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Introduction

Good evening. A warm welcome to everyone. As you know, we sit in silence for 45 minutes, and then I'll offer a brief talk. We'll ring the bell at 8:15. Thanks.

Whats Real

Good evening. Welcome, nice to see you all.

These days, there's this talk about artificial intelligence (AI). This brings up the question: what is real? If there is anything that we feel must be real, it must be you or me, right? "I'm real, you're real." There is this idea that "I'm real."

But the Buddhist teachings include this idea of not-self. So, what does that mean, really, with that whole idea of not-self? I'd like to explore this a little bit. I'm influenced by a contemporary philosopher, Julian Baggini^[1]. He is not a Buddhist—or maybe he is, I don't know—but he writes as a philosopher, and he gave a TED Talk about ten years ago that I heard. I thought, "Oh, okay, he's pointing to this same idea of not-self, but from a really different angle that I found interesting to think about."

Before I go into that, I want to talk a little bit about some of the initial reactions we might have to not-self teachings, or even hearing about this, maybe for the first time or over and over again. We might have this idea of, "What? I don't get it. Not-self? Of course there's a self, this is ridiculous." We might want to be a little bit dismissive of it because it's so different than our actual experience. "Of course there's a self, there's a real self. What are they talking about?"

There's a way in which this teaching runs counter to our experience, our ideas, and certainly the way that society and our culture suggest that there's a self. I'll talk a little bit more about that. But certainly, my initial reaction was a little bit of puzzlement or disbelief. I remember hearing some teachings that really touched me, and I felt like, "Wow, this is so great. This whole Buddhist thing, I feel like I found a home here. It makes sense to me—except for that not-self stuff." So I kind of thought, "Okay, well, I'll be a Buddhist, whatever that means, but I'm just going to be a self. I'll let them keep all that not-self stuff, and I'm going to keep my self here."

It's not uncommon to have these ideas: "Okay, well, maybe it's true, I don't know." It is normal to feel a little bit uncomfortable with it, and have attempted to dismiss it just as I did. And that's perfectly fine, you can do that. You don't have to believe anything that I'm saying. The last thing we want to do is say, "Here's a collection of beliefs or views that you have to adopt." That's not the direction we're going. In this tradition, we're really pointing to experiences, and I'll be pointing to that in a moment.

One last thing that I'll say about some of our initial reactions when we hear about the concept or idea of not-self—after maybe some puzzlement, disbelief, or wanting to dismiss it—is this recognition that this path of practice asks for some open-mindedness and humility. Part of what I think makes it so powerful and attractive is that it requires this open-mindedness. We hear about beginner's mind: this idea of, "Okay, what is there to learn? What is there to see? How can I learn, and how can I see?" If we thought that we already knew everything or had everything, we would have no need for meditation practice. We would have no need for a spiritual practice. We'd have no need for coming to IMC on Monday nights.

So this path asks us to engage with our experience, to be present for our experience with a certain amount of open-mindedness and humility. And I'll even add that this isn't just a nice thing to say. Investigation^[2]—this quality of open-mindedness and humility, and asking, "What's really here? What are my ideas about what's here? What are the experiences I'm having? What's happening, and what's my relationship to what is happening?"—is one of the factors of awakening. It is a support for awakening. It's more than just saying it's nice to have this open-mindedness and humility; I would say it's an integral part of this path of practice.

So getting back to this idea of non-self. There's this sense of self that just makes common sense. If I were to ask some of you, or somebody walking down the street, "What does it mean to have a self?", they would kind of look at you oddly. We don't think about this so much, but there's often this idea that we have a core or an essence. Some people, rather than "self," might even use the word "ego" or "soul"—this inner entity that stays with us as we grow and go through our lives.

There are lots of things in our culture that really reinforce this idea. One that I hadn't thought of before was this whole idea of horoscopes. If you're born in this month or time frame, you have this astrological sign, and therefore it means something about you. I still hear people, even Buddhist practitioners, saying, "Well, I'm a Gemini, and that means..." or "In true Aries fashion, I did..." There's this idea that a person could have a horoscope that says something integral to their essence.

If you don't believe in horoscopes or astrological signs, we still have professional and career development personality tests. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)^[3]—maybe some of you have taken these tests. You get a four-letter designation describing the "type" that you are, and then they suggest the best way that you work, the best way that you learn, or how to be a good manager or employee. Here's another way society suggests that you have this core essence. And not only that, but it can be assigned a type, and this type is going to be with you as you progress through life.

