Welcome all. I feel quite happy that some people want to investigate this topic of the self with me because I've been really enjoying it and I hope you all do too. This is difficult Dharma, but well worth the difficulty, I say. And there's so much to say, it's a little bit like, I'm not quite sure how to start, and I'm sure I'll come away feeling that it wasn't all said. So Dogen Zenji, our founder in Japan, says in maybe his most well-known saying of all, he says, to study the Buddha way is to study the self.

[01:19]

To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. And when actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away and no trace of this realization remains and this no trace continues endlessly. That could be said to be a commentary on this chapter 18 of Nagarjuna's great work which could be said to be a commentary on one of the Buddha's most important teachings and some early sutras of the Buddha. And I hope that this class will be a kind of experiential event.

[02:26]

It's quite technical, there's a lot to say, It can get very intellectual, and I think it's necessary to get somewhat that way. At the same time, it really has the potential to be something we can really start to experience what these teachings are about, and the value of them, the incredible value of them. It's for people who were here, maybe it was a couple years ago, I did another class on chapter one of Nagarjuna, and I think that, just the nature of that chapter is less experiential, I would say. I think this chapter, and I'll get into soon this work of Nagarjuna and what these different chapters are about, This particular topic of the self, of the person, as you can imagine, is inevitably experiential.

[03:35]

It's about us, it's about what's happening right now to each of us, and our entrapment and freedom turns around this point. I think all of Nagarjuna could be said to be this way, but when just analyzing dependent co-arising of buildings and trees and things is different. We can't get into it quite as directly, at least as excessively, as I feel this chapter. So a little bit of background, kind of history, to put this into context, woven in with the teachings that talk about the self. So I could say the story begins with Shakyamuni Buddha and his great awakening, enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, seeing how things are, and particularly seeing who he was himself, and the actual, the end of suffering, the end of sometimes suffering is maybe too

[04:57]

big a word for us, the end of all intense suffering and the end of even the slightest discontent or dissatisfaction or alienation or separation or dis-ease or anxiety, stress, you know, the end, complete cessation of all of that. And so from that realization began the tradition of Buddhadharma that brought us to this room. So the Buddha is sitting under the tree having just realized this profound way things are that he hadn't realized before after many years of striving with great effort to realize the way things are and to realize the end of suffering, he came to that point and he was very much enjoying this realm he was in, just sitting under the tree there and wandering around the little village and sitting under other trees and he maybe could have gone on like that till he died

[06:26]

But they say various deities came and said that people can understand this. You should try to convey what you understood. And Buddha was like, it's too profound, it's too deep, but it'll be impossible. And they just kept pleading with him. There's people with little dust in their eyes, as they said, who can actually be able to understand this, though it might not be easy. So this is the apology for these types of teachings in the beginning, is they are deeply profound, but they are understandable, this is possible. And so then the Buddha was convinced, he'll try, and his great compassion, you could say these deities who spoke to him were actually his own deep compassion. And so he went looking for his previous teachers who taught him a lot but didn't lead him to the end.

[07:31]

But they were pretty good. And then he realized that they had recently died. So he went to look for his five friends who were practicing with him before he went off alone to realize the way on his own. So he found them. after wandering around quite a bit, and you probably know a lot of this story, right? They kind of left him when they thought that he, you know, because they were all kind of extreme ascetics and, you know, basically starving themselves and so on, and the Buddha thought it would be good to have a little bit of rice for some energy for zazen, and They thought that that was a little too much, and that he'd given up the way, so they kind of, they thought he'd become too indulgent, so they left. And so when they saw him coming, they recognized him, even though it was quite some years later.

[08:35]

And they said, well, let's just, we won't be like mean to him or anything, but, you know, we should just, let's just ignore him, basically. But then when he got closer, he was kind of glowing, and so they... their sort of commitment to ignore him, they basically just forgot about it, and they got out of seat for him, and they washed his feet, and they took his bowl, and so on. And so, I think interesting, you know, that before he even said anything, they couldn't help themselves, right? Something about the way the Buddha was. So, anyway, he started teaching them to cut out some of the details, and he taught the first setting the wheel of Dharma in motion, classic teaching on the Four Noble Truths was his first teaching. One of the things he, basically in the First Noble Truth of suffering or stress or dissatisfaction, he listed all these things, not getting what we want, getting what we don't want, these types of things, and said basically in the end the definition of suffering is

[09:48]

could say, grasping the five skandhas. This is term, upadana pancha skanda. Upadana is like, grasping the five skandhas. It could also be translated as, the five grasping skandhas are the definition of suffering. So, we could interpret this as, grasping the five skandhas as a self, or if we translate it the other way, we could say it's, the five, the skandhas, grasping the skandhas as a self, or the skandhas grasping a self. Either way would work, and I think they kind of come down to virtually the same thing. This is the definition of suffering. And I won't go into that sutra more, but wonderful teaching. And at the end of that teaching, one of these five... shramanas who was practicing with him realized something, he got it.

[10:55]

Now these were already these yogis who had been practicing a long time and they already knew meditation, deeply concentrated states, but they didn't get this point yet about the Four Noble Truths. So one of them kind of got it, kind of first got the kind of first basic understanding It wasn't like they had come to the place that Buddha did, but something really shifted for them. And they kind of lit up and like, I understand. And so that was, you know, what later came to be called stream entry, which involves no longer grasping this view of this independent self. So then he kept teaching the others, and one by one, they started to get it.

[11:58]

Maybe he just kept teaching the same sutra, the same teaching over and over. We don't know exactly what, but... And you can picture the scene that's described in these early teachings where the ones after they got it, those ones would go and collect alms for the rest of them that hadn't gotten it yet and were just constantly listening to the Buddha teach. So I put the ones to work who got it, and they didn't mind. So I first said that just a couple of them would go collect the food for the rest, and then three of them collected food for the rest, and then four of them, until they all got it. Maybe they all went and collected food together. And then they all got to this point of what we call a stream entry, which is technically defined later.

