I tried to talk Paul into coming this morning because I missed his presence and he really was still in California. But now I feel a little guilty getting you to prop yourself up. Does my self feel guilty? What feels guilty? There are quite developed Buddhist theories of self-cognition. How does that fit in with the selflessness of persons? I mean, self-cognition is you remember you did that or saw that.

[01:11]

So what remembered you? So it's something, some kind of activity we call self, remembers what happened to us. So on the one hand, we have to be practical about what... what our own experience is. And the most convincing experiences of self are probably memory, our body, Our physical location.

[02:22]

And, yeah, again, agency or that we make decisions that have an effect. And that we accumulate experience. What accumulates experience? Do we call what accumulates an experience, what do we call what accumulates, do we call accumulative experience, self? And do we call our body a self? Okay, now, I mean, for most people, this is maybe irrelevant considerations. But again, Buddhism makes such a point about a basic tenet of Buddhism is the selflessness of persons.

[03:34]

So most of us here are practicing Buddhism, or to some extent practicing Buddhism. as it may be in the midst of our contemporary world the world view of Buddhism that we are finding ourselves in through the practice of Zazen and the teachings of Buddhism, it may be the strongest dynamic in our life. So then, if the beginning teaching in every school, basically, is the establishment, is the practice of looking for the self,

[05:08]

And it's really, I mean, basically pretty simple. If you believe you have a continuous self, And you believe that to various degrees. Maybe in some practical ways you don't believe it. But we still feel we have our self. We can be insulted, we can be wounded. And we try to establish our life in relationship to others comparatively. If you're trying to establish your life in comparison to others,

[06:23]

you have some idea of a continuous self. So what we have to ask ourselves is What usefulness is this emphasis on non-self? Okay. So first of all, as I again said yesterday, It's useful for any person to establish an awareness of the process of self.

[07:52]

So I'm suggesting that you, as I said this morning in Zazen, That you ask yourself the question, what is attention? And I don't want to repeat everything we talked about yesterday. But I suggested we develop a practice which I called closely held attention, which is related to Vasubandhu's closely placed recollection.

[09:01]

And this idea of Vasubandhu's again is that you bring something into your attention So it's really present in each moment of your activity. And again, to do this, for your practice to mature and develop in this way, You have to be able to feel yourself in the flow of momentary appearance unless you've developed the skill of being of feeling yourself in the flow of momentary appearance.

[10:19]

Unless you've established that experience. And if you do establish that experience, it changes your life. If someone wrote me in an email yesterday or a couple of days ago, if they can bring awareness into each momentary situation, the situation becomes malleable, like clay. And you're present in the situation where you can feel it happening and develop it in the midst of the situation.

[11:45]

And you can feel yourself You can feel yourself with views, patterns, habits reacting to this situation. It's as if you could slow time down. Perhaps like if you could hear a bird song slowed down and the details of its music. So if you develop the yogic skill of being in the flow of momentary appearance, your engagement in your life becomes much more subtle.

[13:00]

And your experience matures in a more thorough way. And it makes you feel you belong to your own experience. You don't feel separated from your own experience. Okay. Now if you turn on a light, You see the light and you see the objects being illuminated. But if you look at a photograph, you don't see the camera. And maybe a very skilled, informed person can tell from a photograph what kind of camera was used. Vielleicht kann eine sehr erfahrene und fähige Person bei einem Foto erkennen, welche Sorte Kamera benutzt wurde.

[14:44]

But still, there's no evidence in the photograph much that there was a camera being used. And as Wittgenstein has pointed out, and I pointed out that he's pointed it out quite a few times, there's nothing in this situation I'm seeing right now There's no obvious information that tells me a mind is seeing this. So one of the main yogic tenets. Tenets? T-E-N-E-T-S.

[15:47]

It means basic teachings, basic positions. Tenets is like the main things you believe in. Also, eine der Haupt-Glaubenssätze des Buddhismus. one of the basic tenets is to remind yourself that all objects are mind objects. So whenever you see an object, you see the mind seeing the object. Or let me say, first you know, you tell yourself, you remind yourself that with the knowledge that the mind is seeing the object.

[16:51]

And through this reminding yourself of this knowledge, of this fact, after a while you begin to feel the mind knowing an object. When you turn on a light, you feel the light illuminating the object. So after a while you begin to have the feel of mind in the field of mind. No, I'm saying this because it's something we should realize in practice. But I'm also saying it because it is a territory of experience that is possible for us.

[17:57]

So that if you know it's possible, if you really get it that it's possible, it'll start to become possible. Because knowledge is prior to perception. And perception begins to reflect the knowledge prior to perception. Okay, so let's imagine that you have a feel for or a taste of the the mind in the flow of momentary appearance. Thanks. So of course, this sense of flow of momentary appearance

[20:04]

It's something like swimming in your world. You're not separated from the world, you're in the midst of it, moving around in it. And most of the evolved teachings of Buddhism require being entered into this flow of momentary experience. So this closely held, closely placed recollection is you recollect a teaching, a basic pattern, You remember a teaching.

