Oh, thank you. Every way through that's a problem.
Okay. Good morning Penn's online, too. As I said, I thought we were gonna have maybe 8 or 10 people there this morning. I had imagined and created this whole little scene where we were going to actually know each other's names.
But now there's a lot of us, and it might be a little bit more challenging. I know and recognize many of you. It's wonderful to have you here.
And welcome back. And some of you are new faces, and we're very happy to have you here.
I always like to start… By acknowledging that we are actually resting, Jacoji is on the unceded land of the Ohlone people, the native people to this region.
who have lived in the Bay Area Bay Area for over 10,000 years.
And, um, we recognize. Them. Their history, their culture.
And we kind of hope that our recognition, our acknowledgement.
conveys goodwill to the Ohlone and their descendants who are among us.
and even zooming out farther, we hope that. our acknowledgement and recognition of the Ohlone people.
Allows us to recognize all people, all cultures, and are incredibly vast.
Interconnected, shared. existence.
In my last 2 talks here, which have been separated by several weeks.
Uh, we talked about the… one of the foundational teachings of the Buddha, the three marks of existence. I've covered two marks, which were impermanence and suffering.
And so this week I'd like to address the third mark of existence, not self.
People think not self is something other than not self is, which is really interesting. They think they have to somehow completely evaporate as beings.
So I think we will maybe explain that a little bit today, or at least explore it together.
This particular teaching is the Buddha's second teaching. So, right after his awakening, I'll teach a little bit more about his awakening in a second, but right after his awakening, there was this 49-day period.
He wasn't teaching, but then he taught. And this is the second of his teachings. And so it's very important and very foundational.
So, as I mentioned, the three marks of existence.
Sorry.
are impermanence. I imagine you had a taste of impermanence this morning in your meditation. Did you notice some thoughts and feelings and sensations coming and going?
Permanence. Very easy, accessible way to notice the embodiment of impermanence.
Of course, that's going on at many levels all the time.
That's a taste of impermanence. and suffering, or dukkha, or dissatisfaction or dis-ease.
Um, is when we try to hold on to those things that are impermanent, one way or another, we try to cling to them, either because we want more or we want less.
That's, like, you know… A symbol full of suffering. If you want to learn more about these things, you can watch our YouTube video, where Taishin's been posting things, thankfully.
Today I want to talk about… This third mark, non-self.
So I mentioned after his awakening, the Buddha didn't teach for 49 days, which for those of you who are familiar with the Bardo.
days there, too. But the thing that's important about this is that he thought he could not teach, that he would not be able to convey his insights.
That people would not be willing to… Receive his understanding.
Why? Why would he think that?
I have a pet theory. But I don't think is a big reach. My background is in, um… evolutionary biology, that's my undergraduate degree. And I think that the Buddha was saying that everything about us.
So this is my bias. Okay, I have a bias. But I think the Buddha may have been saying that everything about being a human being.
It's designed to have us actually. Individuate in a very particular way to actually have a self that is separate.
and distinct.
His teaching, which we'll go to in a minute about non-self.
kind of goes against the stream of ego. And all of our human desires to be somebody.
seek control and to have an identity. goes against the stream of our habit.
goes against the stream, I think, of our very biology.
Whether it's through having children. Um, or any other immortality project, which could be your career.
So at a basic level, I think that humans are shaped.
Two… This is my partner, Michael, making some indication to me that I don't understand.
Okay. This is how you live with him all the time. He's making indications I don't understand. Why don't you unmute and say what you want to say, Shouhou?
Identity, identity, identity. Look at me. Look at me.
Okay.
Very subtle, yeah. Okay. Mute yourself again, honey.
Okay.
So. at a very basic level, I think all humans are kind of designed to be seen as individuals.
And identify ourselves as special, and then protect these cells and defend these cells and assert these cells, and impose these cells.
To carry this life forward. To maintain some kind of continuity, and to kind of solidify an identity.