[13:00]

And then Buddha taught another teaching. We don't know what he did in the meantime with all those people, but what's known as the Buddha's second teaching, second sutra. And these are short, like one-page sutras now. Supposedly are like this, you know, this is oral tradition, but probably something like this. And the second one is particularly on this issue of the self. And that's one of these handouts. It's the... The Discourse on the Not-Self Characteristic. Anathalakana Sutta. That's Pali, and Sanskrit would be like the anatman. Oh, there's maybe too many people, huh? There were 25, so we maybe ran out. Maybe people who aren't going to be here for the whole series and are just here for a week or something could pass those on to people who are staying.

[14:09]

There's two. Anyway, I'll make more of it for next time. So the discourse on the not-self-characteristic is supposedly the Buddha's second teaching. And you can see it's quite short. You know, Buddha's in Varanasi. The game, Refuge, is another translation of Deer Park, Varanasi. And so he brings out this teaching of the... Well, he mentioned the five... skandhas, the five aggregates, in the first teaching, but he didn't define them. He just said, grasping the five aggregates. So, you know, it's probably kind of a summarized thing. Maybe he did expand on what they are in his first teaching. But this is particularly, the whole teaching is on the five skandhas and the self and the relationship between them. And then this is, this chapter 18 of Nagarjuna is also on this topic of the relationship of the five skandhas and the self. So you could say Nagarjuna's Chapter 18 is a commentary on this second teaching of the Buddha.

[15:18]

And we will come back to what this teaching is. And then also on this sheet, if I forget to mention, I just selected these. There's a lot of early teachings on the five skandhas and the self and all different variations and These are particularly wonderful kind of different variations, because one is really talking about how it's not a matter of self or not self. It's the middle way. So this is the short teaching to Ananda. And then this water snake simile sutra, sections of that I think are also really wonderful and variations on the theme. Hopefully we'll get into the details of these. Anyway, so the Buddha taught more and more, and more and more people got it. Actually, at the second sutra, these five stream enterers, they all five at once, apparently, as it says actually at the end of the sutra, realized the end of outflows.

[16:23]

And this would be the realization of arhat-ship. which is rare attainment in Buddha Dharma, but something about the Buddha was around, and these yogis were great practitioners. So that was the end of the sutra. It says, now there were six arhats in the world, the Buddha and these other five. And from there, it just took off. It's amazing to think of how this could have really been this way. There's this kind of brand new kind of teaching, very related to all these wandering yogis in India at the time. Similar kinds of teachings, but something was different about this one. It just spread like wildfire. The stories go on from here. Very quickly, hundreds and hundreds of people realizing the end of suffering, basically. And then it just went on, spread from India to...

[17:28]

China and Korea and Japan and Tibet and Thailand and Cambodia and all over Asia. It basically became like the religion of these countries and then came over to America and so on. And by that point, of course, many, many variations on the theme, styles and practice. But at some point in the first or second century, we're not quite sure of the dates exactly, this great Bodhisattva Nagarjuna appeared on the planet, where Buddhism was thriving in India at this time. There were Buddhist universities, people practicing everywhere, a lot of scholastic Buddhism. And Nagarjuna practiced at one of these universities, It kind of felt like things were getting overly scholastic and not experiential enough. There were these Abhidharma teachings, dividing the mind into all these factors, just infinitely analyzing different things.

[18:40]

Maybe not completely experiential, but it just got too stagnant somehow. It got too bogged down in the details. Nagarjuna kind of wanted to refresh the Dharma, so he kind of referred back to the early teachings of the Buddha, the kind of most basic, profound, simple in some ways, teachings of the Buddha on the middle way, which you find all throughout the Pali canon, the early teachings of the Buddha, and kind of brought them out in a new way and in a very very detailed, methodical way of really showing what this middle way, free from extreme views, is. There's legends of Nagarjuna going down into the ocean, the bottom of the ocean where these Nagas, they're like dragon serpents.

[19:47]

Here's one of them coming out of the ocean. where they live and they had kept the Prajnaparamita Sutras at the bottom of the ocean since the time of the Buddha who taught them and felt like maybe the Nagas felt like the world wasn't ready for such profound teachings yet. So this was this, you know, some hundreds of years after the Buddha had passed, felt like, okay, the world is ready. And then the Gajan is the one to, like, bring these out. This is the picture of one of the Nagas handing the Prajnaparamita sutras, which include the Heart Sutra, the Diamond Sutra, to Nagarjuna, who's stacking them up here and imbibing them and turning out his great work, the fundamental verses on the middle way, Mulla Madhyamaka Karika, which is the other one of these handouts,

[20:50]

has chapter 18, so there's 27 chapters in this work, and it's all different aspects of Dharma, and all these different factors in the Buddhist world. Each chapter had some point to make, and so the Self, Atman, was one of the really important teachings, so you could say why it's in this order, why it's chapter 18, but I think not so important. But it does seem to be an important chapter of the work as a whole. When I was deciding about this class and thinking of doing another chapter of Nagarjuna, looking through, I just felt like this chapter has got some juice to it. And then later, as I started getting into it, you know, maybe they say things about different chapters too, but one of the great Tibetan teachers says that this chapter is kind of like a summary of their work as a whole, and it all kind of springs from this chapter.

[22:02]

And the great Tibetan teacher Tsongkhapa, who is the founder of Galukpa, the school of Tibetan Buddhism, which is like the Dalai Lama's school. Anyway, he's one of the really great scholar yogis of Tibetan Buddhism in the 15th century or so. And let's see this book, Ocean of Reasoning here, that's his commentary on Nagarjuna's fundamental verses. Actually, probably in English, the greatest commentary, most thorough commentary on the whole book. And anyway, supposedly he had been practicing Tsangkapa many, many years. He was already a great teacher. And after teaching a long time already, and he went off into retreat for a while with a small group of people for some years, and just basically studying these teachings, Nagarjuna and the commentaries on the Middle Way teachings.

