This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon. I'm delighted to be here at Tassajara, all of you. And I hope that the words I have to say are... Ideally, it would be useful for you. And if they can't be useful, I hope they're at least interesting. And if not that, well, then it's up to you to make them interesting. Maybe you have some good questions for me as we go along. The topic that I wanted to bring up is that of self and not self. Many people, when they encounter Buddhism, will... come across some statement or some idea that suggests that Buddhism or the Buddha believes that there is no self.

[01:03]

Some of you have come across this idea? Some of you say, no. Good. You shouldn't be here. There's this teaching called in Kali, Anatta, and in Sanskrit, Anatman. It's a negation of the word Atman. Do you know the title Mahatma Gandhi? Mahatma is a contraction of Maha, which means great, and Atma, which means self. So it's a title in India for a great person, it's a great self. And so in these ancient teachings of Buddhism, there's this teaching of An-Atta or An-Atman, And that's very commonly translated into English as no self. The Buddha taught there is no self. So it confuses people.

[02:05]

And here's a wonderful little passage by a scholar. Her name is Joy Manet. When she was doing a scholarship in early Buddhist tradition, she did some of the great scholarship in the 1980s. And so she wrote this. At a recent conference whose theme was the psychology of awakening, Buddhism, science and psychotherapy, many of the participants expressed their confusion regarding how the Buddha could function in the world without a self. Because they were Buddhists, they were trying to follow the teaching and to achieve or to imitate what they imagined this form of functioning could be. So they'd heard this idea that there is no self, and you're supposed to realize there is no self. And if you realize there is no self, then what follows? How are you supposed to be in this world if there's no self? And so they thought they had somehow pretend they didn't exist, or deny their personhood, or their desires, or somehow have no identity at all, and go around the world maybe identity-less.

[03:23]

I thought they had missed the point. What the ancient texts show in the character of the Buddha is someone with a very advanced self-concept. His self-esteem is perfect. He has gone beyond doubt. He knows and he is confident of his knowledge. He expresses himself with conviction. When the Buddha talks of himself in the first person, he does so with clarity. He has a strong sense of identity and knows very well who he is. He gives accounts of his life experiences in the first person. He gives accounts of his spiritual capacities in the first person. That is, he announces and proclaims that he is a Buddha and he says what a Buddha is. He gives first person accounts of the capacities required of him by society. For example, he insists he is a competent debater. He discusses at ease and in full equality with kings and other notables.

[04:28]

He defends himself and his teaching against unjust accusations and false representations. It is clear that the Buddha's self, as this concept is understood in contemporary psychology and psychotherapy, namely a clear sense of identity, the ability to function confidently and realistically in the world, to have a standard of ethics, to achieve one's goals, to interact with people, to make good choices and so forth, was fully functional and remarkably well-developed, as one would expect. Either psychotherapy nor meditation is possible unless the sense of identity or ego is mature and well-grounded. Otherwise, there's nothing to change and nothing to go beyond. So, for people in the... Theravada Buddhist tradition, Thailand, Burma, that rely on the most ancient texts of Buddhism, this quandary about the teaching of anatta comes up quite often. How could the Buddha, because you have these texts that seem to say over and over again that there is no self, there is no self.

[05:35]

And so they end up with this confusion. Well, if there is no self, then who goes to the bathroom? Who cooks dinner? Who does whatever they're going to do? And And people get quite bewildered. So then, if we look more carefully at the earliest teaching of Buddhism, to see what it actually says about this anatta teaching, it turns out it's not saying that there is no self, but rather it's very specific. And it says that the whole process of a self is a perception that the mind makes up. We have nothing else besides our perception, our constructs of the self, to base some idea of the self on. Even if you claim, any claim you make that this is the self, that's going to be a construct, and it's going to be a perception that you apply.

[06:39]

And so the earliest tradition sees the notion of self as a perception, not as a thing. And I think many people assume this is the self. I'm a self, right? I'm a thing. But to see myself as a self, I have an identity, all that, the early tradition calls it a perception, a sanya. And a perception is an activity of the mind. And we know that we can change our perceptions of certain things depending on the angle that we looked at it. I was... When I first came to Tassajara in 1980, I used to make yogurt in the baths. And they had this big, I don't know what to call it, look like a big planter box, but five or six of these gallon glass jars, and they put the milk in, and put the culture in the milk. And we'd carry this big box to the baths, and we'd lower it in to the baths, and it would be there overnight or something, and in the morning you had yogurt.

