I Don’t Exist!: The Self in Buddhism

0:00 This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Report an error in the passage at 0:00 Highlight the passage at 0:00

0:16 Good evening, everyone, here in the room, online, wherever you may be. Lovely to be here with you all. I'm Dan Gudgel. I'm a resident and a priest. Here at Beginner's Mind Temple and welcome. Whether this is your first time here or you're a frequent visitor or you are a temple resident, I'm glad you're here. Report an error in the passage at 0:16 Highlight the passage at 0:16

0:45 I'm glad we have this opportunity to investigate the dharma together. Report an error in the passage at 0:45 Highlight the passage at 0:45

0:55 I'm expecting to leave a little time at the end of the talk for comment and discussion. And if anyone has any General questions about what we do here, why we do it, how we do it. Feel free after the talk to ask anyone who has a robe or rakasu on. If they don't know the answer, they can probably at least point you in the right direction. Report an error in the passage at 0:55 Highlight the passage at 0:55

1:23 So this evening, I'm going to talk a little bit about our human experience of feeling ourselves to be a separate self and the Buddhist teaching of the essential unreality of that self. And this can be kind of a, can be a little bit of an intellectual topic. Report an error in the passage at 1:23 Highlight the passage at 1:23

1:52 I'm going to try to approach it from a few different directions and with a few different analogies and examples. But I will just say, if you get lost at any point in what I'm talking about, topic. Report an error in the passage at 1:52 Highlight the passage at 1:52

2:09 That's totally fine. Feel free to let that piece go. If that is the case, then that particular expression of this teaching maybe is for the benefit of someone else. And hopefully there will be another way of presenting this teaching elsewhere in the talk that meets you where you are. Report an error in the passage at 2:09 Highlight the passage at 2:09

2:34 So to begin tonight, I wanted to introduce us to a poet. whose work I have become fond of. Fernando Pessoa was a Portuguese poet in the early 20th century. He published very little in his own lifetime. Report an error in the passage at 2:34 Highlight the passage at 2:34

2:57 But when he died, he left behind tens of thousands of pages of writing. And he was in the habit of creating characters and then writing from the perspective of those characters. He wrote in multiple languages. He sometimes had his characters comment on the works of other characters who he had created. Report an error in the passage at 2:57 Highlight the passage at 2:57

3:24 They would translate each other's work. They would argue with each other. And some of Pessoa's most popular poems are credited to a character he created named Alberto Cairo, who Pessoa said was a former intellectual. who had abandoned book learning to tend a flock of sheep, wander the Portuguese countryside and write spontaneous poetry in the lineage of Walt Whitman. Report an error in the passage at 3:24 Highlight the passage at 3:24

3:57 And Pessoa said that this character was closest to speaking for him. So clearly Fernando Pessoa himself had quite a complicated relationship with the idea of a self. Report an error in the passage at 3:57 Highlight the passage at 3:57

4:15 So I'm going to read One of Pessoa's short poems. And then I'm going to read right after that an excerpt from The Questions of King Melinda, which is an early philosophical Buddhist work which touches on the nature of the self. And then I'm going to read another short Pessoa poem. Report an error in the passage at 4:15 Highlight the passage at 4:15

4:56 If only my life were an ox cart, which early in the morning comes creaking down the road and later goes back where it came from, almost as the gentle dusk is falling on that same road. Report an error in the passage at 4:56 Highlight the passage at 4:56

5:15 I would have no need of hopes. I'd need only wheels. My old age would have neither wrinkles nor white hair. When I was no use anymore, they would simply take off my wheels and I would lie upturned and broken at the bottom of some ravine. Report an error in the passage at 5:15 Highlight the passage at 5:15

5:36 or else they would make something different out of me, and I would know nothing about it. But I am not an ox cart. I am different. Report an error in the passage at 5:36 Highlight the passage at 5:36

5:49 But just how I am different, no one would ever tell me. The Report an error in the passage at 5:49 Highlight the passage at 5:49

5:59 Buddha was preaching beneath the shade of a great tree, surrounded by villagers who had come to listen. A man stepped forward and bowed. venerable sir I have heard that you teach there is no self but if there is no self who is it that hears sees speaks and acts if there is no self how do we live The Buddha smiled gently and replied, Tell me, friend, have you seen a chariot passing by going down the road? Report an error in the passage at 5:59 Highlight the passage at 5:59

6:38 The man replied, Yes, Lord. Is the chariot the wheels, the axle? Pole, frame, yoke, reins, or the ropes that bind it together? No, Lord, all these together make the chariot. The Buddha nodded. Just so. What you call self is only a name given to many things working together. Your body, your feelings, your thoughts, your memories, and your awareness. Report an error in the passage at 6:38 Highlight the passage at 6:38