[23:05]

And over and over he really understood really thoroughly and had had actually quite a lot of experiences confirming the teachings and so on. But his great enlightenment was at the end of one of these longer retreats. He was kind of in semi-retreats and teaching some and so on. Also during these retreats, his protector deity was Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of wisdom. So he would just bow to Manjushri literally, maybe millions of times, you know, like over and over. When he wasn't studying the Middle Way, he was doing these devotional kind of practices, so it's a whole emotional, devotional, body-mind practice, right? So, he had this dream about, he'd been studying commentaries on Nagarjuna and had this dream

[24:14]

about understanding it in a slightly new way, and then he woke up and he apparently opened the text to where he left off the night before, and it happened to be the beginning of chapter 18, and he read the first verse of chapter 18, and phew, Sangkhapa's great enlightenment that was like, and from then on, his life and teaching exploded into wonder. So... this first verse of chapter 18, which is really the main verse of the chapter. And I will probably mostly talk about this verse, simple verse, but a lot in there. And then just recently, I read something from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who doesn't talk about his own experiences so much. He's very humble, but he said something happened with him like lightning coursing through his chest, he said, again with this verse 18, 1, first verse of chapter 18 of this text.

[25:24]

So something about this, this verse, right? Powerful stuff. You could say that the first verse of chapter 1 sets up this tetralemma of Nothing arises from itself, from another, from both, or from neither. This is the greatest verse to realize the emptiness of all phenomena. That verse is elaborated on endlessly, to clarify that verse. And you could say this verse, verse 1 of chapter 18, is the basic verse for... realizing the emptiness or selflessness of the person. Sometimes it's emptiness or selflessness are synonyms. It could be the selflessness of dharmas, of things, of phenomena, and selflessness of the person.

[26:25]

They're kind of two different approaches to almost the same thing. I mean, the person is kind of like a phenomena, but they're slightly different. As you can imagine, there's a little more juice in looking at the person. And the reasoning basically comes down to the same thing, but a slightly different angle. So, for example, Chandrakirti, who has got the classic commentary, he's got one line-by-line commentary on Nagarjuna's work, but his more well-known kind of introduction to the middle way, is broken into these two parts, basically, and one is basically a whole commentary on this first verse of chapter 1, and one's a whole elaborative commentary on this first verse of chapter 18. So these two verses are, if you study two verses in the whole text of Nagarjuna, those two, I think, would be the ones.

[27:28]

And there's lots, lots written about them. So this one about the person also... You could say these early teachings of the Buddha, some people would say that the Buddha's main teaching, maybe, is on the selflessness of the person. And then some people would say, well, the Mahayana, the great vehicle, then teaches the emptiness or selflessness of all phenomena, and that distinguishes the great vehicle. It's more vast scope. So another great thing I think about this chapter is it's really universal. All schools of Buddhism would agree with this chapter. And it would be pertinent to Theravada Buddhism, where they're working on the emptiness, selflessness of the person. And so the more I study it, the more wonderful I think this chapter and this verse in particular is.

[28:29]

So, this is going to be important to, since this verse, just to read the verse so we have some context, if the self were identical with the aggregates or skandhas, it would have to arise and cease. If it were different from the aggregates, it would have the character, it would not have the characteristics of the aggregates. So before we get into that, you can see that this is basically, it's about the relationship of the self, and we're going to see what that is, and the aggregates, or skandhas, that, as we chant in the beginning of the Heart Sutra, are listed. So we're going to have to really define and clarify what these two things are, and then clarify the relationship between them, and this is going to be like, I hope a really cool thing for people to do.

[29:31]

I find it very cool. And also, so this self, this inherently existent, independent self that we believe in, is the topic, is what the self is here. It's a false belief. You can know from the start that they're saying it's a false belief and we're going to have to to this conclusion experientially ourselves, but this point about this false belief in self, I find very interesting studying these teachings because there's almost contradictory opinions about how to work with this thing. And just before we get into this, just to bring out to this that one of, say, two basic approaches in studying the Self, to forget the Self, as Dogen says, one could be said to be something like, basically to just start forgetting the Self.

[30:48]

To study the Self is to forget the Self, so to basically If some view of self comes up, basically just forget it. Drop it. Let go of this view. Or any self grasping and so on. If it starts to come up, just relax. Let go. And this is generally the Zen approach, or at least I think Zen center approach, and maybe classical Zen approach even. And you'll see what the other one is, and see how it may be different. And I think when you look at the early teachings of the Buddha, they seem to be maybe a little bit more like this, although you could interpret them in either way. But modern Theravada teachers, and particularly I think the greatest Western Theravada teachers now, who I have deep respect for, seem to talk about this practice in this way, the mentioning of...

[31:53]

basically when views of self come up, you're just letting go of them. Another way to put it is, there's this term ahamkara, that literally could be translated as I-making, making a self. And so this style of practice would be like, just don't make the self. And they would kind of say, well, it's not like there's some... kind of lurking, hidden view of self in there that you have to like destroy. It's like, it's actually not there until you make it. And we just make it moment to moment, maybe like most of the time we're making it, but just like basically this style of practice would be just not making it. And kind of catching ourselves, maybe just as we're starting to make a self, make an I, and just don't go there, you know. And of course very challenging in to do this, and wonderful practice, and maybe this is how some people practice here.

[32:55]

I think it isn't, we maybe don't talk about it in exactly those words, but when we say just let go, in a sense we could say, well that's what we mean by just let go, let go of grasping anything, and actually any kind of grasping in a way is grasping at some kind of a self, or it's the self, this illusory self that's doing the grasping. So this is one style, briefly anyway. The other style, that might sound quite different, is actually saying that there is this kind of hidden, lurking, actually innate view of the inherently existing self. Innate means we're born with this view, and every, not just human beings, but sentient beings, animals included, have this view, born with it. And from beginningless time, yeah, basically beginningless time, if you believe in cycle of lives, and even if you don't believe that story, I think this story could still work, that we're born with this view.

[34:06]

But the rebirth model works, I think, quite well, because you can actually see how actually evolution, for example, created this view from... maybe amoebae didn't have it, but pretty early on, there's benefits for the survival of the species in having a view of a separate me that's kind of independent and kind of like the sort of controller of the skandhas, actually, of the aggregates of body and mind, the kind of sort of the one that holds together the body and mind. We're going to talk about different ways of talking about this, but there's value in that for survival, right? You can come out over other groups of skandhas, right? And it seems like, although actually, body and mind, a living being can function without this view.

