everything depends on me. And we don't see that the results of our actions and what happens in life or what happens in a certain situation is actually the result of a whole web of conditions. It's what we call a 'dependent arising,' dependent on a whole web of conditions.
Sometimes I like to say, actually, for instance, this Dharma talk -- so this Dharma talk, to me, feels quite different from last night's Dharma talk. The energy in the room is very different. And it's interesting to say, "Well, why is that?" And maybe tomorrow night it's different. Why? Because it's a dependent arising. I could feel like, "Oh, maybe, I don't know, it didn't go that well, or they were a bit sleepy," or this and that, but actually, what comes even out of my mouth, the energy with which I express it, it's all -- in a way, you guys are giving the talk as much as I am. Does anyone ...? If you've ever done any public performing, like if you're a musician or something like that, you can feel the interaction with -- and even when you're talking one-on-one with someone, you're sharing something, and it's deep, and it's perhaps vulnerable or whatever, how what comes out of your mouth depends on the quality with which you are being listened to. Have you noticed this? Same thing.
What happens, though, so often to this deluded consciousness, is we take the result -- maybe I say something wrong, or it's not very clear or intelligent or whatever it is, in this situation or could be any situation, and then I take that as reflecting on the self. The result -- it's about me, rather than it was a dependent arising. So many factors there. So you could be in a work situation, an office or whatever, and you make a mistake, and actually didn't see, there was tiredness there, I was tired. It's a condition that doesn't have to do with self. And there was lots of stuff going on in the office, lots of distraction, lots of pressure. All this, it's a dependent arising rather than self. Now, I say that and hopefully it makes sense, but the thing, again, as always, is to see it as a practice. We find ourselves in pain with how things went, and judging the self for it, and can we re-view the situation and actually look at it in terms of the web of conditions rather than the self? And actually look at it again. Sometimes we need a friend to help us do it. What am I not seeing of the web of conditionality, the web of conditions, the dependent arising? So all of this, I really feel when I give a Dharma talk, I'm talking about practice rather than anything else. Everything, everything that's said, it's like, it takes practice to really digest it. It takes looking in certain ways deliberately to really digest it.
We said the self is dependent, it's a dependent arising. So a second possibility. Have you noticed, like I said before, that the sense of the self changes and gets stronger, gets less, gets more solid, gets less solid? And it changes with clinging. When the sense of self is really strong and solid, some thing is also being clung to as really solid, some thing is a big deal. If I'm in a tantrum about something -- even the inner critic, I'm judging some thing. For the self to be strong, it actually takes clinging to some thing as a big deal. The more I cling to something as a big deal, actually the stronger the self. Or for instance, how much the self gets built up by thinking about -- I think about this, something has become -- I think about this thing because it's a big deal, and with that thinking about and thinking about, the self-sense gets built up. It's dependent on the clinging and the thinking about.
And that thing that I think about could be meditation. Could be meditation progress, if you're here and that's the sort of thing. And then the self-view is built around that. For instance, on retreat, there's not a lot of other stuff to think about except meditation. There's not much else. So meditation begins to become quite a big deal, and how I'm doing in my meditation. And the self-view arises in relationship to meditation, how I'm doing in meditation. As I was saying last night, it's like, out of everything that's going on in the day -- going to the toilet, sleeping, da-da-da-da-da -- pick out one thing, and focus on that, draw it out of the totality, focus on it, and build the self-view from that thing that I'm pulling out and in relationship to that thing. Then I've built a self-view, and that self-view is then like putting on a pair of really strong lenses that focus then on particular things.
For instance, if we take meditation, I'm here, and meditation gets to mean something. It gets to be the big deal after a while on retreat. So the self-sense relates to that and draws that out of the totality of experience. It could be something much smaller, because we're actually doing quite a lot of meditation. It could be something -- I can't think of anything right now, but it doesn't have to be that common in the day; in other words, it could be just a moment or two, but somehow we're drawing something out of the totality, and then the self-view gets built in relationship to that thing, and then that self-view is the way we then look again at the totality, and so the cycle goes round. We keep drawing out that thing. So, for example, meditation. Meditation gets to mean something, I start building the self-view around meditation: "It's not going very well. I must be a failure. I must be not good enough. I must be a loser." And then we look at the meditation experience through that lens and we focus on when it's not going so well. So it goes round. Do you understand? [yogi in background: It's like a filter.] It's a filter, very good. Yeah, it's a filter of perception. And the process builds itself this way. The self-sense gets built this way. Again, sometimes very, very gross, sometimes quite subtle.
The point is, what we begin to see with practice, because we practice letting go of clinging and then seeing the self-sense -- we'll get much more into this -- get less, so we begin to cotton on: the self-sense isn't really independently real. It moves along this spectrum dependent on my clinging. So the self-sense is a dependent arising. It depends on something being a big deal, on clinging.