We have official type indicators, but there are also plenty of websites and magazines asking you to "answer these five questions, and we'll tell you what kind of learner you are, what type of exercise is best for you, the best diet," and everything you can imagine. This idea that we have one distinct style or type is part of what society and our culture believe, and many of us accept it as making sense.

If we believe that there's this core or this essence, then we have this idea that this core has experiences that get tacked onto the outside of it. There's this thing in the middle, and now it has these other things hanging on to it: experiences, memories, things that we learn, sensations. There's a sense that there is a "something" here, and everything else is attached to it—our style, ego, soul, or self.

To be sure, we certainly have desires, beliefs, knowledge, sensations, and experiences. These are things that we believe are distinct from this core, but somehow attached to it. However, what the Buddha is pointing to—and even modern-day neuroscience and some schools of philosophy point to this—is that there actually isn't this core. There isn't a "you," an "I," or a "me" at the center of all experiences.

Well, then you might ask, what is there, then?

Clearly we have these memories, desires, beliefs, knowledge, and sensations, so these things exist. They're all integrated in some way and overlap. Our beliefs are related to the experiences we have and the sensations we've had. Our memories, and the things we think are important, are also associated with our beliefs and knowledge. Sensations are associated with what we do in the world or how we're experiencing it, which is associated with the thoughts we might have. All these things are interrelated; they're not completely distinct.

Maybe the emphasis here is on the way that these components of our lives are connected. They all belong to one body and brain. My sensations aren't happening to any of you, and I'm not having any of your sensations. So they're connected in that way.

But they're also connected because there's a narrative that's getting created. "This sensation means X," and whatever X is, is based on our beliefs, values, knowledge, and other experiences. There are sensations, thoughts, and beliefs, and then there is a narrative that's knitting them together and making a story. We're adding meaning to them—the story that we tell about ourselves. The story that highlights, "Oh yeah, that memory was me, and I'm different now." Even though the memory is actually happening in the present moment, the fact that we're remembering it is an indicator of an experience or sensation we are having right now.

There's this invisible or unseen story that's knitting all our experiences together to make sense. We all want to have our life and our experiences make sense, so there's this narrative that we're layering on top. So what does this mean exactly? We might say that a "you" or a "me" is just a collection of connected things—beliefs, sensations, values, thoughts. In some ways, we're like the sum of the parts.

I like this example, and this is from Julian Baggini. I like it because, as some of you may know, I trained as a scientist. We could take something like water, H2O. Two hydrogen atoms, one oxygen atom, put them together, and you get water. It's real. We know this, it isn't too complicated. But what you probably didn't think is that there's an "essence" of water, and then we stick a hydrogen on it over here, and an oxygen over here. No, it's two hydrogens and an oxygen together, and that's the water. There isn't a core that we call water that we then stick things onto.

Or maybe we might even use the example of a microphone. I don't know exactly how microphones work, but I think sound waves come in, there's a diaphragm that vibrates, and it's connected to a doohickey, which is connected to a thingamajig, and there's a wire. It's the same thing. There isn't this core that's called a microphone that we stick the diaphragm, the coil, the thingamajig, and the doohickey onto. It's a collection of parts in a particular configuration, working together to do something—in this case, to amplify my voice.

Mickey Mouse in cartoons is the same type of thing. It's a character on TV or on a computer that was drawn by somebody, and there are stories about it. But is Mickey Mouse real? It's a collection of things that were created. It teaches children stories and rules, so it's not "not real," because it has an impact on people. Water is real. Microphones are real. But they don't have a core; they're just a collection of things, and we are assigning a label to this collection.

Or rainbows. When certain conditions are present—water in the atmosphere, sunlight, and a human being or entity that can see in that color spectrum—rainbows are real. But they're not substantial. We love rainbows, we can take photos of them, but they're just a collection of certain conditions that came together. They have an insubstantiality to them.

All of these things—Mickey Mouse, rainbows, microphones, water, everything actually—don't have a core that has other things attached to it. Why should the self be different? Why should this idea of a self be different than everything else in our experience? Why do we think that we're not just a collection of our parts, but instead have this core that other things get attached to? There is nothing like that exists that scientists can point to.

I want to highlight that I'm not saying that selves don't exist. Of course I exist, and of course you exist. I'm just saying that often when we say there's a self, we're assuming it has this core and everything else happens to it. I'm saying no, it's just a collection of parts. In the same way that a waterfall is water falling. The waterfall is always changing; it's different droplets of water going over and landing in different places. A self is kind of like that too. All these parts are changing and interrelated. Niagara Falls, if you ever take pictures of it, is beautiful and even makes rainbows, but there isn't a solid core substance to it. The self is like this.