[35:11]

So another way, well, let's see how to not get ahead of myself. Anyway, there is a kind of actually conventional self that's a kind of imputed, nominal kind of sense of self that can go on quite fine without the belief that it exists of itself in a real way. Yes, the creatures need certain things in order to... Yeah, yeah. But it's, you know, this is going to be tricky. We're going to have to look into this because even like the skandhas, for example, desire is part of the five skandhas, even before there's a sense of it, even before there's this belief in self, or I shouldn't say before, but irrespective of this belief in self, the skandhas

[36:19]

are basically these factors of body and mind that we attribute self to, is basically what they are. So just to finish this other, so we have this one practice of letting go, not doing eye making, not creating a self, moment to moment, letting go, and the other one is actually to locate this innate very subtle, semi-hidden belief that we all have that is locatable and findable and experienceable, and actually bring it up front in a strong kind of way to really look at it, which almost sounds like the opposite of the first one, right? As soon as it starts to come up, you let it go. Don't get into it. This is kind of getting into it.

[37:19]

You're going to bring it up in order to see exactly what it is and see what it is, basically, and see how it's not the way we think it is. And this involves some analysis and reasoning. And, you know, I hope it doesn't get too complicated. It's pretty basic, common sense kind of reasoning, actually. But it does involve that aspect of the mind, sort of semi-analytical aspect of the mind, in order to convince the mind that this thing, that this belief that we've had since beginningless time, so this is no, like, small belief, right? To see through that. And so it actually... then we no longer make it in the same way. That eye-making thing doesn't happen in the same way. So, maybe you can get the sense that these two different approaches are kind of different, and the Tibetan approach has some of each, but tends to veer towards the second one.

[38:28]

This is more using this reasoning, and even the Tibetan schools, like people known Dzogchen and Mahamudra, very similar to Zen in many ways, still they all agree that these reasonings are necessary to clarify the view of what the Self is very clearly, and then within that view, then drop it all off. So the Zen and maybe Theravada style is almost like, by letting go, over and over and over again, the view gradually maybe gets clarified. Yes? How would you locate Dogen, say, in studying the self-historic? Yeah, so Dogen, for example, I think we see both of his styles, both these styles in Dogen, and we'll bring up different Dogen teachings, hopefully. But I'd say that one I understand more is a little more like the second. And actually Dogen in general, you know, has a lot of writing, and

[39:32]

In general, though it's not doing this very methodical reasoning that the Tibetans do, I'd say Dogen generally kind of falls into the second category of, Dogen says many times throughout his works, examine closely this point, and so on. But he does it in this very kind of poetic, fluid, kind of creative way. You might not notice that it's actually reasoning, but it's in there. and other Zen teachings. In a way, you could say, well, any teaching is going to be like giving some teaching on this. Anything more than just let go of everything is doing some reasoning or some looking at how things are. So I think Zen does have both sides and Theravada has both sides. And in a way, the second approach is a little, maybe a little bit more like Rinzai Zen in the sense that you're kind of like... It's kind of about a sudden experience in a way.

[40:36]

Sometimes they say that Rin Zai Zen is more like you're emphasizing this turning point where you can show, like you see nature of things in a new way. And it's kind of like Tibetans sometimes talking about how this practice plays out. It's kind of like you get to this point and actually something changes. in your view, like you see in a different way at a certain moment. And I think Soto Zen has this too, but it's a slightly different approach. Anyway, I think maybe as we go into this we'll get into both these approaches, but I think particularly it's the second one that I intend to emphasize because this seems to be the approach of Nagarjuna, is using this reasoning, and then the Tibetan sort of bringing the meditations, more experiential meditations that you use these reasonings to do.

[41:44]

So it's something a little different maybe than we're used to in Zen, and it works well, I think, in a kind of class format, but it totally informs Zazen, and you can work with this stuff in meditation, and... I think very fruitful because I think some of these teachings also say that things like, sometimes get a little critical of this first approach and say you can be letting go of this eye-making thing over and over again for years and years and lifetimes and lifetimes and it'll just keep happening, right? It just keeps coming up and we might have that experience, right? I just keep letting go and maybe it's gradually training our habits and we catch it earlier and we don't get quite as into it but it could be argued that actually your view isn't changing. I know that there's suffering in this I-making, making a self, I know that, so as soon as it starts to happen, let it go, and actually the suffering doesn't come up, but this view will keep arising.

[42:54]

some would argue, until we really clarified how this is, through reasoning actually, and then experience through the reasoning. So that's hopefully what we can come to conclude, is how this self is. Another point about this too that I wanted to mention was sometimes it can sound like this study of the self can sound, especially to people who aren't practitioners, as very selfish, right? You're just like getting totally into yourself and you're kind of like self-engrossed and self-obsessed and you're just like looking at the self, figuring out what the self is and like

[43:56]

And even if it's about finding your own freedom, it's like, well, there's all these suffering people out there. Isn't that a little bit self-obsessive to just be into this get-over-the-self thing and spend all your time on that? And this could sound this way. We might actually have this feeling on the bodhisattva path. We might come to practice feeling like, actually, I really want to find a way to help others. And we know that compassion is this essential aspect of the path. And so how does this tie into that? So one way to look at it is that actually the way to actually really help others, well, the way to be free from suffering, right, is according to the Buddha in his first Four Noble Truths teaching that suffering is grasping that five skandhas is self, right? So, the freedom from suffering, end of suffering, cessation of suffering, realization of liberation, is the not grasping this five skandhas as self, or not the self grasping the five skandhas.

