Good morning. Nice to see you. And I'm sorry I'm a bit late, because we had a wedding in Crestone that I didn't expect. I had to come a week later than I planned, so I just really arrived, boom, boom. It implies more than you verbally... You didn't say so much. Oh, well, usually. Okay. And we have, as you know, this topic of self.

[01:09]

And, yeah, it's an experience, obviously, an experience we've been exploring for all the days and hours of our life. And it's a topic that, subject, topic that every culture in the world comes to some idea about. But different cultures have rather different ideas or ways of acting through or acting as a self.

[02:22]

And of course, you know, since my life and your interest too is in Buddhism, I naturally enough bring Buddhism into how we reflect on What is the Self? Or who is the Self? Or how is the Self? But although I will naturally enough, as I said, bring Buddhism into the discussion, and of course that profoundly interests me, But more fundamentally, I'm interested in what each of us means by the self.

[03:46]

And, you know, there's no philosophy or psychology which really has any, they have provisional definitions of the self, but no one really knows what the self is. Except, again, we spend... most of our, all of our life exploring or acting as self. I was just on the night train from from Zurich.

[05:05]

And last night they gave me some soup and some bread. And I had three pieces of bread and I only ate two of them. So I had one piece of bread left. And what was I going to do with it? You know, I've been taught not to waste things. As a friend of mine always said to me, waste it on the outside, don't waste it on the inside. So what am I going to do with this piece of bread? Well, I ended up wrapping it up in two napkins

[06:07]

paper napkins to save for the morning. But one of the statements supposedly of the Buddha, don't think in terms of I, me, mind. Because everything is interdependent, you can't really say, this is me. Well, somehow I felt this piece of bread belonged to me. I mean, there's lots of bread on the train, but I didn't think all the other bread was mine.

[07:21]

But this piece that ended up in my room, my roomette, I thought, somehow now it's mine, or I have to do something with it. But this piece of bread that was in my sugar bowl, that is somehow, I just thought that this is mine. But I think this is very funny thinking. I mean, it's something we all do, of course. Some version. But did this piece of bread become my responsibility because it happened to be brought into this roomette? Anyway, somehow I felt responsible for this piece of bread. So, somehow this is a definition of self. Something, this sense of possession.

[08:42]

I came into possession of this piece of bread. because someone happened to bring it into a near space. So I think to explore a topic like self, We have to look at all of the ways we implicitly act through the idea of self. If we say something like, myself, I mean in English, myself, I wouldn't do that. We mean that that which we wouldn't do somehow doesn't belong to what we are.

[09:52]

Now this is so natural that we do that all the time. What can Buddhism possibly mean when it says there's no self? Of course it means there's no permanent self. But what do we feel when we imply that this belongs to me or this is not me? But what do we mean by implicit if we say, this is not mine, this does not belong to me, this does not belong to me.

[10:53]

So I think if you take, you know, how do we explore these categories? Because we need to speak about something like this. We need some categories. And I think we have to notice the categories we use explicitly and implicitly. Of course, the most common categories for us are mind and body. And of course the most obvious categories for us are spirit and body. And I think we have a pretty clear idea of experience of mind and body as related and separate.

[12:04]

And although We can't really say they're separate, we experience them separately. So let's just say for the sake of our interior shared conversation, We have these categories of mind and body. Okay, now we add to themself. What is this third category? Does this Self, possess the body.

[13:11]

We say my body. In Japan they don't say my stomach, they just say stomach. Who else's stomach? But we say my stomach or my mind. Or what is this category that we talk about as somehow responsible for the body and the mind. Well, now, as most of you know, I have this daughter, Sophia, who is now seven. And from the moment she was born, there was a body born. That was what was born. And there was clearly the body had awareness.

[14:24]

But we related to her body, of course, holding her and so forth. And they related to her awareness. Putting things over her crib, playing peek-a-boo, etc. But we also... related to something that wasn't there or did we make it?

[15:26]

We could call self. You know, she's seven years old and she still likes to eat with her fingers and play with her food and stuff. And we say, you know, you can't eat that way. Well, obviously she can. It's a lot more fun. But we say a seven-year-old does not eat that way. We cannot go to a restaurant with you. No. Are we speaking to her body? Well, we're speaking to her ears anyway. But we're not really speaking to her ears, we're speaking to her hearing with her ears.

[16:27]

And we're speaking to what? What hears. So do we create in speaking to what hears or who hears? Are we creating a who? Or was there already a who there? Large parts of our culture think there's already a who there, a self or soul or something. I feel that I should apologize for speaking about something so simple as this. But I think, at least for me, I have to start really simply to see what the heck we're talking about.