There's actually something quite fantastic about this. The fact that we are a collection of parts or processes, instead of a stable core that doesn't change, means that we can develop, cultivate, grow, and change. If there was this stable thing that just gets experiences attached to it, we'd be trapped. This is the freedom that's available to humans.

There's even more freedom when we really start to understand this deeply. As long as we think we have this core, we have to protect it. We have to shield it. We have to pretend it looks a particular way to everybody else. There's a reason why we often aren't sharing our inner thoughts with other people, because we often feel like this inner core is somehow not quite right. This is a pervasive feeling that many humans have. So we're trying to hide it, creating narratives and stories to try to convince everybody, "Yeah, I'm fine, everything's under control, I got it, no problem," when we might actually be desperately confused or feeling like our life isn't going the way we want it to.

We're trying to protect it, bolster it, make sure it looks good. We feel vulnerable if we have this core, like we don't want people to know about it or to injure it in some kind of way. We build walls around it so we don't get close to other people. This idea of a central core or essence is a source of a lot of dukkha^[4].

As this starts to loosen up, and we recognize that we don't have a core, there's just a flow of experiences. This allows for more ease in our life. Chances are, if you were to think about the best moments of your life, they don't involve being contracted, feeling separate from everybody else, and feeling like you have to protect yourself. Instead, the best moments of your life are when there's a sense of flow and connection with others, with nature, or whatever it might be.

The Buddha is pointing out that the self is just a collection. I'm not going to go into the details of what this collection is right now, but I wanted to talk a little bit about how we can go about loosening up or even seeing how we are a collection. Often it's meditative experiences that can cause a giant shift, but there are also small shifts along the way that we can be practicing.

Joseph Goldstein^[5] shares some practices to do in daily life to support this idea of there not being a solid core or essence. For three minutes, just listen to sounds. In this building, sometimes we hear traffic, you hear my voice, you hear people shuffling a little bit, maybe your breath. It absolutely doesn't matter if it's in a quiet place or a noisy place. Just listen. Open up the awareness. Hear a sound, and then drop in the question: "What is knowing these sounds?"

Knowing is happening. There are sounds, and we know that there are sounds, but what's knowing the sounds? Let's just do a little investigation. Is there something inside that knows? Is there a "knower"? This feels like an odd question, but we can just look. Is there a knower inside that can hear these sounds or even know the meaning of these words? What is a knower?

When we investigate, we see that there's actually nothing to find. And the trick is to look again and again. Do this exercise when you hear sounds: just turn towards the knower. Do it when the mind is quiet, and when the mind is agitated. Just investigate. It won't be sufficient to do it ten times and say, "Okay, there's nothing there, I get it, what's next?" There's something about looking and not finding repeatedly that has an impact. So this recognition that all that's going on is hearing and the knowing of the sounds. There isn't this knower; it's just sounds being known. There's no self, no core, no essence.

A second practice that Joseph talks about doing for three minutes in daily life involves walking. He shares a story about doing walking meditation while on retreat. He recognized that when he was walking, there was a whole collection of sensations: pressure on the bottom of the feet, the feeling of air going across the body, a sense of motion, or a sense of lightness. There's a collection of sensations, and then there is simply experiencing those sensations in space.

The sensations are on the bottom of the feet, feeling the breeze on the face or hands, the material of your clothes moving against the body. The mind creates a narrative and creates the self: "Oh, there's a body that's doing this motion that's walking." That's true, but the actual experience is different than the narrative. The actual experience is just sensations at the bottom of the feet, upper legs, or face. That's not a body; that's a collection of sensations.

Joseph recommends for three minutes, do some walking and feel how there's just this collection of sensations as we move. We're so used to doing it we don't notice, but it's extra to impute the whole body that's walking. Joseph highlights that the body is like a "fluid energy field." I don't know if that resonates for you, but that's different than the anatomical body that you could see on an X-ray. It's just a collection of sensations. We have this idea of the solidity of the body and might think that this is the core or essence because it feels solid. But when we move, we can start to see it's a collection of sensations.

I want to emphasize that this not-self teaching is really about sensations and phenomena. It's pointing to how the mind creates concepts, like the idea of water. We think "water," but it's not a core to which we attach things; water is a concept, a word assigned to a collection. The body is the same way, and the self is the same way.