So this is maybe a not so unconscious desire for immortality.
put everything in us. wants to say, this eye must continue.
And I think what the Buddha realized… And thankfully ended up teaching.
And what you two, what all of us can also realize.
Something very radically different. That is… There is no fixed self.
There is no stable continuing self that we have to protect.
And defend. no self to advance, actually.
No solid someone who is at the center. Of each experience.
And this is the third mark of existence, non-self.
Now, when I say this, maybe you have a little sense of existential anxiety about somehow erasing you, negating you, but that is not what not-self is.
I mean, I feel pretty meal real to me, and you look pretty real to me. I'm pretty sure you're feeling pretty real.
But in my experience, my own experience, and maybe yours too.
The real embodied awareness of not-self. is not existentially anxiety-making. It is actually liberating.
And this is what the Buddha thought, and thought maybe no one would really understand.
in my own experience, it's a huge relief.
So sometimes a personal story is illustrative of. Um, some of the things we want to share, and so I'm going to share a story from many, many years ago in a galaxy far, far away.
Uh, in my own life. In a temple a long time ago, some distance away, I was serving as Disha, like Patima did for me this morning, for my teacher, Taishin's teacher as well.
And it was a Sunday morning just like this in Santa Barbara.
and we chanted the Jewel Mirror Sutra, the song of the Jewel Mirror awareness.
happens to be one of my favorites. But, you know, I would just chant and chant and chant. You know, I didn't actually have any… Um, meaning, uh, associated with this champ, but I really liked it.
And somehow that morning. I sat down on the seat. My teacher was on the chair after he finished chanting. There we did the service first, and then meditated.
And the minute the bell rang, I had this really very clear.
Um… awareness, insight. I don't want to make it sound anything too special, because I think it's just the way things are, but in that moment, it felt like, oh my gosh, kind of like, I get it!
And what I got… Hi, Peterson.
What are these are dear friends in Chicago. what I got was this.
Very… Sudden, clear understanding that Zazen is practice.
is the dual mirror. And what that meant is my actual experience was… Oh, I see myself in this mirror of Zazan.
I see this person. Well, I also see this person and all the other people in the Zendo. I saw them all, and then I saw everything in the Zendo. The room itself, and then the building itself. And then Santa Barbara, and it just kept zooming out. The whole world from the beginning of time.
It was in the mirror of Zazen.
And the thing that was really interesting about this experience is that.
nothing was in the mirror. Everything? The mirror was empty, and everything was in the mirror, but there was nothing in the mirror.
And I don't want to sound all zen, because, you know, I'm not… I'm not pretending here. I'm explaining my own experience, but what was really happening is that I could see that nothing was staying the same.
I could see impermanence right there. including this one. Nothing essential and stable and continuing.
in the mirror.
It wasn't standing still. There is no fixed someone having the experience of what was in the mirror.
There is no one and no thing in the mirror.
And for some reason, this was not at all troubling.
But a huge relief, like… as if I had spent my entire life carrying around this scaffolding. Does everyone know what a scaffolding? It's like those structures that they put around buildings to kind of secure them as they're building more building.
It's like I've been carrying around the scaffolding around my body, this body and mind had this scaffolding that I had been carrying around, and it was not comfortable. At some level.
I wasn't comfortable. carrying around the scaffolding everywhere I went to protect.
something inside the scaffolding. And I put it down. All right, and say I put it down. It fell off. It just was gone, because it wasn't there anymore. It was so clear it wasn't there.
And yet nobody was missing, even though nothing was in the mirror, nobody was missing. Everybody was with me.
All of you are with me. Even though we hadn't been met.
And the Buddhist language for this is dependent origination. This shared existence.
this endless interconnection.
the traditional way of expressing this is… This exists because this exists, and that happens because that happens.
So for an easy example of this right here now.
And you can look at the trees outside, because Jacoji is so blessed with all these trees.
And you know that they depend on air and soil and water.
just like our thoughts. Depend on memory and mood.
chemistry. conditions.