[21:21]

You remind yourself of a teaching. You repeat a teaching. And in that repetition or holding of the teaching, placing the teaching, You place it in the flow of momentary appearance. And you're really not doing anything but like putting it in the flow. Like you might take a stone and hold it in a stream and just let the water flow around it. And since our life is activity, is an interdependent activity, The flow of momentary appearance is what I call an incubatory process.

[22:35]

A maturing process. An evolving process, developing process. And you're not, in the sense that you are just putting this stone in the stream, the water, this is again an example of what I'm calling a mental posture. is that what I call a mental attitude. And the yogically involved, evolved person

[23:38]

doesn't think much. In fact, he's stupid. No, no, just doesn't think much. Could be, stupid, yeah, right. But rather has mental postures which allow the world to do the thinking for you through passing through around the mental postures. So there's a flow of noticings more than a flow of thinking abouts. Thinking about. But you're putting the myriad things to work for you.

[24:46]

You know, the word, you know, I always point out that the translation of, from Asian texts of myriad is actually ten, what's there is ten thousand. And 10,000 is not the same as many or myriad. 10,000 is a fixed number in a fixed situation. And it has the feeling that at each moment there's a particularity to the situation. But what's interesting is the etymology of myriad goes back to a Greek word which means 10,000.

[25:55]

I find that why would both Asia and Europe, and there's some influence, pick 10,000 as the number for lots of things at once that are affecting you. So this already is a different world view. think of things, the interdependence of things, as a flow that you're in the midst of.

[27:07]

And you can make use of this flow If you feel you're part of the flow and part of the idea of feeling and part of understanding that we're part of the flow is to know that we don't have a continuous self. Okay. Now you've been sitting for a while and it's, I don't know if we should have a break now.

[28:19]

What do you think? Break now, maybe. What do you think? Because if I start and what I'm going to start next, it'll be 10 or 15 minutes. Okay. I don't hear shouts or screams from me. Well, let me just introduce them. on the flip chart something I've presented many times given the topic I have no choice but maybe we can look at it a little differently because in the flow of the 10,000 things I don't ever like to be the same Oh dear, this is the past already here, you see.

[29:28]

Do I tear it off or just blow it over? Okay, I very often... There's a critter here. He says, what happened? Now he's on my shirt. Okay. function.

[30:33]

Again, this is my own way of looking at this in Western So the first, most of you know, is separation. The second is connectedness. And the third is continuity. You know, I always feel like a real teacher when I use the chart. And relevance.

[31:35]

And relevance. Okay, so separation is really simple. It's like the immune system knows what belongs to you. And what doesn't belong to you. And connectedness is we establish, you know, I feel a connection in you. And third is you have to have a continuity. If you have an experience of, for instance, if I'm here and I'm looking here at this beautiful scroll and if I now turn here and I can't remember that I'm in trouble.

[33:01]

I can't find the way to the kitchen. So there has to be some experience of continuity from here to here and I can look back and know that that's there. And relevance is if I don't, if I can't, for instance, if you have some brain damage from a car accident or something, And I can't give meaning or relevance to that bell or to the cushion or etc. And the bell is there because I bought it in Japan or because I have been practicing Zen and I ring it sometimes. If I can't put it into some context of relevance, I again can't function.

[34:07]

So you might think of some other function, but these seem to be the most basic. Now here, if the beginning Buddhist practice is to look for or establish a feeling for self, And is there a real self or just a provisional self? And of course, unless you explore your experience of self, A real self hides in the bushes of the provisional self.

[35:25]

Yeah, and interferes all the time. So you have to find some way to kind of remind yourself in this case of these four categories. And notice when you take the body as self. I often have commented on this 90-year-old person who said he felt just like a young man with something wrong with him. Perhaps he didn't feel any longer that his body was any longer the self he knew. But in any case, we need to explore these basic categories.

[36:46]

And as I said, mainly, hold closely in your attention the questioning of attention What is attention? Is it just an aspect of consciousness? I'm conscious now, but I can focus attention in various places. or as I again often point out, you can bring attention across the bump into sleep, and have a lucid dream,

[37:49]

Now, attention, if that's the case, then attention is a simple part of consciousness. And a dream arrays your experience in ways that you wouldn't have consciously done. Arranges, arrays. Arrases. A-r-r-a-y-s means to place in a pattern, arranged. I said the dream arrays your experience. And ways that you wouldn't do consciously. Where is self here? And is self piggybacking on attention?

[39:10]

Does attention make you, because attention is often our decision-making process, Do we glue the label self on attention? Or is that more than just a label? And if you take the label of self take the label off attention, can it know things outside the relevance of the narrative self? In any case, this process of exploring self and non-self

[40:11]

is an exploration. It can't be really taught. I can suggest to you how to explore and suggest maybe some relevant things in the next today and tomorrow. But the main practice of it, the understanding, knowing, a realization of what is self, occurs through your exploration on your own. And no one can do it for you.

[41:26]

Okay, so let's have a break.

[41:29]

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