Yogi 1: Can I ask a very quick question? Am I right in thinking that the more you tend to begin to lose the self in meditation, when you're not in meditation, your clinging to self can get even bigger and really problematic to begin with?
Rob: It can. Yes, it can. A little bit related to the question this morning about not making too much of a duality between meditation and non-meditation, thinking and non-thinking. So it can, definitely. In the long run, it really shouldn't. But it might go through that little hump, and then we need to address that.
Like I was saying (I don't know if it was in the opening talk), it's very good to see and experience times when the self gets less in meditation, and much more light and refined, etc., but that on its own will not do the trick. I was saying (I can't remember which talk it was) we need to actively look at the self and expose it for what it is, which is different than just letting it go quiet and hanging out when it's quiet. It's like this poisonous tree. You know, maybe the flowers don't come out in winter, but lo and behold, spring comes, the flowers come out, and it puts out its poison. We need to actually cut the tree. Yeah? Although it's still really useful, yeah.
One of the (for me) really interesting things about, one of the radical sort of strokes of genius of the Buddha, if I look back at the early texts, is he shifted the perspective on things. I didn't realize it until someone pointed it out, but with a lot of practice -- it's not actually obvious -- the perspective usually of a human being is in terms of self and self-view, and actually even at that time in India a lot of the perspective was about searching for a self, or "What is this?", etc. And the Buddha actually shifted the perspective to: "What leads to suffering? What actions lead to suffering? And what actions lead to freedom from suffering?" So the shift was from self to actions. When I say that, I mean, it's like, "So?" But actually, there's quite a radical stroke of genius there. And again, this is something that needs practice to empower this shift within ourselves.
Something that's quite interesting is, for instance, the difference between (I don't know if these are the right English words) guilt and remorse. I'm not sure if that's dictionary correct, but we've done something in the past, or we've neglected to do something; maybe it's years ago. And the mind can get trapped in guilt. We just rehash that scenario, and it goes round and round and round, replaying of something. And in that replaying, it's all about self -- conclusions about self and how we messed up, and this and that, self and a repetition of the past -- because we're looking at it in terms of self-view versus actually looking at it in terms of actions that are helpful or not helpful. In that, it's taking the self-view out of it. Again, this is a practice. So if it's in terms of actions, seeing, "Oh, that action wasn't helpful. It led to my and others' suffering," whatever it was, or non-action. And if I look at it that way, then it takes the self out of it, and it also can look forward into the future. Can look forward in a creative way rather than just looping around in self and the past. Do you understand?
Yogi 2: Is that papañca?
Rob: It's a manifestation of papañca, sure, but I'm talking specifically -- well, let's see. Yeah, in a way, the Buddha's saying, "Let's just talk about actions and not self" was a way of cutting papañca, yeah. By the way, actually, this guilt/remorse, this action versus self point of view, we do it with others, too. Have you noticed that we do it with others? They do something or they forget to do something and we make a conclusion about [their] self, and then we trap them in that, as I was saying earlier, versus, "Oh, that action, that choice, that thing that they did or didn't do, that is the issue. It wasn't that helpful," rather than a conclusion about the person and self-view.
Another little thing that it's possible to try is -- and you'd be surprised; you may be surprised -- sometimes you're sitting just quietly, maybe in meditation, maybe not in meditation, and just drop the self-definitions. Just drop the self-definitions. Just -- can you even do that now, just for a moment or two, you taste that? Can you get a glimpse of it? No? Yes? [yogi in background: Yes, a bit.] Yeah? It's a bit more available than we might think. You can kind of just get used to -- oftentimes these definitions of our self are actually -- sometimes they're very conscious; you really hear, "I am this," and we're really suffering with that. Other times the definitions are operating just subliminally. Sometimes just kind of going to a mode of "Just drop the definitions," those more subliminal ones just go a little quiet, and then left with, "Ahh." Especially if we feel a little dukkha around, a little unhappiness, can be really interesting to play with that.
Tomorrow, tomorrow morning in fact, I'm going to introduce another way of looking, in fact introduce some insight practices. And one of them is what we call anattā practice, and I'll talk much more about that. But this is still in the realm of learning to see in other ways, and ways that bring freedom, ways other than the habitual way of seeing and conceiving of the self. Actually learning to look at experience and the self differently. But I'll leave that until then.