7:18 But none of these alone is the self, and apart from these things, no self can be found. Report an error in the passage at 7:18 Highlight the passage at 7:18

7:28 Then a woman spoke, Report an error in the passage at 7:28 Highlight the passage at 7:28

7:42 The Buddha picked up a clay oil lamp beside him. Do you see this flame? Yes, Lord. Is it the same flame that burned a moment ago? The woman hesitated. It looks the same, but the oil burns, the wick changes, and the light flickers. Report an error in the passage at 7:42 Highlight the passage at 7:42

8:09 The Buddha smiled. Just so, my sister. You are not the same as you were as a child, nor the same as you were yesterday, nor even the same as when you first sat before me. Report an error in the passage at 8:09 Highlight the passage at 8:09

8:25 Your body changes. Your thoughts change. Your feelings come and go. Yet because there is continuity, you say, I am. But this I is not fixed. It is only a process like the flame. What you call mind arises and ceases, ever changing, never still. Report an error in the passage at 8:25 Highlight the passage at 8:25

8:54 Then the Buddha concluded, Therefore, just understand this. What we call a self is only a collection of changing parts like a chariot, like a flame, like a river. Report an error in the passage at 8:54 Highlight the passage at 8:54

9:10 See this clearly, and suffering will fall away like leaves in the wind. A Report an error in the passage at 9:10 Highlight the passage at 9:10

9:24 butterfly flutters past me, and for the first time in the universe, I notice that butterflies have neither color nor movement, just as flowers have neither perfume nor color. Report an error in the passage at 9:24 Highlight the passage at 9:24

9:44 on the butterfly's wings that has color. In the movement of the butterfly, it's the movement that moves. It's the perfume that has perfume in the perfume of the flower. Report an error in the passage at 9:44 Highlight the passage at 9:44

10:01 The butterfly is merely butterfly, and the flower is merely flower. Report an error in the passage at 10:01 Highlight the passage at 10:01

10:18 So I think it matters how I think about myself, what I mean when I say I or me, because the way that I think about myself then affects how I act, what I'll do, what I'll put up with, what to me seems fair or right. Report an error in the passage at 10:18 Highlight the passage at 10:18

10:45 And the more tightly I cling to a fixed idea of who I am, The less capacity I have to notice and accord with and respond to what's actually happening here and now. Report an error in the passage at 10:45 Highlight the passage at 10:45

11:02 When I form an idea of who I am, that idea is necessarily formed at a specific time and in a specific place, under specific conditions that are the result of everything that has happened in the universe up until that moment. Report an error in the passage at 11:02 Highlight the passage at 11:02

11:25 But in the very next moment, there is a different configuration of conditions. And so a fixed idea of myself will immediately be out of sync with reality. Report an error in the passage at 11:25 Highlight the passage at 11:25

11:40 From one moment to the very next, it might not seem like such a big gap. It might be easy to ignore this process. But by the next day or the next year or the next decade, My idea of myself is going to be getting further and further out of alignment with reality. Report an error in the passage at 11:40 Highlight the passage at 11:40

12:09 Buddhist teachings point to the idea of a personal, durable self as one of the roots of stress, dissatisfaction, and suffering. Report an error in the passage at 12:09 Highlight the passage at 12:09

12:22 Thinking that I have a discrete, separate, personal self puts that self in opposition to and potentially under threat. from anything that is out there, anything that is not me. And I may even experience some cognitive dissonance or doubt in my fixed idea of myself. Report an error in the passage at 12:22 Highlight the passage at 12:22

12:49 The body sometimes will feel and know the truth of interconnection and interdependence. And the mind sometimes, even in the midst of our fixed idea of self, may have a glimpse. The Buddhist Report an error in the passage at 12:49 Highlight the passage at 12:49

13:16 proposition is that if I loosen my clinging to my idea of self, I'm likely to suffer a little less and perhaps splash a little less suffering out into the world. Report an error in the passage at 13:16 Highlight the passage at 13:16

13:38 Foo Schrader, one of the former abbots of the Green Gulch Farm Temple, once showed me A nuance about bowing. She suggested that I hold my hands in a particular way as I pushed myself up from the ground to hold my hand in fists rather than splaying my fingers out. Report an error in the passage at 13:38 Highlight the passage at 13:38

14:04 And at some point, months or perhaps years later, I noticed myself doing that. And I had this thought first, oh, that reminds me of Fu. Report an error in the passage at 14:04 Highlight the passage at 14:04

14:19 And then I thought, oh, actually, maybe that is a part of Fu that is living on through me. And then I came to feel that that gesture itself was its own little living being, that that gesture had its own existence and was finding expression through successive generations of practitioners. Report an error in the passage at 14:19 Highlight the passage at 14:19