So each moment, moment after moment after moment depends on everything that came before, and is somehow inextricably linked to everything that's coming next.
When the Buddha sat down to…
face himself life. Just as we sit down to meet ourselves, life.
As it is. He looked very closely to see if he could find.
A self. And he couldn't.
And we cannot. We do not. What we find is relationships.
which some of you are probably tired of hearing me talk about.
As I've been talking about relationships for many years, but for me, that's all there is, is relationship.
I cannot find a way around that. That's all there is is relationship.
And this is, of course, the third mark of existence, not… So, not a separate cell.
So the understanding that the Buddha wanted to convey about not-self is, um… kind of set forth quite lovingly, I think, in a conversation he had with Ananda.
among Ananda, who happened to be his cousin, to whom we owe a lot, by the way, if you don't know Ananda.
Bow to Ananda. He's a good guy. And this conversation is often referred to as, empty is the world.
And I really like this one because Ananda asks the Buddha why the Buddha said the world is empty.
And the Buddha answers, the world is empty because.
It is empty of a self. And anything that could be considered a self.
Anything that belongs to itself. everything is empty of any… fixed independent.
Identity.
So this is not self. We exist in relationship.
Right now, and all the time to everything.
The Buddha then specified what we really are, and what we really are is like a river of different streams coming together inside each of us and all together.
And we chanted them this morning. We are a river of these things. I'm going to tell you what they are in a sec.
Unless you know them, anybody want to tell me? Not you.
I know he knows them. These are the skandas.
So the Buddhist said that. What we actually are.
Are these converging streams a river of… Um, as we chanted this morning, form, feeling, sensation, impulse, consciousness. Sometimes impulse is translated as mental formations.
So the river of form. form, and that form is this physical aspect of our existence, our bodies and our sense organs.
The river of feeling. is the sensations that arise in response to our sense organs.
Including all pain and pleasure, which is either negative, positive, or neutral.
or pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral is how the language usually is. Not negative, that's a whole nother layer.
And then there's the river of perception. Which is the intellectual process of recognizing and then identifying and.
separating and then interpreting that information. And then there's the river of mental formations, which are thoughts and emotions, are biases.
our habit activities, the things we keep doing over and over again.
And then there is the river of consciousness, which is the subjective understanding of those first.
those other sconges. So that is what we are.
These rivers are always flowing through us individually, through us collectively.
And… Nothing is fixed. Obviously, it's a river. They don't hold still.
Uh, nothing is fixed and permanent, and none of it exists separately.
So, in the inseparability of all those streams. And the impermanence of all of those experiences is the fullness of our experience of this shared life.
So yes, in the emptiness is the fullness, and here I am sounding Alzani again. But that's the way it is.
fullness comes from our interconnection.
So if everything exists in this interconnected space of relationship.
What do we do about this self that we have to feel sometimes is centered here.
And we're carrying around like that scaffolding. That self that we feel we have to promote.
and defend. the sense of a solid knee.
who is owning this experience, by the way?
The Buddha taught that that idea. of a me is a construct, a fabrication.
which occurs, it kind of appears. When we don't look closely.
When he looked closely.
No self that is stable. And you may have noticed this this morning in your meditation, again.
How many of you think that you were in charge of the thoughts? I hope you had some thoughts. If not, I'm going to have to come take your pulse.
But I hope you had this experience of noticing these thoughts, and maybe, well, just tell me, how many of you think that you were directing the thoughts, that you were deciding what was coming up, what… when they were coming up, like the timing.
and how they were going to affect you. Anybody?
Right. Now, they come. And there you go, if you don't grab them.
And there you go. A thought comes, hangs around for a moment.
Next thought comes, hangs around for a moment. Off.
They just appear. So what we call this self is like that.
It is a process. I am Nenzening right now.
Way is weighing. We are all just inging right now.
This room is eating right now. The world is inging right now. Sounds a little awkward, so you can use your regular name.
As you go, you don't go, oh, I'm minging.