[45:17]

So, if that is really the end of suffering, for everybody, suffering is going to end for anybody, that's the way it's going to end. So partly, this is worth contemplating on your own for a long time to really see if you go for that story, actually. So there's many ways to relieve suffering, help beings in many ways, and they're all great parts of practice in order to complement working on understanding this view and so on. But if you really come down to it, in the end, the way that beings are going to be really freed from suffering is to realize the emptiness of self and emptiness of everything. That's the real end of suffering. So, if we really come to that conclusion, which I personally am convinced that this is the case, then the way to

[46:21]

free people from suffering, and the way to liberate all beings from suffering is to help all beings realize the emptiness of self. This is maybe obvious, but a huge point. Otherwise, we can start feeling guilty, especially if we're getting really into this, spending all the time in this kind of stuff. Maybe this is kind of selfish, actually. And of course we do help people in all kinds of conventional ways too, but if our vow is to save all beings, which we recite, that the fulfillment of that vow is however we can to help all beings, including while all beings realize emptiness, and the only way to do that, this is another part of the thing in here, is that the only way we can really help all beings realize it is if we do ourselves. I mean, we can hear these teachings and pass them on because we heard maybe they're true, so they're probably helpful, so let's help other people.

[47:27]

But to really finish the project with everyone, because then people are going to have questions, right? Like, well, what about this, this, this? Well, I don't know. Read the text. And maybe they didn't really clarify it either. So if we're not really clear, then we can't really help others be completely clear and free. So sometimes we say bodhisattva is like everyone else first, right? And that is the spirit. That's the bodhisattva spirit. Kind of that attitude is the most wonderful attitude to actually help let go of the self. But in kind of practicality, practical terms, you could say, well, if you're really getting into looking at it, it's kind of like you have to realize this yourself, in your own body and mind, to help others. So... kind of two parts in it, right? It's like, for all beings to become completely free of suffering, they have to realize emptiness. For them to realize it, for me to help them realize it, I have to realize it.

[48:32]

So one of these texts said something like, if you have the bodhisattva vow to free all beings from suffering, and you're not putting incredible time and energy and devotion into realizing emptiness yourself, It's just empty words. You're just completely... It's nice sentiment, but you're not really enacting that vow. So when I heard that, that really struck me. I kind of sat up straighter somehow. I was like, wow, something... Because we don't usually think that way, right? We think, well, we're working on our own thing, and we're really helping others, and this emptiness thing is kind of maybe extra. fun along the way, but if you see it, does that make sense to people? If you really see it like that, then when you're studying Nagarjuna, for example, you can say, for all beings, really, really, this is how beneficial this could be to all beings, right?

[49:38]

Even if I don't complete it, even if I don't realize that as much progress as I can make along the way, in this life, be great fruit for everyone. So there's a reasoning in itself right there. There's something you can contemplate, that kind of process. And I think it's well worth it because that provides the fuel for this kind of study and practice to really... Otherwise we can get tired and bored and frustrated because it's difficult. And also, I'd say of these two approaches, interestingly, I'd say the first approach is very, almost like instantly rewarding. I just let go. And just instantly we'll feel like lighter and freer. Hard to do maybe in itself, but it's very accessible. You can do it right away and right now. And we feel some relief from that.

[50:42]

And in a way, not so difficult to talk about and understand. And it's almost like non-work, right? It's like, well, maybe it's the self that's working too hard to just let go. This other way is kind of like work. It's kind of like takes, I think, quite great effort to, um, uh, sometimes studying this stuff, my brain starts to hurt. And I'm like, how is, like, what about, ah? Because it's like, it's, um, using different parts of the mind that we're maybe not so used to. And, um, But then the fruit of such maybe hard work, you could say, is maybe even more, could be more wonderful and joyful and freeing. And I think these two approaches can be combined also. So, before we get into details more,

[51:47]

Any questions or doubts so far? Yeah. So if they could be combined, aren't they kind of antithetical? Because if you're forgiving the self, then it's hard to bring it forward. Yeah. Right, it's true. In a way, from that perspective, they're somewhat contradictory. I think one way you could say that they could be combined is... Before bringing up the Self in this way, it's good to be very relaxed, and very calm, and stable, and concentrated, and flexible, and so on. And the first one, I think, helps with that. In fact, if we have this really strong grasp, and we're like, here we go, yeah, do the meditation, grasping. It's too gross, a sense.

[52:47]

It's too... It's too much, actually, for this kind of meditation. We need to have a very strong sense of it, but at the same time, it's this almost paradoxical thing that it works best when it's in a very settled, calm and concentrated mind that we very carefully bring up this sense. Even if it's strong, we have to keep this grounding going on. We'll talk about how it's possible to do this. So that's why the first one can be grounding in that way. And also, maybe, you know, in a sense from the start, maybe we've all heard teachings about not-self and so on, and we've heard it a lot maybe, and we kind of know that there's no inherently existing self before we even get into this. So I think... We don't know the depth of it, but we kind of, maybe, people are all different gradations of having heard that teaching and have some idea of it, and probably our idea of it is slightly off, because as we get into this, the view is going to get more and more subtle.

[53:58]

But I think partly, you know, this actually practicing moment to moment, letting go of self-grasping, is going to be... helpful when actually the grasping is no longer possible. It's kind of warming up to it in a way. I think if people suddenly realize the absence of inherent existence of the self, if they haven't done some practice of letting go and have some context of meditation practice, which sometimes maybe happens to people like if they drop acid or something maybe, and sometimes people can freak out. So the first kind of practice is like kind of a grounding thing in a way, and it's putting it in context. So then if this thing happens at the second one, that we already know letting go of the Self is to some extent, it's just going to be a more profound one.

[55:09]

Anyway, there's other ways of talking about their relationship, and we'll probably get into it as we go on. Yeah. Oh, like this window? Okay. This, this, yeah, as we get into it, this is going to take intense concentration and awakeness. If you can't, in some ways, you can't really do some of this reasoning stuff if you're not really awake. We haven't really gotten into the nitty-gritty of it yet, though. Also, you could say that the whole path of practice could be said to be in many models of practice, but like the renunciation of basically concern about if you want to get really radical, you can say, you're concerned about anything other than this point, right?