[07:45]

It was great. And so I looked at the baths and I thought, is this a bath for people to take a bath in? Or is it a place to culture yogurt? You know, depending on what you want to do, it has a different function. It has a function either to wash people or to create yogurt. Is it an incubator or is it a bath? It's both. Or it is what we think it is. how we perceive it and how we use it. So, the same thing with us as people. And we have all kinds of different identities that are quite fluid. I can create some identities here that maybe already people at Tashara have already made. I could decide that we should, if you're willing to go along with me, that we're going to have a bachi contest, bachi court contest, between the dining room crew and the cabin crew.

[08:47]

And suddenly those crews have more identity, more meaning. And you're competing against each other, and I'm the cabin crew, or I'm the dining room crew, and it's kind of like a little sparky there, competitive and challenging as the ball goes back and forth different ways. But then we decide that, no, we're going to do a contest between Tassahara and city center people. And now those of you who are kind of like competing with the dining room and the crew and the cabin crew are now on the same team against the city center group. And so your identity has shifted and how you relate to each other shifts because now you're in a different group. So it seems, I think it's kind of obvious that those kinds of identities shift quite easily. But it's possible to get stuck in some of these identities. And, uh, the, uh, I remember when I was a young student here, I had little challenges with my father, and I went to the abbot. And he said something that kind of opened my eyes to see my father in a new way.

[09:53]

He said that your father was a person before he was a father. He was his own person. He had his own identity, his own way of being in the world, which was quite independent of being a father. And that never occurred to me. I thought my father was a father. That's all he was, in my eyes. I perceived him as my father, and I didn't see him as someone who was much bigger, had a broader identity, a broader way of being in the world, than how I limited him by being a father. So in this way, the Buddha saw that self is a perception, the identities we create, and that we could be creative and wise about how we use the identity of self. And one of the ways that... But what the Buddha never did was he never said explicitly that there is no self. And since many people seem to think that that's what the Buddha said, it's interesting to go back to these ancient texts.

[10:55]

And I think there's only one or two places, maybe I think there's only one place in all these volumes of early texts, where someone explicitly asked the Buddha, is there no self? Or they asked me, is there a self? Some guy came and said, is there a self? The Buddha refused to answer the question. Is there no self? Refused to answer the question. And part of what was at stake in this ancient world is that the word self, atman or atta, also had a similar meaning to what we in English would call a soul. And as you know, in some Western religious traditions, the idea of whether or not you have a soul is of great consequence. the whole philosophy and religious philosophy contingent upon having a soul. And so there were ancient Indian religious traditions that also posited this essential, pure, eternal essence that continues for all time. And so it had a certain kind of importance for some people to hear what the Buddha had to say about, is there a self or is there no self?

[12:02]

And when this man, Vaccagota, came to the Buddha to ask this question, he remains silent. He didn't answer. So the one place in the text where the Buddha had a chance to answer the question, is there no self? He didn't answer. So that should highlight the idea that maybe we should be careful ourselves, positing the Buddha taught there is no self. There's another passage where the Buddha kind of gets to the same topic in a nice way. He talks about what it takes to become liberated, to become spiritually free in the way this early tradition wants it, to become awake. And he says in order to become awake, you want to avoid thinking unwisely. Here the translation is attending unwisely.

[13:02]

You don't want to approach things or see things or... relate to things in unwise ways, because if you're not wise about how you relate to your life, you're not going to follow a good path. It's not going to open up in some way. And here's what he said, if you want to become liberated, these are unwise ways to reflect or to attend to things. By asking the following question, one attends unwisely. Was I in the past? Was I not in the past? What was I in the past? How was I in the past? Having been what? What did I become in the past? Shall I be in the future? Shall I not be in the future? What shall I be in the future? How shall I be in the future? Having been what? What shall I become in the future? Or else one is inwardly perplexed about the present. Am I? Am I not?

[14:04]

What am I? How am I? Where has this being come from? Where will it go? It's a pretty great list of questions. When one attends unwisely in this way, one of six views arises in that person. The view means like a philosophy. The view self-exists for me arises as true and established. And the next one I think is particularly what I want to emphasize. Or the view... no self exists for me arises as true and established. So here he's saying that if you come up with this idea that there is no self, that you have no self, that this is a false view and not a useful view to have. And if what you want to do is become liberated, you don't want to follow a path or look at your experience through the filter or the vantage point of any question having to do with the self.

