Anyway, we all have a continuous, pretty much continuous, uninterrupted experience of self. But I think it's actually very difficult when you try to pin it down, is self. Is self the observing function? And in Buddhism, early Buddhism, The self is... actualized, developed through actions.

[01:07]

But what or who is developing the self through actions? I mean, I think it's pretty clear that If I'm trying to, Louise and I are trying to get Sophia to eat a certain way, get her body to eat a certain way. And how do we get her body to eat a certain way? We have to give her a sense of self which uses her body in a certain way to eat. And so we somehow have to hook her, create a sense of self in her.

[02:18]

And then hook that sense of self to what others think about her. So we have to create a sense of shame. And in fact we say in Buddhism that without a sense of shame you can't practice Buddhism. I think we could say that we're trying to create a handle which we can take hold of Sophia with. There are these categories of mind and body, and the body wants to eat.

[03:35]

And her mind has some influence about how she eats. And she is eating this way because she's having fun. And she eats this way because she actually eats pretty well. She eats this way because it irritates her mother. So herself is, we're trying to create a handle on her so we can control her. And she's trying to use that to control us. And so we're trying to create a handle which society can use too. To get her to go to school and things. And she loves to be read to.

[05:06]

But when I tell her, once you read a couple of paragraphs, then I'll read the next paragraph. She doesn't really want to, she likes to be read to. and I say come on Sophia you're old enough to read well she does read but she kind of hides her ability to read from us Also, sie liest irgendwie, aber auf eine gewisse Art und Weise versucht sie ihre Fähigkeit zu lesen vor uns zu verbergen. But I still say, come on, Sophia, you need to practice. If you want to read, just practice some. Aber nichtsdestotrotz sage ich zu Sophia, also ich komme jetzt, du kannst doch lesen, und wenn du lesen möchtest, lesen können möchtest, dann musst du auch üben.

[06:15]

So then I discover a couple days later that she was a little sick and didn't go to school and she read ten books during the day and practiced and virtually memorized these ten fairly simple books. And then the next day, she said to me, will you read to me tonight? And I said, sure. She said, but if I read a book to you first, will you promise not to ask me to read the book that I'm reading to her? She said, if I read a whole book to you first, will you then not ask me to read paragraphs in the book you're reading?

[07:22]

So I said, sure. So she read a whole book to me. Took about 10 minutes. There's one word she didn't know, snoop. Snoop, you know snoop? No. Yeah, like a dog snoops around. And so clearly I'd shamed her into practicing reading. So she had a sense of self with a sense of shame. And she wanted to prove to me she could read. So she practiced for a full day until she knew each word in all the books.

[08:30]

And then showed me. So herself was clearly related to me and to my sense of self. But does herself belong to her? Now we're creating a handle. Do you understand my saying handle? A handle. Which school can take hold of, society can take hold of, ambition can take hold of. So in a way I'm sort of shocked at myself because I don't like the handle that allows people to manipulate you. In terms of ambition and success and stuff like that.

[09:45]

But you know you really have no choice. You have to have a sense of self as a way of functioning with others. Now, Buddhism takes the view that in the most fundamental sense, you're creating your own self. I mean, maybe your parents get it started. But actually, you're participating with them. And from the point of view of Buddhism, the self is the agent, we can say, the agent of enlightenment.

[11:01]

It's the agent of realization. Because it's yourself, it's this What do we call it? Self-unit. Well, why don't we call it you-unit? I don't know what you want to call it in German. But so this you-unit. Mm-hmm. accumulates your actions. And how the you unit accumulates action can lead to suffering or can lead to realization.

[12:02]

Okay, now, is the you unit self or is the Or is there some other unit that's developing the you unit? Excuse me for these dumb examples. Crestone, until recent years, I've never had seasonal allergies. In other words, I have various allergies, sort of mildly, but they haven't been seasonal. In the last few years, in the spring, I've gotten these allergic reactions in Crestone.

[13:12]

And And as soon as I go leave, it gets better. So three days ago, I would have liked to have scratched my eyes out. It's kind of a nuisance, you know. But it's already better. But of course, everyone tries to medicate me. I prefer to suffer. I actually really prefer to just let it happen, see what happens, etc., etc. But, you know, I'm willing to try homeopathic stuff because it's the mildest of medicines.

[14:34]

So they give me these little tiny sugar pills or whatever they are. And maybe they work. I don't know. I can't tell. But anyway, you're supposed to put two in your mouth. So it's a little dispenser in here. Two pop powder, three, you know. Then I put them in my mouth. No, my mouth immediately knows whether there's two or three. And it seems to know... I don't think you know where I'm going here, but that's all right.

[15:44]

It seems to know independent of myself. If I put three in instead of two, my tongue immediately knows there's three. And almost all the time my tongue keeps out of the way of my teeth. My teeth are moving, my tongue is moving food around and these teeth are coming down and my tongue keeps moving. Tongue is a little afraid, you know that? But it's very smart, it's very effective at staying out of the way most of the time.

[16:52]

Who's doing that? Is it self doing it? Or is the tongue just doing it? And I think the tongue can count. It can count one, two, and three of these things. If it was 50, it can't count. Okay, is there some way we have a fundamental... So the question is, is there something like a fundamental level in which we work and where there is no self? This is something we explore in meditation.

[18:04]

If you try to take the observing self out of the situation, they're still functioning. It's not just arbitrary function. Now, I have these beads here. They were actually from Herman gave them to me and we got them in Japan.