But you know this, because the person you were.
years ago is not this person right now.
maybe even not the person you were this morning.
So even though we go through our lives saying me and myself and mine, we kind of assume ownership.
of this thing. There is ample reason to doubt that assumption of ownership.
For another example that came out of your Zazin this morning, maybe you heard some turkeys.
Uh, maybe you heard the motorcycles. on Skyline. Maybe you heard the scrub Jays.
And there's this moment when you heard that sound, and there was no hearer. There is just the sound.
And… and then you identified the sound. And maybe you had an opinion about the sound next. The mind just rushes in right after.
something's been experienced, which is just sound. At that point, just sound, there is no inside and outside. There's that moment, you know it, where it's just the sound. But then the mind rushes in and… identifies it and categorizes it, and then puts it into pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.
Maybe you're thinking, Jakoji should do something about those turkeys. They're really interfering with my concentration.
Or those motorcycles, or those scrub days.
Right there. When you identify it.
an identity in you, someone is appearing. Before that, there's no someone having this experience. It's just the experience.
And the same is true of your thoughts. You know that there's a thought coming through as you're sitting in Zazam.
But before you start taking it apart, and some of us are trained to do this.
To be very analytical. Before you start identifying it, labeling it, and calling it mine, there's just a thought.
Same with your feelings and sensations and impulses and consciousness.
Everything. You should doubt the assumption that you own these experiences.
When we practice a lot with noticing impermanence, that first mark of existence.
Through this zazan, through being alive in our own present moment, noticing impermanence.
We cannot help but feel relief. Some of the things that arrive phenomenologically are things that when we pick them up and call them ours.
Not so comfortable. Think of the difference between.
I'm an angry person. 4.
I'm ego-driven or I'm impatient. 4.
Anybody want to offer one? Some way in which you've limited your definition to this.
Thanks.
The difference between that and… There's anger.
There is impatience. There's frustration. There's… Danico.
Big difference, right? We get used to… seeing what arrives in Zazan as a phenomenon.
just as, like, weather. My friend Hogan the other day told me, some of you know Hogan, he's really a dear friend, a Dharma brother.
To all of us. He was teasing me and joking about he had heard a teaching that said.
It's just what the lunch lady is serving. Some of you don't know what the lunch lady is, because I'm old, but it used to be you'd go to school, and there'd be a cafeteria, and she'd just plop your food on your plate. And that's what the lunch lady was serving.
And it's nothing personal. What you're experiencing in any given moment is just what the lunch lady is offering today.
Don't take it so personally. It's just what's getting plopped onto your platter.
That's what the lunch lady offered.
Now, having said all this, I want to reiterate that, speaking of not-self is not a negation of this existence.
All of ours distance. Life is still happening.
Breathing is happening. Sitting is happening. Walking is happening.
Then Zenning is happening, Sean is happening. We're all happening.
We're happening, babe. But there is no fixed independent controller behind all that activity who's deciding what thoughts are going to come and go in any given moment is deciding what feelings.
sensations and emotions are going to arrive in any given moment. There's nobody controlling it.
No fixed cell. Just process, just relationship.
That's all I can find. And why does this matter? What's the big deal about not self?
Well, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that most of you are here because of this awareness of the capital S self.
That scaffold cell. that you're carrying around. I mean, for me, I came to practice because I was suffering carrying around that scaffolding. I may not have known it.
But I knew I was suffering. It's a burden to have a capital S, so.
I think most people come to Jacoji because they… I think maybe the Buddha was on to something.
That's onto something. are suffering, which is the second mark of existence.
arises because of this very strong evolutionary imperative to be somebody.
to advance that someone and to defend that somebody.
And that somebody, that effort. to stick out, be seen and acknowledged.
is actually the source of our suffering.
This self… is moving.
If we try to grip it. more suffering.
Some of you know this because maybe you've been in situations where you know you should get out.
You stay, you grip. We're suffering.
So you can maybe now see that these three marks of existence.
impermanence, suffering. and not self are also not separate.