[15:06]

And as a meditation teacher, it's impossible for me to count how many times people have come to me and talk about their issues in their life. And all of them are founded at the base around the topic of self. They're concerned about themselves. What should I do next? Where am I going? Where did I come from? They want to explore what happened in the past. because often it's very clear that it's all around this nucleus of a sense of self, that it's all organized. Self-identity, me, myself, and mine. Sometimes it's so obvious because the word I stands out like a sore thumb in this conversation. Every sentence has at least I once. And it's just, you know, after a while I hear I, [...] and it's kind of like, wow, this is quite impressive. To always orient around the I. I had this issue when I was learning Japanese in Japan.

[16:08]

I lived at a Zen monastery in Japan. I was kind of learning my Japanese there. So I didn't speak very well. And so I kind of tried to speak Japanese as I would English. But Japanese has a different syntax, word order, for how they talk about things. And also, the Japanese don't use the word I very often. or the pronouns, are often implied in sentences rather than spoken. So, rather than saying, I'm going, you just simply say going. And, you know, since you're the one walking out the door, it's clear if you're the one who's going. So, there's no need to say I, you're walking out the door. And so, in many ways, it's implied, the pronouns, and people understand in the context. But in English, we don't do that so often. So, when I try to speak Japanese, in the way I speak English, because they didn't speak very well, I found myself often starting my sentences with I in Japanese. In English, it's one syllable.

[17:11]

In Japanese, to say, you say that in a sentence, you have to use four syllables. You have to say, watashi wa, which means, basically, you start the sentences by saying, as for me. And I start so many of my sentences, watashi wa, watashi wa, And because it was so clear that you weren't supposed to do that in Japanese, it stood out like a sore thumb in my mind. I was like, wow, I do this a lot. And so I got to see how often I was self-referential in my language. It was kind of helpful for me. As a teacher, a Buddhist teacher, people come and talk to me. I'm in this wonderful, I feel very privileged role. I don't know if anybody else can do this and get away with it. But, you know, hopefully I'm doing it with compassion and care for the best interest of the person I'm talking to. But I get to tell people they're conceited. Isn't that pretty cool?

[18:14]

Boy, that's pretty conceited. And I don't know if in polite company you could say that to someone. And, you know, because, you know, it's kind of clear how much people are orienting themselves around the notion of self, me, myself, and mine, my identity. how I'm seen, how I want to be seen, what's in it for me, where I'm going, what I'm attaining, what I'm getting. One of the great paradoxes is people coming and saying, am I enlightened yet? Am I an enlightened person? There's this naked kind of identity about being enlightened. So the Buddha says this remarkable passage that if you want to get liberated, don't follow a path Don't ask questions. Don't approach yourself through the vantage point of asking these kinds of questions. Am I? Am I not? When will I be? What's happening to me? Where am I going? Where have I been? And so I think for some of you perhaps this is quite perplexing because this is kind of how you maybe in a matter-of-fact way often made your way in the world is by some sense of reference to yourself.

[19:23]

So is there no self then? Well, the Buddha did not say that there is no self. He said it was a perception, and the self is an activity. And it's an activity and a perception that we use, try to use, for the purpose of walking the path, for liberation. And so how do we use it for that purpose? Well, one is to... Say this... Are you following me okay? Is this interesting enough? Yes. You guys have selves, so it's a little bit interesting. It was early on in the history of Buddhism that the teaching of anatta, anatma, started to be seen as a teaching of no self. And this raised, of course, some problems for people. If there's no self, then who's doing all this stuff? If I'm referring to myself, then... Who am I referring to if there is no self? And one of the solutions that the early Buddhist tradition came up with was, and some of you have heard this, because in Mahayana Buddhism it's a popular idea, is the idea that there are two truths.

[20:37]

There is the ultimate truth, what's ultimately true, and there's conventional truth. And conventionally there's a self, but ultimately there is no self. So that's a philosophy that became quite important. In the earliest tradition, There wasn't that distinction made between conventional and ultimate truth, even though people tried to explain all this away by making that point. The Buddha was quite happy to talk about self, and not only that, he often gave his teachings through using the word atta, or self. He said, make yourself a refuge. Make yourself the only refuge. Make the dharma your refuge. Make the dharma your only refuge. You yourself are your own best support. Rely on yourself, is what he said. So there, in those situations, he was quite happy to use the word self in ways of encouraging people to come along.