[17:50]

So we have to start somewhere where we're fairly clear. So I think it's fairly clear these categories of mind and body. Of course, I don't really think they're separate. And our practice is much about Buddhist practice, much about weaving mind and body together. But still, I think we have to start somewhere. So let's start with mind and body.

[19:11]

Then we add self. But we might also add soul. I don't think we mean they're the same thing. Now I'm not talking about belief or teaching or anything here. But just what we experience. And this is also the view of Buddhism, to, as much as possible, in your fundamental thinking, eliminate all belief. Eliminate all received knowledge.

[20:14]

As much as you can. And then notice that how received knowledge appears. But right now, let's stick to being as simple as possible. Yeah, we have mind and body. And now we have something we're pretty sure about, self. A sense of an observer, a possessor, an agent. And then we can add further soul, spirit, ego, so forth.

[21:23]

Now, what do we mean of these versions of self? Are they somehow something more subtle or do we experience a difference? What do we mean? What do we experience? And I think you have to ask yourself. Ask yourself. Ask your body? No, no. Ask your mind? Ask yourself. I can't say it any other way. Do you have the same situation in German? Yes. So every time I say something like you have to ask yourself, I'm assuming a self. What is the nature of the self?

[22:29]

Is it just something? Does it have a nature? You know, I sound like a kindergarten teacher. But I'm the kindergarten here. Is the nature of the self the body? Is the nature of the self the mind? If the self isn't permanent, then what's it constructed of? If it is permanent, what's it constructed of? But if it's not permanent or changes, then it's somehow constructed.

[23:37]

What are its ingredients? If we can answer these questions, we'll all be famous by the end of the seminar. You know, I think we can also make another category that's useful to look at. Buddha says, and very early things attributed to Buddha, he says, we act through mind, body and thoughts. He's talking about karma, karma in the most simple sense, karma means action.

[24:55]

We act through body, speech and thought. And by acting through body, speech and thought or mind, we create the effects of our actions. Okay, so although Buddhism says there's no... permanent self. Clearly the Buddha is saying there's some kind of self here. Because if you have acting through body, speech and thought, He says one acts through, wills through, intends through body, speech and thought.

[26:24]

What is this one which acts through body, speech and thought? Is it different from the body? Different from speech? Different from thoughts? In what sense is willing something or intending something a thought? So is it thought acting through thoughts? Yeah, I think that, again, you know, one has to, you know... Look at how we use these words.

[27:32]

What are we assuming when we use these words? And our experience of an observing self is profoundly and thoroughly influenced by what others think of our self. If someone has really taken a dislike to you, it can kind of nag you. Then get your sense of self for years.

[28:37]

It can be like a little poison. Every time you think of it, you wonder why. Because that person disliked me. So whatever we call self is not just observing, it's also influenced by... what everyone else thinks. To various degrees. Some people have very weak borders to their self and they're influenced all the time. It can hardly function. Some people have cells which are extremely isolated, you can't give them any feedback at all.

[29:41]

So again, what is this cell? Okay. So now I want to start to make another distinction. We have thoughts. We also have attention. And we can bring attention to our thoughts. But we cannot bring attention to our thoughts. So attention is something different from thoughts. I think that when you really explore that distinction, it's quite amazing. And so, as I often say in very basic Zen practices, you can bring attention from your thoughts to your breath.

[31:01]

And this is something that I say over and over again. In Zen practice, this is quite fundamental, that one can give away one's attention, for example, from the breath, from the thoughts, Is the sense of self carried by attention? If I think my thoughts are belong to myself, if I bring my attention away from my thoughts to breath, do I change my experience of self? I certainly can think believe my thoughts are closely related to myself.

[32:19]

My thoughts are not your thoughts. Well, I hope my thoughts are your thoughts because you have to translate them. But we have a sense of our thoughts being I mentioned this often, but I read years ago that a bunch of kids were asked, what is the mind for? And most of them answered, to keep secrets. You have a sense, you can think things and I can think things you don't know.

[33:25]

It's not really true. But we think it's true. Overall, what we think is felt by other people. But when we bring attention to a breath, Say that you just get in the habit of attention resting on breath. I, me, mine doesn't apply so easily. I, me, mine doesn't apply so easily. I can say my breath. But even if I don't say my breath, I still keep breathing.

[34:27]

And the breathing doesn't really belong to me somehow. It belongs to the body. It belongs to the air. We're all breathing in each other's air here. So if a simple thing, if attention is something you can shift away from thoughts, you can shift it to the breath. the reinforcement for I, me and mine is much less.

[35:29]

You feel more like you're participating in the world outside of categories like I possess it or I don't. Dann seid ihr viel stärker in der Welt, in einer Art und Weise, dass ihr nicht denkt, das gehört mir. Ich bin im Besitz der Welt.

[35:58]

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