[19:08]

We were there together. Okay, so old. Yeah. Yeah, it's not only that they're old because that was quite a while ago, but their dark color means they're much older than that. They get dark from being handled. And I have this watch, which someone else gave me. I think it's kind of a funny story. I looked in a window once and I said, I've always wanted a watch like that. And I thought, maybe when I'm old, I can get a Ford watch like that. And about two weeks later this person gave me this watch.

[20:16]

And they'd gotten some sort of unexpected money and they bought this watch for me. And then she said, I didn't think you should wait till you're old. But I heard she told someone else he's already old. Okay. This is all memory. Yeah, and this that Herman gave me, this is all memory. But now I'm looking at the word memory. Yeah, and I'm looking at the word memory because maybe it's one of the ingredients of self.

[21:21]

If the self is not permanent and it's a construct and I'm participating in, for example, creating Sophia's self And right now, with you, I'm participating in creating which maybe is my self, but maybe it's your self too that I'm taking care of. Now I've used the word memory. Now I'd like you to forget all your memory, all you know about memory.

[22:40]

Forget about how you use the word memory. Like my memory of this watch being given to me. That's one sense of memory. But I want to speak about how what we mean by memory in Buddhism. Now, if I have no memory of these beads, I don't even know they're beads. If my hand, who? I don't know.

[23:52]

My parents' hand? The hand I'm responsible for these days? This hand, without memory, just picked this up, said I had some brain damage. It would just be shapes. Clearly it would be shapes. But it wouldn't be beads. And this, it would clearly be shapes, but I wouldn't know what, it wouldn't be a watch. Without memory, when Sophia, if I handed this to Sophia, when she was a few months old, It would just be a shape.

[24:58]

A weight. She wouldn't know how to tell time. She wouldn't know at all time. She wouldn't know anything. So... These are both just shapes. Everything that makes it other than a shape or in addition to a shape is memory. So I remember that Herman gave me this. Now that's one... kind of memory. But just knowing its beads doesn't matter.

[25:58]

If I don't bring Memory to it, it's just shape. Okay. Now, can I look at you and just see shapes? I'm out bringing memory to it. To each of you. Mm-hmm. And if I get up and walk through the room to the door over there, I'm walking between memories. From a Buddhist point of view. Because I know if I step on your knee, you probably won't like it.

[27:07]

And if I know if I step on the pillow, it probably won't mind unless you think it's your pillow. And if I step on your knee, you probably won't like it. Why are you stepping on my pillow? So I'll try not to step on your pillow, or you'll have to... So I'm actually walking through memory, which my senses are supplying. And I behave in relationship to those memories. So certainly one of the main ingredients of self is memory. But if this was a completely dark room or I was walking through the forest,

[28:21]

Yeah, I might bump my way through. And it might take me a while if suddenly I was in the middle of deer or rocks instead of trees. And this happened to me once walking down the hill in Creston. Without a flashlight, I found myself in the middle of about 15 deer. And they were right, you know, like you. And I think if I'd been walking with my usual sense of self, The deer would have all gone away. I was sort of like a walking tree. I was just in the dark. I just didn't know where I was. And... Suddenly I was surrounded in the dark by an organic mass.

[29:52]

Some young and some females and a couple of guys. It took me a moment just to realize, hey, I had to Every season we have a little different group of deer, sometimes it's 20, sometimes it's 10, this time it was about 15. So I realized I was in some sort of organic field and after a moment or two I realized it was deer. But I had to hold back any sense of deer, animals, bee, human, etc. And if I'd had any sort of fear, it would not have been good.

[31:17]

So I just felt this field, and then I continued slowly walking through it, and somehow the deer made space for me. But the same group, if you come out at Zazen in the morning, they see you, they all start running, scattering somewhere. When I was in a situation where memory was functioning to a fairly slight degree, Als ich in einer Situation war, in der die Erinnerung nur in einem sehr beschränkten Ausmaß am Arbeiten war, I'd gone off the trail.

[32:22]

and of course I knew I was somewhere on the planet and the creststone part of the planet but I didn't know really where I was I didn't know whether there were stones or trees in front. It was totally dark. I didn't know whether there were stones or trees or deer in front of me. So I was walking pretty much outside the field of memory. And the deer didn't treat me like a human being. So I would say perhaps self was less present. So Let's assume that's true.

[33:46]

So let's speak about maybe selfness. Selfness. So if we have instead of thinking of self as a unit or an entity, that's somehow always present, Let's think of it more as a function or process. And as a quality of selfness. That can be more present or less present. So I guess one of the things I'm saying is how do we get from the self as a parental and societal handle

[35:08]

And to the self, which is the agent or means of realization or enlightenment. And the self which accumulates actions. And the self which may perhaps transform or accumulates in actions. wholesome actions and not unwholesome actions. How do we create actions and accumulate actions when there's less selfness or more selfness? And can we develop a self?

[36:25]

But can we develop that self so it feels less selfness? And can we feel when there's more selfness or less selfness? It's not that simple, but let's leave it at that. How can we make, find self as an agent of realization?

[37:26]

And all Buddhist teaching has two goals. To lessen suffering and to increase the likelihood of realization. And what role does the self have in this? The self that's possessed by our society, created by our society. And the self that we possess. And the self that somehow frees us, could free us from suffering and lead to realization.

[38:27]

Anyway, this is the fundamental question of Buddhism.

[38:32]

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