[21:40]

And so, if you look at these early Buddhist teachings... you see that there's a kind of a well-developed, or not well-developed, but there are certain assumptions about what it means to be a person. And what it means to be a person means that a person is someone who can experience happiness and suffering. A person is someone who can affect change in their lives, can be an agent of change. A person is someone who can choose... to make certain changes that are more useful than other changes. A person is someone who can become liberated. A person is someone who can experience the consequences of their actions. You do certain things, and they have certain consequences, and you experience those consequences. So, there are certain concepts of personhood, what it means to be a person.

[22:45]

which go along, that almost seems kind of embedded in this early, the teachings of the Buddha. If you have an itch, you don't scratch your neighbor, right? There's a clear, founded sense that this itch is happening here, and I'm responsible for my own itch. I have to take care of it here. So how do we take this idea of personhood, the idea of self, if we take refuge in ourselves, if we're supposed to rely on ourselves, how do we utilize it in a way that's helpful? And one of the ways it says it's useful is to see it as a perception, to see it as an activity of the mind, and you use it, that activity of the mind, in a way to further your own growth and cultivation. So, for example, if you feel that you are really afraid, and you're always very timid, then it's good to do what it takes to have a stronger self-confidence, to become less timid, maybe more courageous.

[23:52]

If you don't know yourself very well, then it's good to get to know yourself better. Because if you don't know yourself, don't know what makes you tick, don't know what drives your behavior, then it's good to take time to get to know and understand yourself. And that's a useful way of understanding self and focusing on self. Certain roles are useful to have. And so in that role, it's useful to get behind that role and see yourself that way provisionally, but then also put it down when it's no longer useful. So the idea that we can actually play and be creative around our roles, creative with a sense of self, is a useful thing. I found it fascinating when I was here doing practice periods at Dasara how often I was given a new job. In every practice period, every couple of practice period, I had a new job. And what I discovered for myself was that different parts of me came out in the different jobs I took. And I felt so lucky because it's like every three months I had a new career.

[24:54]

Whereas out in the world, many people have one career for a long time, maybe a year, maybe a whole lifetime. And maybe they're great careers, but they only use a certain part of who we are. And it's only because parts of us get shown or get to come out or get developed. And, but here, you know, you, I mean, there were people here, I don't know if it happens anymore, but don't know anything about cooking and they made the head cook. So that's challenging. Or they're made treasurer or they're made, you know, I know, I knew people who were back then who were sent up to work in the shop and had nothing, they knew nothing about, you know, being a handy person. And they had to kind of, And so all these jobs have different challenges, not just learning a skill, but also in our identity and how we see ourselves and how we see ourselves in relationship to other people. And so you got to kind of, all these things came out, and we got to see these things and learn about ourselves. So one of the approaches around this idea of self in the early Buddhist students is to study oneself.

[26:03]

We've got to see how these activities of the mind work and to start noticing how we create an identity, how we organize ourselves around identities, what our assumptions are about the self that we have, what we think we have to be in order to be a successful self, the judgments we have about who we are. We create ideas about who we are. And then we live in the world through those ideas. And sometimes it's very painful. There are people who literally come to me and tell me that they are bad people. I'm a bad person, they say. And that's kind of, for someone who's 40 years old to come and say they're a bad person, it's kind of a little surprising to me because it's such an abstraction. But it's very painful. It kind of breaks my heart. There are all identities around this abstract idea. out there bad somehow. Or that there's a certain kind of conceit to see oneself as bad.

[27:09]

There's also a certain kind of conceit to see that we're really good. There's also a kind of conceit. And for people who want to be really self-affirming or affirm the self, there's a conceit that arises which is not very useful. Some of you probably know that I think in the 90s, 80s, late 80s, 90s, There was a self-esteem movement in some of the public schools where they wanted to raise kids who had a lot of self-esteem, and it backfired. I think eventually the teachers were horrified at what they had created because it created a generation of people who felt entitled to get whatever they wanted. They get all this esteem. You're so great. You're so wonderful. And they get the message that they're wonderful. They don't have to work. And so by the time they get into college, they feel like it should be easy. It should be given to them.