So this morning Nick asked a question, and it was a very deep and very complex question, but I feel like I could have done much better in terms of the answer. It's related to this -- the self is empty, yet it's still there in a sense, and it still functions, and there's something about that. And things are empty and yet they still function. Later on in the retreat (this is partly where it gets complex), if we really focus deeply at any time, at the time that we're really focusing deeply on the sense of emptiness of self or emptiness of some thing, that thing begins to fade -- certainly to lose its solidity and substantiality, and then to fade. We'll revisit this in a lot of detail. But when I'm not focusing on the emptiness of something so deeply, but I've seen the emptiness of things deeply, things can appear, and we just know that they're empty. We just know that. And they appear -- the classical way of saying it is that they appear 'like an illusion.' And this world, and the world of self and things that we take so real, it begins to take on, in a very lovely way, a kind of illusory, magical -- 'magical' is a better quote here -- magical-like quality. That's a much better word. It's a magical-like quality.
Yogi 3: Are you talking about in meditation or out?
Rob: Both, but if you go really deep, deliberately contemplating the emptiness of something, that self or whatever will actually disappear from consciousness; it will fade from consciousness. We will talk about this. Afterwards, it's almost like the knowledge of the emptiness of things -- it's like, even when you're not contemplating it deliberately, the things still appear and they do their thing, and they interact and they function, but one has the knowledge, the understanding of the emptiness, so to speak, in the background, and it takes on a kind of magical quality.
It's like one knows: this is just the appearance of things. This is just the appearance of things. And one's not so fully assenting to that solidity of self or other. And in that, things appear, but there's drastically less suffering. There's more openness there. So ... [laughter] That's all I'm going to do for now. I hope that's okay. Nāgārjuna says, in terms of this:
Relying on actions and effects within knowing this emptiness of phenomena [so things function, causes and effects function within knowing the emptiness of phenomena, he says] is even more amazing than the amazing and even more marvelous than the marvelous.[4]
There's something truly, truly magical about this. It's like things appear, everything works, but one's seen the magical spell of it. I'm aware, you know, yesterday, talking about "What does it mean for things to lack inherent existence?" -- it's actually quite a journey to fully understand what that means. But we begin to get more and more clear. It begins to get more and more clear. I'm repeating something -- just to finish -- that I've already said in this talk, but a big part, I think, very generally, of how I conceive of meditation, the whole meditative project, is learning different ways of looking, learning different ways of looking at things, and learning ways of looking that unbind the suffering of things for us.
So to go back to what I began with, we can look in terms of self, and we can look in terms of no-self. Both are useful at different times. Both are useful. And we're learning ways of looking. A non-practitioner, it's probably fair to say, or most human beings, will only be used to looking in terms of self. It's the default. As I said, it's the ingrained, habitual way of looking. What we're doing as practitioners is actually expanding our possibilities, our range of ways of looking. So I can look in terms of self, but I can also look in terms of not-self, and I can choose when I do one and when I do -- in a way, even the degree to which I do one or the other. And in that, it opens up an enormously vaster range of possibilities for freedom, and possibilities for understanding the truth as well.
Yogi 4: I'm tempted to ask -- maybe I'm clinging to some sort of Zen idea of a true self. For me, there are moments when -- I don't know -- opinions, perhaps, fall away. But then it feels like you're being the seeing, you're being the knowing, as you were saying. And at that point, I guess I don't think of it as a way of looking. Maybe that's -- am I deluding myself in that?
Rob: In a subtle way, yes. But this is really important. This exactly has to do with what I was talking about: the spectrum. So at that point, the grosser manifestations of self -- personality self, opinion self, all those sort of grosser shackles -- have fallen away. And what has happened is the identification has gone -- in a very subtle way -- with the looking, with the consciousness, with the seeing. One's, as you said, "being the seeing."
Sometimes you hear that that's it, that's what we're trying to do, that's the arrival point. I would most definitely say not. That's a very lovely stage on the spectrum of much less self, but there's still -- what would it be to even let go of that? What would that be? And to go beyond an identification even with that, even identification with being, or simple being, or being the looking, or being awareness or whatever? That's quite a journey, but that's what we want to kind of communicate and give some sense of how one might actually begin to go beyond that. Is that okay?
Yogi 4: Yeah, I mean, I think perhaps I thought, "Oh, you're going to take all my nice experiences away." But it doesn't feel like that to me.
Rob: No. No, no, no.
Yogi 4: It feels like actually there might be just more space or something like that.
Rob: Absolutely. And I, for one, would never want to take your nice experiences away. [laughter] Some teachers do, but I want you to have all the nice experiences, and I want you to have more. Ultimately it's not about experiences; it's about the understanding, but a lot -- not all the time, but sometimes the experiences help the understanding.
So yes, you're quite right. It's like, keep it, go for it, get really used to that, get familiar with that. As one of my teachers used to say to me, he said, "Get attached, Rob." And I was like, "Really?" [laughter] So you want to get really used to that, and in time, it's almost like hopefully, hopefully, we don't set up house there. Hopefully something in us has a bit more integrity, and it's like, "Maybe there's something more than this. Maybe I can even let go of this. What would that be?" So you still keep access to that stage and that much less self, but it can even go beyond that. We'll get to all this in the weeks.