They are completely intertwined.
in our daily lives, we sometimes have these notions of the self.
I should be more like this. In my case, I should be more patient. I'm actually really patient with everybody but me.
Most of the time, someone here might argue. Um, but I should be more patient, or I should be, whatever, fill in the blank, whatever you'd like, whatever your form of self.
harm is. I should be more like that. I should be more like this. And this is not, um, spoken in a way of, you know, Bodhicitta or inspiring. It's usually self.
punishing. Every time you hear that voice, you are fabricating yourself.
It's a very clear, like, ding, ding, ding! You're making up a self.
Maybe even during meditation this morning, you thought, I should be calm.
I shouldn't have any thoughts. I do not like that itch.
all of these things, or I should be more Zen.
That should any one of those shoulds. is this attempt to solidify.
So to make a capital S, so… Somebody. Trust me, it's a lot of work.
Whatever is asking to be seen. In any part of your experience is an attempt.
Creative self.
trying to stabilize. this moving thing.
Now, I don't want you to think that trying to stabilize this self and kind of get… grounded in some way in something that you think is really me and permanent.
Uh, is bad or is wrong? I wouldn't say that.
But it is a constructed self. And reconstruct this through, mostly through memory.
and habit. A lot of unconscious material.
I personally find it a burden. your mileage may vary.
Maybe you'll enjoy carrying around. a scaffolding.
But I found it pretty liberating. I find it pretty liberating every time the scaffolding falls away.
In my own practice, I think of it this way. You can work with a capital S self two ways.
One is self as, um… content. Self as content.
And with that content comes a story about, oh, I'm this way because that happened, and I was victimized here, and victimized there, or I made these bad choices, and I victimized other people. So that self is content.
Um, is one way. For me, that looks like suffering.
And you find out for yourself. Another way of dealing with capital S self is self.
As context. contacts. And you probably know what I'm pointing to.
Relationship self as it arises right here, right now.
in relationship.
And in that way, that self becomes an observer.
I am not angry. There is some anger. That difference is very profound.
Pretty life-changing when you don't have to identify. Everything that pushes your buttons.
So as an observer dealing with this self as context, as opposed to content.
We can be the sky, you know? As vast as the sky. Or as empty as a mirror.
We're… Stuff's coming through, you know?
stuff's just coming through.
The sky doesn't have any… self-identity or nature. It's just like a container for everything that goes through it, and that's what we are, too.
So what happens when we loosen the self? We sat down the scaffolding.
I'm not going to deny that there might be a period where that falls away and there might be a little like, uh-oh.
What's left? You know, like this very profound sense, like, wait a minute, what happened to I?
But you may not have that experience. You may just feel, whew!
I'm free. This loosening… Makes life very playful.
and spontaneous. and less self-conscious, wildly less self-conscious, because the self doesn't seem to be anything permanent, that you should be self-conscious about.
I mean, it's not analytical like that, but it just kind of… evaporates, not permanently, trust me.
Comes, it goes.
The one really profound experience around this falling away of this scaffolding is really no one to advance.
There's no one that you have to promote anymore. There's no sense that you have anything to prove.
That is really a wonderful feeling. For those of you who've already… I mean, I had a career, many of you have careers, there is that kind of pressure to prove yourself, to demonstrate your capacity and your… Your competency, and to kind of almost stick out like our DNA wants us to, and say, look at me, and recognize my contribution. And aren't I special?
And when that goes… It feels really good. You just don't need it, and you're aware that you don't need it. And that… It's really delicious place to play.
I mean, it is really great. because you're just responding to what's here all the time without feeling like you have to be.
Have your contribution recognized. Doesn't have to happen. There's no me that has to be in that role.
you get comfortable with whatever the lunch lady is serving.
at any given time.
Now, you could look at me up here, sitting here as a teacher, and say, well, easy for you to say, but… I'm just as surprised as you are that I'm sitting up here as a teacher. This was not my plan.