[28:10]

They're so wonderful and great. And a certain kind of conceit. And so now they don't... I think they're shying away from trying to teach esteem. There was an article in the New York Times last week about even the idea of self-confidence. is not a good thing to develop. Isn't that remarkable? Because the word self goes together with self-confidence. And that becomes a magnet for all kinds of ideas of being a particular way. If you have self-confidence, you're a certain kind of person. Identity, which is very fragile. As soon as you have an identity, you're kind of fragile and limited. But instead of having self-confidence, what this article talked about, it's much more efficacious. to develop competency in certain skills. And competence in certain skills, you have competence in a skill, but you don't then create an identity around that skill.

[29:10]

And once you create an identity, then you're into trouble, possibly. So I did that when I was in college. I was tricked into being an artist when I was in college. My roommate was a born-again artist. And so he was an evangelist. And it worked. And so I started taking art classes. And then because I could take more art classes, I became an art major. I had no intention to major in art, but that's the only way you can take these classes. And so that was all fun and nice. And then there was this day where I decided that I'm an artist. Before I was just doing art, right? Happily. Now I'm an artist. I created an identity. A self. A self with an artist. And the amazing story, it's true, is that the day I decided I was an artist was the day I stopped doing art. And it was because then the motivation to do art came from, because I had to, with my identity.

[30:15]

I had to kind of do it for this purpose of proving my, you know, fulfilling this identity. And I couldn't get motivated for that reason. Isn't that nice? And so then I only started doing art again when I came back to Tassahara, when I came to Tassahara. After about a year at Tassahara, I think a lot of my ideas and identities and what I had to be started to drop away. And in that space of not having to be someone, these creative urges started coming through me. And I started drawing and doing some poetry and I did some sculpture. But I was no longer an artist. So I tried not to be an artist. So how do we use identity to help us become free rather than using identity to limit us? I think it's one of the great tasks of practice. So one of the things about identity that I've said a number of times now,

[31:22]

is that identity, the notions of self, is a perception, which means there's an activity of the mind. And activities of the mind are optional. It's possible to quiet the mind's activities or have other activities going on. So, you know, I could be completely concerned with what you're thinking about me. You know, how you're judging me and what you think of me. completely involved in self-concern and that particular conceit. And then suddenly they serve cake, dessert. And I'm more interested in the cake than what you think about me. And what you think about me, how who I am and all that, falls away in the pleasure of the cake. It was an activity of the mind I was caught up in at a certain time. But I was distracted from it. And so then it falls away.

[32:24]

The mind's activities are not something that are frozen. And that's the way it is. Even though the thoughts, the activity of the mind is giving the message, this is how it is. This is true. This is forever. We can have those thoughts that's forever. This is how it's true. But those thoughts are activities of the mind. And those activities don't have to persist. they can change. And in meditation, sometimes they can quiet down. And one of the nice things about meditation, when the mind quiets down, is to have an experience of being alive without it through the filter of the self-identity issues that we normally live in. And not only have that experience, but have that experience as being, an experience that feels good, a sense of well-being. to feel kind of a nice sense of satisfaction, well-being, even a sense of meaning and purpose that come just to be alive without experiencing ourselves through the filter of a story or an idea that we're telling ourselves about ourselves.

[33:42]

Because if you have that experience of yourself without telling yourself a story or a concept of yourself, then when you... start having concepts about yourself again, you see it for what it is. You see it as just a concept. It's just a thought. It might have some truth to it, might have some usefulness to it, but it also might not. And if it's just a thought and a concept, maybe I can just let it go. I can be wise or how I relate to it. So, one of the approaches... in this early Buddhist tradition is, in fact, to quiet the mind down, to quiet the mental activities down so that there's a tremendous feeling of peace and quiet in the mind. And in that quiet, not to find any self or not to find any selfing activity.

[34:45]

One of the advantages of this is that if you don't find a self, it means you're not creating a self. And if you're not creating a self, then the mind is really peaceful. And then what the earliest tradition says is, in that space where the mind is peaceful and no longer playing the self game, the mind is poised or something deep to let go. Some deep tendency to crave, deep tendency to get attached, to crave, will finally have a chance to open up and drop away. As long as we're involved in a self-engave, the mind is not quiet enough or still enough for this deeper dropping away to happen. So it's kind of like if you take a If you go to some of these, I don't know if you've been there, I've seen them in a museum for kids, where they have these big bowls, and you put a marble or a coin into the bowl from the side, and it was spinning around and around and around and around and around.