[56:16]

Anything other than emptiness. And so that's the first step, you could say. And the second aspect of practice is bodhicitta. So just emptiness without that could become self-centered. And sometimes to say bodhicitta is actually, it's a wish, you know, for, wish to realize, Emptiness for the benefit of all beings. And sometimes I say, partly it's the wish for everyone else to practice renunciation. Because in a way, renunciation, in some ways, if it's complete, is already free. We say that in our ordination ceremony. Something like... renouncing everything, you are Buddha, something like this, we say in our ceremony. So in some ways, complete renunciation would be renunciation of the sense of inherently existing self, too.

[57:19]

But still, we start practicing any kind of letting go of anything along the way, and then we bring in this great wish, compassionate wish, and then the realization of emptiness would be the third part. clarifying the view of emptiness and realizing completely. And then that would feed back. If it goes in a loop, you could say that would feed back to, well then, we know there's nothing to hold on to. And then our wish is even greater to see that beings and people especially are suffering, and they could be free. If we would become free, then we could see, well, actually this potential is there for everybody. And it's just like this fine line in a way, this little turn. And we don't need to fix people up in some way that they're not. It's just like, if only this little shift. So although more compassion can arise, we see the possibility, totally sunk in suffering, and yet it's so possible to be free in any situation we might see after realizing the view.

[58:28]

And then that would clarify the view more and so on. Okay, so the inherently existent self is the... Inherently existing means it exists on its own. This is this view that supposedly we are born with, an innate view, an inherently existent self. And we have this, even as we speak, as right now, we're actually holding this view, supposedly, even if it's not active, it's like a dorm, it's like sleeping, it's resting, right? But we can bring it up any point, and it will, mostly like other things, we'll bring it up at any point. But it's just waiting, basically, to...

[59:31]

to wake up and cause trouble. I have a question. It goes back to the idea of need. If the need arises, there, for me, the self is created. There's something in the need. And if you feel, I need something, this is actually locating the sense. Particularly, there could be an experience of, I feel a need arising. Maybe the self would be a little, maybe it'd be in there, but a little more murky. But if you say, I need such and such, in fact, this saying the word, I, is one very good technique in this meditation. to find the sense. In fact, the word I works better than the word me in our language because it's very personal.

[60:39]

That's our personal pronoun. We don't say, well, me is a little bit more removed. That happened to me. It's like some other me kind of, but I need something immediately, the sense. So one way, as we're going to get into at some point, locating yourself, Yeah, but I think if you want to find the self, particularly to focus in on what is this self that we're starting to talk about, you could ask, who is it that needs something?

[61:44]

Who needs? Well, I do. And so as we start talking about this, see if you can start to get a feeling, it's kind of a feeling or a sense for what this I is, because we can experience it. Yeah. Before we get into aggregates, yeah, we're going to get into that. But first, it's just the sense of self. This is almost like before we get into the aggregates. This sense of I being inherently existing. We're just defining this term now. Inherently existing or essential, or I think a good way to put it, is existing by way of its own character. So maybe that... For me, that actually works better. That phrasing. The self, you could say it about anything, any object, existing by way of its own character, meaning independent of not depending on anything else.

[62:53]

The character of the self exists by way of its own character, or essentially, inherently, The word inherent we don't use very much in the language. I looked up inherent. It means existing in something as a natural and inseparable quality. And also can mean innate or inborn or intrinsic. So the intrinsically existing self. The self that exists or naturally existing is another term. It means like it exists just kind of like, there it is, naturally existing on its own. These different words might give you some sense of it. Self-generating? Self-generating, yeah, self-generating, not other-dependent, objectively existing, existing by way of its own power.

[64:04]

Here's another one that's a little nuanced, different. Existing in the basis of designation. This might not make sense to some people, but we designate things onto a self. We designate, we impute something on there, and we think that there's some basis that we impute onto, but the inherent existence is like it exists in the base of the designation, kind of before there's any designation, before we call it a self. Even before we name it, right? That's another way to put it. Before we name it, it's already there, like, really real. Yeah. Do you have one? Yeah. Well, just in Elena's example of taking a hand out of the fire, it would seem to me it's possible to respond to a situation, a condition, a fire hand with a hand, without a sense of sense. Yeah, I think so, yeah. So that's when you said a need.

[65:05]

That's kind of a funny example because we usually don't think of, like, I have a need to take my hand out of the fire. We usually just take it right out before we even think of our need to do that. But it's more like when we start thinking more about our needs. I was thinking politically about creatures, you know, the beginning of individual creatures. association between the beginning of self by saying... Survival. ...need to survive this environment. Definitely. Yeah, yeah. I think that's probably how it started. And you could look at this whole thing scientifically as evolution, right? And see how it progressed. And it seems like other animals, for example, that are maybe further down the evolutionary chain, even like dogs, seem to have this sense of self, as we'd start to describe it more.

[66:06]

You see how... And that's the proposal of all these ancient teachings is that actually dogs have this innate view. Dogs have a view, actually, which we don't usually think that way. Yeah, you can see from the way they act that they do. That's how we can see we do, too, by the way we act. But then that's really the question I was asking. It wasn't so much about the reflex about fire, but that there are conditions, we respond to conditions, we're in a dependently colorizing situation. Yeah. without a self, the conditions without a self. Or without inherently existing self. Yeah, so in this dance of a play of moments of response, [...] and interactive and responding, it seems like it would look, because our thinking tells us so, it looks like there's a self we met, But the same behavior could be going on without a self, because it is, in fact. I think we should clarify without an inherently existing self, because there is actually, and one of these sheets has these five different kinds of self.

[67:14]

One of the kinds is the conceptually imputed self, this kind of a conventional I, or self, and that's the one that actually is not a problem. And we do, we also have that. But we misinterpret that one as an inherently existent one. Which one? So on the back of Nagarjuna's chapter, it says types of self. So there's the dependently co-arisen self that Catherine was kind of alluding to about just the five aggregates. It says here, for people who don't have it, conventionally or dependently co-arisen self. It exists conventionally. It is the interrelationship of the five aggregates of body and mind. We haven't gotten into them yet, but it's form, feeling, perception, formation, consciousness that we attribute a person to, which includes body, mind, and the whole world, including the conceptually imputed self.