This is just what happened. The lunch lady delivered this life.
And I said, Okay. So when we experience this.
not intellectually, not because you read it in a book, not because you heard it from me, but actually through your own bodily experience.
the burden of being someone so dramatically feels unimportant.
that we stop wanting to be anyone. It just doesn't matter. It's, like, becomes irrelevant.
Like, the ingredient is… doesn't exist.
We stop having to be anybody or anything. And what is actually right here, right now, and whoever she is, who knows?
In any given moment by moment by moment experiencing.
And it's interesting because you feel totally and dynamically engaged.
But it's not about you. There's no center. It's about this right now, you.
And me, and us, and this building and everything became before us that brought us here.
total dynamic functioning, Zenk. in Japanese.
And interestingly, the feeling is from the inside of that.
It's enough. It's enough. You don't really need anything more. It's just enough, because it's so full of so much potential.
So much possibility, and not just… It's part, practice this part.
There's a kind of joyful ease. Okay, that's what the lunch lady gave me.
I'll take it. I'll eat it. I'll do my best.
to use that fuel. To meet you.
To be recognition. of you.
This moment.
So now maybe you have a sense of this not self.
It is this. This meeting all the time.
Everywhere you go, everything you see. That bird flying.
Slowly. I don't know what's wrong with him. It's a very slow little flap over there.
Fact is that this is all happening in relationship.
Nothing stands alone. We are never alone. can't be. So the question becomes not.
Who is this? What is this? What is this? What is this? What is happening right here right now?
Everything is possible there.
We have so little time together on this planet.
It's incredibly precious. To be together.
Enjoy our lives. May we take care of our own lives, which means taking care of each other's lives.
Gently. Lovingly. Recognizing… The empty mirror reflecting everything and everyone.
May we actually enjoy this endless interconnection.
Your turn. You can ask questions, or… make comments, or…
People online, you want to go first, Akbar-san.
I I. I've unmuted.
I have to unmute. Well, Aguir is going… Oh, well. Okay. Well, your name's not Akbar.
Okay, now, I was having problem unmuting myself. Yes, sorry. Thank you very much for this talk.
Uh-oh.
I have a visual that helps me. To picture this this nonsal. It's the darling.
I want to see as visual.
Oh.
Darling's murmuration. When you see those birds, they're just moving around as a big body, as if something is controlling them, and none of those single birds is in control of anything. It's just the whole thing is moving, and you can scale this as…
From your neurons to the society that everyone is moving in some way of.
You know, reacting to something, yeah. So there is no one in.
self and no single person or no single bird in charge there. It's just that the whole thing is moving. That's my picture that I try to.
Stick to it and remember.
Thank you so much. Everyone heard that, yes? What a wonderful vision. I love that too.
Yeah, maybe that's the thing that we're so enchanted by when we see them.
Well, that's it.
Thank you.
You wanting to speak, Michael?
Yes, um, yeah, it was a very good talk.
stuff I forget about, you know, and then you remind me. But, uh… You're talking about sense of self, and how many selves. And I just went home after a very long absence to where I grew up.
And man, did I have a sense of all the selves.
that I have been I mean, it was really remarkable.
you know, and how… how fluid.
It all is. One moment to the next.
and. how it all changes in an eye blink, you know, it was rather profound.
But but I really got a sense of this universe of selves.
all the selves that I was. all the cells I am, and all the cells that will be. You know. I just I just got this whole kaleidoscope. It's like looking through one of those kaleidoscopes when you're a kid, you know, you turn them.
And it was like, whoa.
It's it was really. Kind of a little hard to put into words, but it was quite an immense feeling.
But thank you for your talk.
Thank you for sharing this. I think it's very important that us.
practitioners we. I understand what Michael is speaking about. Look at all the selves look at all the selves we've already been and just think of it exponentially. I mean, look at all the selves we are, all of us.
And our practice is to radically accept all of those cells, right?
not cut out the ones that we think, oh, I wish I hadn't done that.