[36:10]

And if you put your hand in and keep spinning it, it just keeps going and going and going. And there's a little hole in the bottom of the bowl, the base of the bowl, And since you have enough momentum, this marble just goes right over the hole. It keeps up and down, this way and that way. And you keep coming along your finger, you push the marble, the momentum, it keeps going, keeps going, keeps going. But you have to stop adding momentum to the marble and let the marble kind of play out its momentum. And then slowly, the marble just goes less and less up the sides, it's less agitated. It's quieter and quieter, and it goes closer and closer to the middle, and finally it goes slow enough that it falls into that hole. Isn't that nice? So the same thing with the mind. The mind is like this big bowl, and you have these loose marbles in there. And we're constantly kind of flicking them, pushing them, moving them along with our concerns and our preoccupations and our fears and our desires.

[37:18]

And they're always spinning and going. And sometimes people start meditating. They realize how tired their mind is in the lifetime of mental activity and thinking and all that. And then slowly, when the mind comes to quieter and quieter and quieter, then the loose marbles finally get a chance to rest, to drop down, fall away. So two ways to do this in this early tradition. One is they teach meditation practice for the purpose of quieting the mind. And so the mind is no longer involved in the selfing activity. That's one way. The other way is to understand how we do the selfing activity. To watch how we create the self. How we...

[38:20]

form these ideas about who we are, what we need to be, what has to happen, what our needs are. And you can watch it arise in the mind. If the mind is sharp enough, attentive enough, you can watch the birth of a thought. And if you can watch the birth of a thought, you can see you're less likely to take a thought as being the absolute truth. You see, it's just a thought. Whereas, if you're not quick enough in the mind, and you're already living in a whole complex world of thinking, it's very easy to think that this is true. This is how it is. So, what's an example of... You know, so I assign you into bachi tips, right? This half of the room is the blue ball, and this is the red ball or something, right? And so you could watch in your mind...

[39:20]

Certain thought is born from that. It could be a negative identity. No way am I going to play bocce and be a bocce player. And so I'm not a bocce player. I don't do that kind of silly thing. You can watch the arising of that thought. You've created an identity. Or you can say, yes, I'm a good bocce. I bet I'm really good at this. I did baseball in high school. I bet I can throw balls. I'm sure I'm a great bocce player. even though I never played it before. And you can see the arising of that thought. And because you see it, you can leave it alone. You just see it as just a casual idea that arises. But if you don't catch it early and see it as a casual idea, then you can latch on to this identity. I'm not a Bocci player. I am a Bocci player. And from there can arise suffering. Because say that you decided... You're really a good voce player. It turns out you're awful.

[40:22]

And then, you know, you're going to be disappointed in yourself because you build yourself up. So to study and look at how we create the sense of self is part of this early tradition. And as we begin seeing the constructive aspect of the mind, to see it as being conditioned phenomena, contingent, And some Buddhists will say to see it as being empty. Empty of any inherent permanent status. It's just a thought. And then to be wise by that thought. It's a useful thought to pick up. We pick it up. It's not useful to get involved. We leave it alone. So earlier I read this passage where the Buddha talked about how one attends unwisely. Was I in the past? Was I not in the past? What was I in the past? How was I in the past? Having been what?

[41:25]

What did I become in the past? Shall I be in the future? How shall I be in the future? Having been what? What shall I become in the future? Or one is inwardly perplexed about the present. Am I? Am I not? What am I? How am I? Where has this being come from? Where will it go? So maybe some of you have asked yourself the question, what am I? Actually, some spiritual traditions, that's a central question, what am I? Or who am I? So the Buddha, for himself, he says, if you want to become liberated, these are not wise ways of paying attention. But then he provides us with a wise way of paying attention. One attends wisely in the following way. this is suffering. One attends wisely, this is the arising of suffering. One attends wisely, this is the cessation of suffering.

[42:27]

One attends wisely, this is the way leading to the cessation of suffering. So here, the way to attend or to frame, understand our experience of life is not through the framework of the self, me and myself aligned, but rather through the framework of what in the West has been called the pleasure principle. When religious people have not had a god to tell them how to live their lives, the Bible tells us something, some ultimate authority, then generally what they rely on ultimately is what Freud called the pleasure principle. one of the contemporary of the Buddha in Greece, Epicurus, had this idea. And that what you really can face your life on in taking choices is whether it's painful or pleasant.