A last recommendation for something we can do to help see through this idea of a solid core is to observe our thoughts. This often works a little better when the mind is a bit quiet. It's not uncommon for us to identify with our thoughts. "Okay, maybe I'm not my body, maybe I'm not the knower, but my thoughts—this inner narrative—that must be me."

But when you look at the actual experiences, what is actually happening is a lot of thoughts that come and go, all day long. It's just a collection of thoughts. Some thoughts we believe, some we don't. Some are wispy, some get repeated a bazillion times. They are all thoughts. Notice how many thoughts you have in a three-minute period. Often we just get lost in them, but notice how thoughts are arising and passing. Even thoughts like, "This is silly, why am I doing this?" are just thoughts, and they are coming and going.

If we think that we are our internal world, well, which thought would we be? Are we only the thoughts we like, or only the thoughts we don't like? There isn't a core or essence there.

This idea of not-self is pointing out that it's completely appropriate to use concepts and labels to assign to collections of things. "Self" is a label we assign to a collection of things. There isn't this core that will always be with us forever. And I know somebody is going to ask, "Well, wait, if there isn't a self, what gets reborn?" That is a perfectly legitimate question, but I'm just going to say for here that there isn't a self in the way that we think there is. There isn't an ego or a soul in the way we think there is. Of course there's a self—I'm a self, you guys are a self. I don't want us to get too tripped up on language. It would be better if we had another word than self, ego, or soul.

This idea of not-self might bring up puzzlement, a desire to dismiss it, or even fear and uncomfortableness. I often don't like to teach about this topic because it causes a lot of uncomfortableness. But while the idea of it seems weird or uncomfortable, the experience of it—which usually happens in a deep meditative state—is beautiful. It turns out to be an enormous relief. "Oh, I didn't even know that I was carrying this burden, this idea of a self that I have to protect and make everybody like." The experience is completely different than our ideas about it.

With that, I'll open it up for some questions or comments.

Q&A

Diana Clark: Are there some questions?

All right, nobody has a self, we don't have questions. [Laughter] That's fine, you don't have to ask questions, I just wanted to provide an opportunity.

Questioner: There's a way I've been thinking about this...

Diana Clark: Can you hold the microphone a little bit closer so we can hear? And go like this... yeah, there you go. Thank you.

Questioner: I am a craniosacral practitioner, which is a very subtle, gentle type of bodywork. I notice when practitioners talk about what happens in the physiology, it comes out of osteopathy, so it has a particular paradigm and languaging around it. But I notice when practitioners are talking about what happens in the physiology and what we're doing, the issue of self really becomes a problem. It's a type of work that's like a non-doing. You're being very present with somebody, and you're not doing something; you're attending to them, you're tracking, you have awareness. But it's very important that it has a non-manipulative intent. It's not an intent to alter somebody.

I have been noticing how practitioners have a real challenge around how to language that, and I really feel like it's that "not-self." I always think, "Oh, this is so very Buddhist," because it's just the truth that they're trying to get at. They often end up going towards spiritual language, and then it becomes like a "God thing," right? So it's just something I've been rolling around in my mind, in terms of the experience that they're pointing to actually being not-self. There is physiology, there is phenomena, there is awareness, there is attending to. There is not manipulating, not controlling, not fixing, not remediating.

So just for myself as a practitioner, I've been playing with how that could be articulated. To me, it really comes down to what we talk about in Buddhism as not-self, but that's outside of the paradigm that it's operating in. They're trying to quantify that experience, which is real, getting into that essential experience, but they lack the language because it's not Buddhist.

Diana Clark: So they also have the idea that there isn't this core?

Questioner: That's what I feel is trying to be articulated, because that's a real and true experience. When you get into that, actually there's nothing—there's not a self, there's just being present with. There's attending, there's experience, there's phenomena.

Diana Clark: And I think you're pointing to something: when there is a core essence, then we often feel like we have to fix it, or manipulate it.

Questioner: Yes, thank you. But then when you relinquish all that to just attend to it, in fact, how do you describe it? What are you doing? It's something I've been rolling around: how could this be articulated? In Buddhism, we know how to articulate that, we recognize that as not-self, but that's outside of the paradigm.

Diana Clark: Thank you. Okay, so thank you all for your attention, and I wish you all a wonderful rest of the evening. And if you'd like, you can come up and talk to me afterwards. Otherwise, I wish you safe travels home.