14:51 I thought of it for a little while as its own little being, like a little mouse or something like that. A little phantom mouse that might, maybe that lineage of mice might flourish for a little while and then disappear. Report an error in the passage at 14:51 Highlight the passage at 14:51

15:12 And this little gesture I came to realize was a perfectly fine analogy for my own experience of self. Like that gesture, many things, many centuries and millennia of history have come together to produce the conditions that have made me feel how I feel in any moment. Report an error in the passage at 15:12 Highlight the passage at 15:12

15:46 I really am no different than an ox cart. I am just a pile of aggregates, a pile of conditions. Finding expression in the present moment. The whole universe changes in each moment, and the assemblage that I think of as me changes in each moment. Report an error in the passage at 15:46 Highlight the passage at 15:46

16:13 So it's much more in accord with the actual conditions of the world to not cling so tightly to my idea of myself, but just to engage with the experience of this particular consciousness's The echo Report an error in the passage at 16:13 Highlight the passage at 16:13

16:38 of the content of each location of the universe in each moment of existence, the echoes of each small piece radiates out into all existence. As these things radiate out, they may attenuate, they may slow, but they are always fully interconnected. Report an error in the passage at 16:38 Highlight the passage at 16:38

17:07 Some echoes might be like gravitational waves that by the time they reach us are so faint we don't consciously experience them, but they are still passing through us in each moment. Report an error in the passage at 17:07 Highlight the passage at 17:07

17:25 Other echoes, like our own choices, may be very strongly felt for a long, long time. And sometimes I think of this like ripples on a pond Report an error in the passage at 17:25 Highlight the passage at 17:25

17:42 As the rain is falling, the ripples on a pond are interacting with each other, creating spikes and valleys. Report an error in the passage at 17:42 Highlight the passage at 17:42

17:53 But I realized in thinking about it that that analogy I think also minimizes the true interconnection we're talking about. Report an error in the passage at 17:53 Highlight the passage at 17:53

18:05 It's really more like every drop throughout the entire pond is capable of rippling. And all of those ripples Move through each other and affect what is going on in the entire pond. Report an error in the passage at 18:05 Highlight the passage at 18:05

18:24 And I, in creating and clinging to my small idea of myself, am like one little drop of water in the middle of the pond, trying to hold myself still, trying to defend my territory, draw a boundary around me, and behave as if I am not affected. by everything else that is going on. Report an error in the passage at 18:24 Highlight the passage at 18:24

18:53 But I am completely affected by everything else that is going When Report an error in the passage at 18:53 Highlight the passage at 18:53

19:04 I was in my 20s, I became increasingly exhausted by my own efforts to know myself, to be sure of and defend my opinions and my ways of being in the world. Report an error in the passage at 19:04 Highlight the passage at 19:04

19:23 I thought that to be an adult, I needed to know. Who I was and what I believed, how I thought the world worked, and that I needed to be able to debate and defend these positions and ideas. Report an error in the passage at 19:23 Highlight the passage at 19:23

19:41 And eventually I noticed how tired I was of that effort to figure out who I was and to be able to explain who I was and to be able to prove how and why I was right about what I thought. Report an error in the passage at 19:41 Highlight the passage at 19:41

19:59 I realized I actually wasn't even all that sure that I was right. So at 29, as I was moving across the country, ending a job, ending a relationship, I made an explicit choice to just not know for a while, to put all of my opinions and my certainties on hold, and to just not need to be sure of anything. Report an error in the passage at 19:59 Highlight the passage at 19:59

20:31 And that experience of Giving up my opinions for a while raised this question. If I'm not my opinions and my beliefs, then what am I? Report an error in the passage at 20:31 Highlight the passage at 20:31

20:45 What essentially is me? And all of the other things that I looked at, my history, my body, my personal narrative, none of these were essentially any more me than my opinions were. Report an error in the passage at 20:45 Highlight the passage at 20:45

21:05 So I tried to just stay with that not knowing. to just be at ease with Report an error in the passage at 21:05 Highlight the passage at 21:05

21:16 Assessing what was happening in the present moment, responding to that, and not feeling like I needed to... evidence for or against myself. Report an error in the passage at 21:16 Highlight the passage at 21:16

21:29 And I didn't really realize what a Buddhist thing I was doing at the time. I had not started Buddhist practice at that point. Report an error in the passage at 21:29 Highlight the passage at 21:29

21:41 But I think this curiosity is a wonderful practice point and a great way to engage with the sense of self. To just ask in each moment, who am I? Who am I right now? What needs to be done right now? To honor how each moment is brand new and how the newness of each moment calls forth a new expression of this body-mind complex. Report an error in the passage at 21:41 Highlight the passage at 21:41

22:32 So in meditation, this could look like asking myself, what is this moment? Or who is aware of this moment? Who is thinking? Who is here? In relationships, this practice might look like letting go of prior judgments. Report an error in the passage at 22:32 Highlight the passage at 22:32