[68:21]

That's actually part of the dependently co-arisen self. And it's inconceivably coming to be from beginningless time. Also, the inherently existent innate one is also from beginningless time. But this one, even more beginningless, actually, this one came first, you could say. It actually did come, you could say, before the inherently existent one. This one, dependently co-arisen self. That's why I kind of made up this old model, but put that as number one, because this is the root, right? This self is inconceivable. We can't actually, we can't maybe directly experience, we can't get a handle on this one. It's just the flow of everything, right? And, but we don't refute this one. This is, this dependently co-arisen self, no problem. No problem. We don't say there's no self about that self. And the next one on the list is the conceptually imputed self. This one also exists conventionally.

[69:24]

It's an aspect of the dependently co-arisen self. It means it dependently co-arises from all things. It's imagined to be inherently existent. This particular one, this conceptually imputed self, is imagined to be inherently existent, but actually it is merely imputed, projected, imagined, in dependence on the five aggregates of body and mind. And this is... Each word in here is really crucial. It's not imputed over body and mind exactly. That would be a little bit off. So clarifying this view, to get specific, it's imputed, dependent on body and mind. Body and mind are already dependably co-arisen, and then the imputation is another layer of dependence. It's dependent on the interdependent body and mind. I don't know if you could follow that.

[70:26]

But anyway... It couldn't do it without... The imputation couldn't happen without... Yeah, it couldn't happen without, and it's not even like... We might think that the imputation is kind of like attached to, kind of overlaid on the body and mind. That's a little bit off, because it's still like... You know, because it's not some thing. It's an imagination imputed... The basis of imputation is... The body and mind, the five scounders, it's imputed dependent on that basis. This is getting tricky now. We're going to keep going over this. Yeah. Non-conscious isness. Hmm? What would you put non-conscious isness? Non-conscious isness. Business with non-consciousness out of itself. I don't think there's such thing. I think there is no is-ness without consciousness. Like what would be an example?

[71:34]

Pure determinism. What? Pure determinism. But like a phenomenon, a phenomenon that would be is-ness without consciousness. Do you mean something like a tree could just be without consciousness? Or the sum total of everything. The sum total of everything. But that is with consciousness, though. Is it? Well, consciousness is an aspect of it. And actually, in some ways, you could say consciousness creates that, too. So part of this thing, too, we could get into that. discussion, but also I think it's good to remember that in terms of this discussion, I think it's most helpful to remember that this whole discussion is in terms of our experience.

[72:37]

And if not, then, because that's the Buddha's, in one of these early sutras, I hope you read this at home or something, because the Buddha says, I only teach suffering and the end of suffering, and so if questions got too abstract or didn't relate directly to that point, say, well, let's go back to the point here, because this might relate to the point, but for now, I think we should just say, you might see what you're asking about might fit into number one on this list, the dependent coerisen self, or might fit into this number five, true self. I was looking at it more from the aspect of five. Of thought. Yeah, well, let's see when we get there. Yeah, it may be that there's something like this. So anyway, the conceptually imputed self is merely imputed, dependent on the five skandhas, but that's the very one, that mere imputation is the very one that we believe to be inherently existing.

[73:43]

That's kind of how we can... Does that start to make sense? It's a wonderful... you know, set up here, I think, or how this is put. Okay, so then, this is also called the mere I. And this is when we say I have a need for such and such, this is the I that we're actually referring to. And it's actually not a problem if we don't believe it as to be inherently existent. This is a function to get around in the world. We don't just say, like, well, there's these five skandhas doing things. In our language, we can use the word I, and the Buddha used the word I. Often, because he was playing with this stuff, sometimes he would say, the Thathagata says such and such, the thus come one, to kind of remind us that it's not really I, it's the thus come. He did say I? Well, he did say I, yeah. In some of these sutras, you'll see.

[74:45]

He says I. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he does use the word, I don't know in Pali Sanskrit what form it is there. And this is the one he's referring to, number two, the conceptually imputed self. He's talking about, there's this conventionally speaking, there's this kind of sum, it's not the sum of the five skandhas, but it's imputed, dependent on the five skandhas. 12? Oh, verse. Oh, we're actually looking, this is this, um, not Nagarjuna's verses, but the, uh, the types of self on the other side. So these numbered things here. And then, so the inherently existent self. So I already mentioned some. This one does not exist at all.

[75:46]

This is an important point because sometimes they say when you get into this view, they say you can refute too much. This would be a problem if you refute this one, actually. This number two, conceptually imputed. The conceptual imputation is going on. It doesn't mean there's a self there. It doesn't mean there's an inherently existent self. There's just a conceptually imputed self. I think what happens is, oh God, just conceptually imputed things, it's like... Now, you've been studying the Sanjay Nirmotana Sutta, so this is a little bit different than what we call the imputational character, because that one is to be, in a way, refuted. It's different. Actually, if you go back and read the definition of that character, it's combining two of them, in a way.

[76:56]

It's combining number two and three, actually. I don't want to get into this. It's like saying that the illusion exists. Yes. Number two is that the illusion exists. Number three is that there's merely illusion. No problem. That one can go on. And in fact, this one... This number three, no, number two, the conceptually imputed self. After the realization of emptiness of self, this illusion continues for a bodhisattva, as I understand, until what's called the eighth Bhumi, the eighth stage bodhisattva, which is this incredible, you know, they say Nagarjuna was like a third stage bodhisattva or something. So it's kind of like this... Nobody on the planets in a thousand years maybe realized that. So it's like all through these great bodhisattvas, they've actually, they all keep this, they still have this conceptually imputed self.

[77:59]

But then at the eighth stage bodhisattva, actually that impute, that conceptual appearance actually disappears. And that's like we can't even conceive of what's going on there and how they function and so on. Yeah. Do you have a question? Okay, well, maybe we'll finish the list. How about... Because then you can contemplate this for the week. The inherently existent self does not exist at all. These are different types of self. Some exist and some don't. We're just conventionally calling them self. The inherently existing one doesn't exist at all. It's the innate, deeply rooted illusion, like way deeply, which is just a footnote that that's why this, you know, this just letting go thing is like, this thing is so deep, right?