Yogi 4: Yeah, but that was helpful.
Rob: Good, good. Yeah.
Yogi 5: Is it like taking medicine, taking a drug or taking something, and your body gets used to it, and then it's no longer as effective? You have to take a bigger dose or a different ... I'm using the wrong language.
Yogi 6: You build a tolerance.
Yogi 5: Yes, yes, thank you.
Rob: No, I wouldn't quite put it like that, to be honest. It's more like, when consciousness opens to a new and unfamiliar state of less self, to whatever degree, it's usually quite striking, and quite, "Wow!" The initial reaction we have is, "This must be it!" kind of thing. A lot of people say, "I can't conceive of going further than this." And it's just that it's a bit like -- sometimes I say to people it's a bit like going into a darkened room, and at first you say, "There's nothing here. There's no self here. There's nothing here." And then, a little while, your eyes get used to it, and you see, "Oh, actually, look, there's a bunch of people in here." [laughter] Or whatever it is. It's like we don't notice the subtle dukkha in a state like that. You're talking really subtle now, and the subtle sense of identification. It takes a while to actually get used to it.
So people teach in very different ways. I tend to say to people, "Get attached. Get familiar with that place. Really enjoy it, and drink the freedom of it, let it impress on the being and seep into the being." And then, after a while, "Time to move on. Time to look now: what's still the identification here? What's still ..." -- you know? So, my way of thinking is you get the best of both worlds that way. That make sense if I put it that way?
Yogi 5: Yeah, but it seems very elusive.
Rob: What seems elusive?
Yogi 5: I mean, just to be able to get to that point ...
Rob: Yeah, sure.
Yogi 5: And then to say, "Well, that's not good enough"?
Rob: Okay. [laughter] So. Can you tell what's come in at this point? Can you tell what's come in? It's the measuring self, isn't it? Yeah, okay. So like I said, this is going to creep into practice. We're going to bring this to practice.
We might as well talk about this a little bit. I will give a whole talk about relating to practice, wise relating to practice at some point. But it's coming up now, so I'll talk about it. You know, sometimes teachers make a decision not to say anything about this kind of stuff, and just kind of ignore a little bit Bruce and his question or whatever, so that people don't feel the pain of that, "Well, not good enough. Not good enough." The danger is that then certain stuff doesn't get talked about. It doesn't get communicated. If we're going to communicate it, then the danger is that that pain comes up, and the pain of the measuring self and the inner critic and all that.
So it's really, really important to find a really healthy, balanced relationship with all this. On this retreat, by the end of it, I will -- I can pretty much say this -- be describing experiences and stuff that I know no one has even come near yet. I'm just painting a picture of something. It's very important how I relate to that. It's very important. I can relate to it with a sense of inspiration. I can relate to it with a sense of self-judgment, etc. But this also needs to be investigated. What matters is that you have a sense of possibility. So wherever I am now, I have a sense of, "You know what? I can do that, because I just do this and this, and eventually it's going to unfold that way," rather than a sense of impossibility. And partly I hope that -- what we will try and communicate is a really clear kind of way of proceeding. So it's kind of just a matter of doing this and doing that, and the thing begins to unfold. And with that, and with the practice -- and you'll probably notice over the four weeks -- a sense of possibility begins to emerge, rather than a sense of, "How would I possibly do that?" It is really, really important, really important. You know, and people in here have very different backgrounds, very different histories with meditation, etc.
Yogi 7: Partly what we're saying is that anything you've chosen to define as self, you're setting yourself up for massive failure. I work partly with adolescents, and lots of them have to have perfectly spotless white trainers. If they get some mud on them -- disaster, you know? That's just a crude version of what we're all doing.
Rob: Yes, absolutely, yes. Yes. I want to just say a bit more about this, but I'm not sure what to say right now. You know, what I was saying earlier today about samādhi, it's like the mind has a tendency sometimes to get embroiled in what it doesn't have, or what the problem is, rather than actually feeling what's working for oneself and actually enjoying that sense of possibility for oneself, rather than what I don't have yet and what that must mean about me. So again, there's a kind of bringing oneself back to oneself and one's own experience, and actually, I can feel this unfolding, or I feel just this little bit of release, and I've understood something there. And that's actually really, really important.
Yogi 8: But you keep using the word 'self': "Just bring oneself and myself ..."
Rob: Yes.
Yogi 8: But if I don't have a self ...
Rob: Okay. But didn't I also say tonight that there's the possibility of looking in terms of self and looking not in terms of self? So really, really important is for me to love myself. Me to love myself. I have a relationship with myself of care and me, and I care about myself, and I care about my meditation practice. And it's completely on that level, and really important, you know? Really important. Does that make sense? Yeah? I will revisit -- as I said, a whole talk just about this. It's really, really crucial, especially in a retreat like this.