Because you wouldn't be this without all of those cells. And this is fantastic.
Being alive is great, whatever it is. And it is all of those other cells, and all of these other cells.
together. So it's important to. Go to the next step and realize the richness.
selfie that we're doing. and the impermanence of this selfie.
Patience.
Oh.
I so appreciate your your talk today, and I wanted to recognize that behind you there's a switch plate that has a shadow that creates a great big L, a capital L, instead of a capital S. So, just to representing love and how we can.
Be free to love when we're not carrying this scaffolding as a burden, and I love that image.
Because, you know, that's, I think what the Buddha and what you're saying is to be present for what is… our experience of, um.
you know, devoting ourselves to this practice. Thank you.
Yeah, you know, I like to use this word love, too. I find it's very triggering for other people.
So, but yeah, I think the Buddha was about love, about our connection. And that love, of course, includes everything, including our sense of disconnection.
and hatred and anger. The love is the whole thing.
I like these visuals very much.
Yeah, it's a relief. Big relief to be able to, even in the midst of discomfort.
to be really… A chain interconnect.
So that when someone is upset with you. You are… Not having to perform.
Someone gives you some feedback that feels yucky, you can think, hmm.
Who is that? Or if someone comes at you, really looking angry, saying things, you can say.
is you're not at the center of the experience.
Already, that sense.
Yeah, that's.
Yeah.
I forgot that there was an area designated. come back and tell us. Yeah.
Yeah, some of you maybe remember being children. In the sense of not being separate.
Um, experience. Not having an opinion or a sense of… I remember it was very terrible.
It's no difference between me and the grass and the clouds.
Like, not intellectually, you know? Not like that, not like the way I just expressed it.
Four words, I guess is the way I would say it.
or we separate and navigate into the territory where there's grass and clouds and.
That kind of merging. experience with this.
Observer of the experience. Yeah, I think that neuroscience is a really.
fertile ways of looking at Buddhism. for that matter, so is autumn physics.
Everything is kind of proving would have said 2,500 years ago.
Yeah, we have a negativity bias. Yeah, that's about preserving self, right? Protecting self.
I gotta watch out, because someone can try and take something.
Really? What could they possibly take?
Wish they'd take your identity. I shouldn't joke about that police identity.
That'd be fine. Okay.
completely ice creamy. That is my visualization of. Thank you for that.
Of course I'm behind you. Now we all we can see with ice cream all over the room.
Yeah, but you can have this experience without even without even going outside of.
into your imagination, although you've got a good one there, this memory. But, you know, we talk about mindfulness all the time. You know, I was washing my coffee cup this morning.
little glimpse of… the bubbles in the water and the cup and the sponge, and I was like, oh my god, this is so wonderful! What is so wonderful? It's just that there is nothing else happening.
And so you can just return to this moment like that. And even in the midst of… in the midst of a discomforting moment.
Great beauty. We've talked about this, they show on it.
A little bit about in the midst of our discomfort.
I know this is true. Great luck.
are washing dishes.
You're completely absorbed. as Williamis is describing, completely involved.
There's nothing else except for this now, now, now, now, now, now. It's great.
Maybe we'll all think about your son.
Yes. It's a big ask.
This is the Buddha's very first.
This is here.
Gave myself. I asked my teacher to give me.
I took it.
Liberation. I see.
acknowledging. There's anything.
The other side of all that is love, love, love, love.
I didn't know this about this. Happens because of that.
Joseph.
It's true, and some of us live here. It is continuous.
In a… There's no avoiding results.
You're running into yourself all the time. So yeah.
Delightful. requires you to pay.
That's what can be done.
It's not you. You, it's the self.
Every single heartbeat and breathe. So, everyone is doing.
Yeah. Maybe tomorrow.
No idea, and nor do you. And nor can we to have the answer to that would be to understand.
higher universe. then I know how you got here. You drove up the hill, and I drove up the hill.
But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about what caused you upgrade.
Just sit here and place yourself. All of us.
melt into this charity.