22:58 of my stories about people, my stories about experiences, the things that I am sure of. I notice how easy it is for me not just to create an idea of myself but to think I know who or what another person is, to think that one experience I have with someone is enough to show me who they are. Report an error in the passage at 22:58 Highlight the passage at 22:58

23:25 And so... To practice with no self in relationship might be to let go of these stories, to Report an error in the passage at 23:25 Highlight the passage at 23:25

23:40 see the present moment a little more clearly. My clinging to my sense of self is very limiting. It limits the possibilities that I come up with. If I think of myself as not the kind of person who gets up early, then I might not even consider doing something that starts early in the If Report an error in the passage at 23:40 Highlight the passage at 23:40

24:10 I think of myself as in here, in this body, bounded by this skin, insulated from the outside world in some way, then it becomes very easy for me to ignore the experiences of other beings and other conscious perspectives out there in the world. Report an error in the passage at 24:10 Highlight the passage at 24:10

24:37 Limiting my idea of me seems to limit the flow of compassion and care. Report an error in the passage at 24:37 Highlight the passage at 24:37

24:49 And I realized that in years past, part of what I was trying to achieve, part of what I was striving for was self-consistency. I also thought this was very important in being a responsible adult human being. Report an error in the passage at 24:49 Highlight the passage at 24:49

25:12 Once I figured out who I was, how I was, how I should be, that then I should be the same way all the time. That self-consistency would be a marker of stability and maturity. Report an error in the passage at 25:12 Highlight the passage at 25:12

25:33 But I don't actually have to be self-consistent. There is no essential self in self-consistency either. I don't have to decide whether I'm an early riser or a night owl. I don't have to decide whether I'm a coffee drinker or a tea drinker. This at various times has seemed to me like a really important question. Oh, am I a coffee drinker or am I a tea drinker? It turns out this body does not do very well drinking coffee every day. Report an error in the passage at 25:33 Highlight the passage at 25:33

26:09 Eventually this body gets pretty unhappy if I drink. Coffee as my caffeinated beverage every day. Report an error in the passage at 26:09 Highlight the passage at 26:09

26:20 But a latte on Sunday morning is just delightful. Having a little coffee works just fine for this body. And that, I think, is a lovely little example of how what seems to me a more easeful way to be in the world, a way to be that honors the way that everything is constantly changing. Report an error in the passage at 26:20 Highlight the passage at 26:20

26:52 If someone has just made good coffee, I'll have a cup of coffee. If someone has just made a delightful pot of tea, I'll have a pot of tea. Report an error in the passage at 26:52 Highlight the passage at 26:52

27:03 Neither of those choices reflects poorly on me. Report an error in the passage at 27:03 Highlight the passage at 27:03

27:15 So there is a conscious perspective that has inherited the content and the context of this location moment. Report an error in the passage at 27:15 Highlight the passage at 27:15

27:31 Conscious awareness, this conscious point of view, to me seems to be more essential than my body or my memories, my history. Report an error in the passage at 27:31 Highlight the passage at 27:31

27:49 All I really am right now is awareness of the present moment and the ability to choose the next action. Whatever happens after that, is the business of the self that arises in the next moment. Report an error in the passage at 27:49 Highlight the passage at 27:49

28:09 So I've begun to think of myself as the consequences of a series of decisions that, for convenience sake, we call Dan. Because the consequences of this series of decisions are mostly localized in this area. Our names for each other don't describe us any more completely than the word forest. Describes all of the leaves of all of the trees in that forest. So Report an error in the passage at 28:09 Highlight the passage at 28:09

28:49 I'll end by reading again the first of those Fernando Pessoa poems that I read at the beginning. This is poem number 16 from The Keeper of Sheep from the complete works of Alberto Cairo by Fernando Pessoa. Report an error in the passage at 28:49 Highlight the passage at 28:49

29:13 If only my life were an ox cart. which early in the morning comes creaking down the road and later goes back where it came from, almost as the gentle dusk is falling on that same road. Report an error in the passage at 29:13 Highlight the passage at 29:13

29:32 hopes. I'd need only wheels. My old age would have neither wrinkles nor white hair. When I was no use anymore, they would simply take off my wheels and I would lie upturned and broken at the bottom of some ravine. Report an error in the passage at 29:32 Highlight the passage at 29:32

29:52 or else they would make something different out of me and I would know nothing about it. Report an error in the passage at 29:52 Highlight the passage at 29:52

30:00 But I am not an ox cart. I am different. But just how I am different, no one would ever tell me. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge. And this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click giving. Report an error in the passage at 30:00 Highlight the passage at 30:00

30:37 May we fully enjoy the Dharma. Report an error in the passage at 30:37 Highlight the passage at 30:37