[79:06]

We've had this from beginningless time. It's like entrenched in the whole way we view the world. And so to actually... uproot that or see through this belief is like a kind of a pretty radical thing. And in fact, they say, as you approach seeing this, if you don't start becoming extremely afraid, you're probably not really doing it quite right. So I don't mean to scare anyone, but this is a good fear. You get scared with it or without it. Yeah, either way, it's going to be, yeah, the fear without it is going to be like much worse. It's like the first one is you're always letting go of the self, but you always believe that there's a self to let go of. And the second technique is understanding that there is no self. Then as you're letting go of it, you're understanding you're letting go of an illusion. That's one way to put it, yeah. I think you could do the first one while also kind of understanding that there's not, but maybe not deeply, deeply understanding.

[80:09]

Like we hear there's no self, and we kind of know that, and that's why we can kind of let go of it already. And it feels better anymore. And it feels, we know, and that kind of proves that it's like something's on the right track, but... But yeah, we don't deeply, deeply... That's why we keep getting caught in it again after we've let it go. So this deeply rooted illusion that the conceptually imputed self exists by way of its own character. That's what's relating to this one before. Each one builds on the other, if you read these more carefully. The conceptually imputed one exists by way of its own character from its own side. This self, which appears to be completely mixed, they say like milk and water, with the five skandhas. That's why it's very hard to locate. We can do this. You will be able to do this, this location thing. But it doesn't come naturally because it seems to be mixed with the body and mind.

[81:12]

It's constantly changing. It's V, body and mind, right? But we can tease it out. So this is the most subtle self that must be refuted. Other false views of self, which do not exist at all, other illusions of inherently existing self that are non-innate, so dogs don't have them, they learn from others. I don't think animals maybe can learn some of these, very highly evolved animals, but humans definitely can through false thinking and speculating, different philosophical views of self, and this gets into like, the Atman view of Vedanta teachings, Buddha's kind of... And he would say that's not an innate view. It's easier to refute in a way because it's a philosophical way of trying to make sense of the world, kind of make up this thing actually called the Atman. That version of... And it's kind of generally that one, like the Vedantic Atman, tends to be not...

[82:18]

actually the same as the body and mind. It's more like a cosmic, unchanging kind of self. We can get more into that later. But the one that's mixed like milk and water with the body and mind is the innate one that's the most crucial to refute, and the most very, very subtle, most difficult to refute. True self you know, this is kind of like the Zen part kind of added in here, ultimate truth, beyond existence and non-existence, the emptiness or absence of any type of inherently existing self or non-self, you know, inherently existing non-self, manifested as joyful, compassionate, spontaneous freedom. Is that different than the self of the don't-self? Or is it the same? Yeah, it's different. Oh. Yeah, yeah. Although I think it's similar in many ways. And I think in those traditions, people like Ramana Maharshi, who talks about the self and kind of everything is the self, is this incredibly realized being, but it's kind of like a different philosophical view.

[83:29]

But it goes, he was a pretty happy guy. Can you say quickly what the difference is between the two? Well, um... That's kind of like, that self, that Atman, it's something. It has some existence, actually. It has some existence. Whereas this last true self, it's emptiness or absence of any existence. Oh, I see. It's an absence. There's nothing there. And yet, joyful, compassionate, spontaneous freedom. So, do you have one question? Non-self? Well, you could say any one of these, the non-self. Generally, like the term An-Atman that the Buddha used in the early teachings, there's no self. So that would refer to the absence of number three.

[84:38]

no inherently existent self. But if you read in one of these handouts, and I'm sorry there weren't enough, maybe you can share, I'll put more on the dining room table, so if you didn't get one, you can take one from there. There's one on self, no self, and not self, that gets into this point. Buddha didn't say that there's no self. And the teaching of anatman, a lot of contemporary teachers make the point that This is not like an ontological statement about the nature of reality. And things aren't not self, although the Tibetans kind of veer in that direction. It's more like a teaching about liberation. It's not getting into like, is there a self or isn't there a self? And this early teaching of Buddha makes that point. And also, just to briefly mention the five skandhas, also sometimes are taught as like a model of like, if you look for a person, these are the things that make up a person. And it's kind of like a description of a person, these five skandhas.

[85:41]

And some of these teachers make this point that actually, that's a little bit off. That's a kind of modern Western interpretation of the five skandhas. Actually, they're just meant to be these tools for showing where we grasp the self. We grasp it in these five ways, grasp these five things as a self. And the Buddha, again, didn't set that up as an ontological kind of model. He wasn't into models of how things are and aren't. It's just like tools for how we cling and suffer and how we can be free. It's kind of a different change. That throws you into emptiness. A little bit. Buddha was like not having views actually at all. So to say like, well, the view of like the person is like as the five skandhas. He didn't get into that. Anyway, so I recommend reading. It may be helpful if you want to get into this.

[86:44]

These short sutras, early sutras of the Buddha. And also these meditation you can try. And down at the bottom of Nagarjuna, the five skandhas are listed. So you can... start becoming familiar. Next time we'll go over in more detail what the five skandhas are. Yeah, how about that if you want to take one. And because they're the sacred words of the Buddha, don't kind of like just leave them on the ground or the garbage or something. You can give them back to me if you don't want them. On the table, yeah. Yeah. And just, um, lastly, if you want a homework assignment, a meditative homework assignment, um, besides reading the text, um, the first, one of the first steps that's going to, that you can start working with and see if you can do this because it's kind of hard, try starting to locate the sense, your innate sense of an inherently existing self, which is that, which you have, but it's, it's,

[87:57]

sometimes actually hard to locate. It's very, because it doesn't actually really exist. It kind of comes, it's very kind of like mirage-like, but sometimes we feel it really, me, this, me. So, and it gives some techniques and the meditation part about, you know, ways to bring it up, which is sometimes kind of painful, but you can kind of play with it. Did you get confused with the second one when you were doing it? You might, yeah. So see if you can see the difference between these things. And we're going to keep clarifying it because it's going to get gnarly. Good luck.

[88:40]

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