[43:30]

And he wasn't a hedonist, as some people, the Catholic Church wanted to criticize him for being Epicurus. He lived a very Spartan, simple life, because he had a sense that the highest sense of well-being was not sensual pleasure, but was a contented, simple life. And you can be your own guide. You can find your own way to a peaceful, happy, contented life if you use pleasure and pain as your guide. I forget, John Locke. who was an important English philosopher who started the background of what became pragmatism, utilitarianism. He also had a pleasure principle like that. This is how you can find your way in your own life, is really paying attention to what causes suffering and what causes brings you pleasure.

[44:31]

Freud, of course, had that as well. So the Buddha also had this. The Buddha also used... Because the Buddha had no God who was going to tell you how to live your life. Each person had to find out their own path to liberation. But there was a guide, you know, a guidepost upon him in this way. And the guidepost was to understand suffering and freedom from suffering. And by looking at the point of view of suffering or stress or distress... as a guide, it's possible to engage in a path of liberation without understanding it from the point of view of self, me, myself, and mine. And for the ultimate reaches of liberation in this early tradition, it's very important to be able to put down the thoughts of me, myself, and mine, because they keep the mind agitated. Even when they're useful, they involve

[45:35]

agitated or energized part of the mind than what's needed for liberation. And so, but the framework of, is it stressful? Is there suffering? That's useful. Or is there not? All the way to liberation. In fact, the Buddha's own liberation, it said in these texts, was based on seeing very clearly suffering, the arising of suffering, the sensation of suffering, and the way to the sensation of suffering, which sometimes has been called the Four Noble Truths. And so that's my topic for tomorrow. I think I called it, I don't know if Greg's told you, the origins and early history of the Four Noble Truths. So it's considered one of the primary teachings of Buddhism. Before I take questions, I want to point out one interesting set of modern interpretations around this self-teaching, the early teaching of not-self.

[46:49]

And that is, a number of Western Buddhist teachers have translated or interpreted the not-self teaching to mean that there is no separate self. That somehow the idea that there's a separate independent self, that's what causes suffering. And so we have to understand that there is no separate self. It might be good teachings in its own way, but it lends itself to the idea then that we're supposed to merge and be indistinct from everybody else. There's a whole other group of, a small group of Buddhist teachers who are now beginning to say, no, it's very important to see that we're distinct. Don't merge with everybody. But rather, we can only deeply respect each other, really meet each other in a deep way, if we really see each other in our differences. And one of the wonderful places where this kind of teaching is coming from is from the queer community, the queer Buddhist philosophers. For them, it's really important to be seen for what they are and not to assimilate into the heterosexual culture, just like, you know, you're supposed to be like everybody else.

[47:59]

And so, you know, no separate self means like there's no distinction. but to really be able to honor and respect distinctions are very important as well. And so you have these two different kind of holes where people take these Buddhist teachings, and one says, no separate self, and the other says, there is a separate self, and we have to respect that. And perhaps it's the both. Perhaps it's the merging of both, the way of holding both, where it's possible to find a wise way of moving through our lives. So I hope that made enough sense, that it has some usefulness to you. If it wasn't useful, what's useful sometimes is to feel challenged. So are you challenged or upset, or are you confused, or do you have any questions you'd like to ask about this? If you could say your name in the vain hope that I could remember. My name is Levi. Levi. And I had a couple of questions come up.

[49:01]

Well, one... past, was I, and, you know, this kind of past contemplation of self, usual contemplation of self, present contemplation of self. There was this question about, well, what about, what about all of this, you know, purification, repentance, vowing for karma, you know, contemplating upon instillful actions in the past and vowing that having skillful intentions for the future in Vowling God, having skillful intentions present in Vowling God. And then the other question is, there's something seemed off to me in saying that pleasure and liberation are in office, that it is a path from suffering to pleasure, or that just, that seemed, you know, there was something there, I was wondering if you could reconcile this or saving

[50:04]

So you had two questions. Let me try to see if I can do both. Thank you. Good questions. So the first question has to do with when is it skillful to operate from a notion of a self and when is it not skillful? And when it's skillful, then please do. When it's not skillful, then don't. So in this... So the question of repentance and tracking what we do and the consequences of our actions... There's very simple teachings that the Buddha gave to his own son when his son was... Some people say his son was about seven or eight. So it's very simple, because teaching a seven-year-old has to be simple. And the key thing here that he was trying to teach his son... was to pay attention to the consequences of your actions.