Do it all for you. I used to think that there would be a way, um.
trained as a lawyer, and lawyers do this thing where they basically… take the structures apart until they get to them. And this… Your Honor is the cause of all of this.
There's no doing that. It didn't exist in log either.
I am recovering. But there is this kind of incredible selfing desire to get to the bottom of this and pull out of the ball of yarn the one little foot and say, ta-da!
There's just no way. And I'm just so grateful you're here, but I have no way of saying it.
And really, it was unpredictable from any, well, maybe not. One of my friends from law school was coming.
Well, obviously, you're always a Buddhist monk. I absolutely never have said that about me.
So maybe it was visible to other people, and maybe it's visible to me that you should be here, but not.
and it doesn't matter. I don't know what that is. In the tradition, you know, there's this bodhicitta, this desire to await.
It drives people to practice. I'm not going to deny that, because I experienced… For me, it was probably tied in a little bit to… bottom of this, but… I did get to the bottom. It was the ground.
That's the same ground we're all on. So I don't have any ideas, I don't.
Being able to do what you're proposing. But maybe you will.
I don't have the corner. I would like to know someone else has an idea that is not.
selfie. How we got here.
Roxy, I saw. you're going to be the last one.
Remember how we're talking about sound.
And then there's the identification. And then there's maybe a story about how I don't like that sound.
Before any of that excess stuff happens.
Just an observer, observer. experiencing not.
They're happening. Simulation.
If you wake up in the morning and a woman's body and think this is.
You can think that, but it is just the body.
So this putting language.
Even all these words… really aren't touching.
They're just an approximation. It's what we have. Buddha said.
But I would say you tell yourself the truth about.
What is here? What is here? It doesn't have gender. But to say it's non-binary is now another level.
When people… and I'll tell you the truth. I'm… I was, um… A woman in a law firm with all men.
But this… in Buddhism, I was the only woman I knew in Buddhism for a long time.
for some time it was at least I actually formed a group called VAWS, the Voices of Women in Gun, because I wanted to talk to other women. And I'm like, Hi, I know you're a woman. Can we talk?
And it wasn't because.
I really… what I really wanted to get at is I didn't want to be viewed as a woman.
just wanted to be viewed as being. Like you're a bean.
I just didn't like the imposition of gender on me.
even though I'm totally okay with seeing this. don't like all the words attached to it, and the constructs around it.
So it's like a horseshoe, you know, one end could be non-binary and one could be completely celebrating whatever this is.
And someone moved from the outside would say, well, she's a woman.
I don't have to go around doing that. I can just be what this experience is without the extra.
thing right? It's a turkey. or it's a scrub day.
And I don't like your idea. Ricci? So, when everyone says should, they're creating the self.
They're saying it about you, you should do this. They're creating… and position of the self.
Really has nothing to do with you, by the way, so don't take it personally without them. Everything that everyone is saying you should do is about them.
And, um, I think it could be just honest with yourself about.
What is my experience? Well, if you're in a female body, you're going to have female body type experiences.
Because those are the parts that the lunch lady gave you. Well, that sounds bad. Oh, it's just like a uterus lamp out my cafeteria tray. Don't go there.
Gonna have to get that out of my head first.
You get it. Tell the truth. This is my experience and tomorrow. It's okay. And you might feel like, yeah, I'm non-binary tomorrow.
Whatever. It's not the important thing. is actually happening?
Not the overlay. Now, I want to go on record as saying that does not mean we should be disrespectful of people who identify.
go away, because that's what they're doing, and that's what their reality is, and it's not good or bad, and it's not for you to say it's good or bad.
You have to be honest with this one, that's the only person.
that you can be… Also, really.
take care of this. Changing and permanent.
dynamically related self. and my own feeling is that when someone comes up and says.
Yeah, shouldn't do that, but you should do that.
For me, it's always the right response.
What do you have to lose by doing that?
I don't know. It makes me closer.
I think we really do have this. We'll be together, don't worry.