[51:06]

It's very important to pay attention to that. That's your guide. So here's what he says to his son. If you wish to do an action with a body, you should reflect upon that same bodily action thus. Would this action that I wish to do with a body lead to my own affliction or to the affliction of others or the affliction of both? is an unwholesome bodily action with painful consequences with painful results. When you reflect and you know this action that I wish to do with my body would lead to my own affliction or the affliction of others or the affliction of both, and it is unwholesome bodily action with painful consequences and painful results, then you definitely should not do such an action with the body. So here there's enough focus on self. You're efficacious, you can make choices, Your actions have consequences, and you should pay attention to that. That's definitely being taught to you.

[52:08]

And then it goes on. It says that while you're doing something, look at the consequences. And as you've done it, look at the consequences and make amends if you need to. But this principle of looking at is there affliction, is there suffering from what you do, or is there not, is a guide even to the deepest areas of meditation. Because in the deepest parts of meditation, there's no longer suffering. But even though there can be a tremendous experience of peace and bliss, there can be a very subtle sense of tension or stress operating. It doesn't feel quite right. And you use that as a guide and say, you know, this too. This too. Let it go. Let it go. And then something deeper can drop away. So... So this idea of looking at the consequences of your actions, yes, it's your actions, for sure, but don't measure it. Don't orient your questions, your approach, from the point of view, I'm the one who's doing it.

[53:16]

Rather, orient it towards understanding the consequences and how you can make a difference. It has to do with what comes first. Does the self come first? Or does the the actions and consequences come first. And the notion of... So if we start with the premise of self first, which I think many people start because I'm so important, right? We start with myself. Then we're asking questions from the vantage point of the self. And then that lends itself to certain answers. But if we start from the vantage point of karma, of action and its consequences, and looking at the action and the consequences, are they beneficial or not beneficial? Do they cause suffering or do they not cause suffering? Then, from that vantage point, we can look at the activity of selfing. Selfing is an action. The premise is we begin by looking at karma, meaning action and its consequences,

[54:24]

then from that vantage point, we can look at self and see it as an action and decide to use it when it's beneficial and not use it when it's not beneficial. If we start our first beginning premise is self, me, myself, and mine, then you go into the world and say, well, what actions can I do to make for better self? Rather, if you start with karma, you say, what karma can I make? What action can I do? so there can be more happiness and well-being. Does that kind of answer the first one? Yeah, and it actually makes me realize what was often, or what probably was the cause of my second question, which is that aspiring to pleasure is, you know, pleasure isn't permanent. And so maybe there's a different word you could use there, linking or likening liberation to moving from suffering to pleasure. It's just like... seeking pleasure through meditative practice yes so I think I was careful not to say to equate liberation with pleasure but this early tradition what I'm teaching you here comes from this early tradition I keep referring back because I want to be consistent to the tradition and what you do with it and how you practice with it is up to you

[55:52]

But this early tradition, certainly, Buddha in these early texts certainly promoted the pursuit of pleasure, but a particular kind of pleasure. And the pleasure that he was most supportive that people pursue is a pleasure that comes from deep meditation practice. But it's not going to be a permanent pleasure. It's conditioned, it's empty. In fact, it's conditioned, the penalty arisen, and it's not going to last. But the reason to pursue it is that it's onward leading. And at some point, as you get into these deeper levels of pleasure, if you're really there and pay attention to it, you see that even though what was incredibly blissful starts feeling unsatisfactory. It starts feeling there's some kind of distaste. It feels a little bit off. It feels like there's some suffering there, some tension there. And then you move to the more sublime, or... more peaceful place.

[56:53]

And you keep moving to more peaceful and peaceful place until the highest pleasure, the Buddha said, is the absence of all suffering and stress. So it's not a conventional kind of pleasure because it's not a thing, it's more like the absence of something. So if you want to equate liberation with pleasure, then it's the kind of pleasure that's the absence. Does that make sense? But more generally, the tendency in this early tradition is not to describe liberation in any positive terms. Sometimes it's called the great happiness, but it's usually defined and described by what's been let go of, what's not there anymore. That's enough. You don't want to posit it. As soon as you posit it is something, then it's too easy to get into this idea I think you're suggesting. that there is something permanent. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[58:02]

Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[58:18]

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