Good morning. I'm hoping to find a rabbit. No rabbits. Today I'd like to talk about the self. We used to chant the Genjo Koan. of Dogen, part of which is to study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by the 10,000 dharmas. To be enlightened by the 10,000 dharmas is to free one's body and mind and those of others. I want to talk a little bit about just the beginning of that, to study the self and to forget the self.

[01:06]

And I'd like to talk a little bit about what is self. We all know what our self is, right? It's me. And in Western psychology, the self is defined in various ways, but basically it's a collection of memories, thoughts, feelings, stuff that we learned, inner representations of parents and other important people, and the feelings associated with them. And all of it, most of it has to do with memory. Memory and experience. Subjective experience.

[02:09]

And we talk about in Western psychology having low self-esteem, not having a good image of oneself. It's the kind of thing that therapists take care of. And some people have too high an opinion of themselves, maybe an inflated sense of themselves. And psychotherapists deal largely with trying to help people understand how they got that view of themselves, whatever it is, how it runs their life, and to help people run their life in a way that's healthier. And I think a lot of us think that that's studying the self, and I think it is, but it's not quite what Dogen meant.

[03:21]

But it's a start because if you start investigating what makes you feel bad or what makes you feel good, eventually you will notice that even if you chronically have a sort of a low opinion of yourself, that there are sort of islands of brightness. And even if you generally have an overly inflated sense of yourself, every now and then something comes along that will cut you down. And the therapist will kind of point out the other side and help you come to some kind of balance. And that's part of, I think, what Dogen is talking about.

[04:31]

But I think to study also means to us to know something, to know the way we know stuff that we learned in school. and we study ourself in that way and we know ourself the more we study ourself and investigate inside the better we think we know ourself and we know what makes us mad and we know why and we understand the kind of patterns that we get into And we can identify problems before they come up and plan ahead and live our life in a healthier way.

[05:44]

And we call that knowing ourself. But I think that's not quite what Dogen meant either. I think to study or to know the self, in the sense that he meant, has more to do with maybe the biblical use of the word to know, which was used as Adam and Eve knew each other, to be one with. That's, of course, what we do. That's the effort that we make in Zazen is to be one with the thoughts, the feelings, the sensations that come up. And as we sit, paying attention to the thoughts and emotions

[06:55]

we see how they change from moment to moment and we see how the mind grabs on to the pleasant stuff, follows the interesting thoughts, pushes away the unpleasant stuff, moves around. And we say in Zazen instruction, we always give Suzuki Roshi's example of when thoughts come up in Zazen or some feeling arises not to invite it to tea just to let it go. And the self that we know as our self is largely composed of thoughts and feelings and memories that we've not just invited to tea but invited to dinner, invited to spend the weekend, invited to live with us. So not to slam the door in their face, but perhaps not to invite them to move in.

[08:07]

So that's hard because it doesn't leave us with very much to work with. One feels, if one just lets go of all the thoughts and feelings and judgments, a bit naked and defenseless, how do we deal with all the stuff in our life. How do we deal with the pain? It's painful living in a human body, not just when you're sitting cross-legged, maybe differently painful or sometimes more painful sitting cross-legged, but we do this for some reason and it has nothing to do, I think, in spite of what we say in Zazen instruction about the stability of this posture, I think it doesn't really have so much to do with legs.

[09:35]

It's not an athletic exercise and it's accomplished equally well in a chair or in a bed or walking down the street. It has to do with both sides, using both sides, allowing both sides of ourself to support our life, entering our life with everything. We've learned to exclude things we've learned to exclude from our awareness painful experiences and ideas that don't fit.

[10:42]

Often we've learned to do that for very good reasons. We defend ourself, we've defended ourself from all kinds of real or imagined attack from the environment and other people. Probably most of us came from homes where we weren't recognized for who we are, where we were not fully appreciated in a way that was best for us. We've all been wounded by life in one way or another. And as we grow up, particularly when we're small and relatively powerless, we're really defending our life when we push away

[12:01]

that which is too much for us, that which is just too painful to be aware of. So to be asked to let go of all that as adults is very scary. Our whole life has depended up to now on the patterns that we built up that we call ourself. but we mostly come to practice at a stage in our life when we're, for one reason or another, fairly dissatisfied with the way we've lived our life up to now. And so, when we're told, forget the self, we think about all these negative images and habits and unhappinesses that we've accumulated over our life, and we say, forget this self? Great. Let's forget it. And we attach to Buddha nature.

[13:10]

And we think that perfection must be the other side of this imperfection that we know as ourself. I think the other side of the imperfection that we know as ourself is if we have a low view of ourself is an inflated view of ourself. Some people start with an inflated view of yourself, but I think most people who practice maybe start with a low image of themselves. The inflated view is usually close behind. It's just the other side of the deflated view. And the reason that Buddhism talks about the 10,000 dharmas, Dogen says the 10,000 dharmas will enlighten you. Dharmas just means things that happen, feelings, thoughts, whatever it is.

[14:18]

It's just a big number, it's everything. Everything will enlighten you. our effort is for our life to include everything, not to exclude anything. So as we sit, we grow, we stretch, and hopefully we don't get puffed up like a balloon that's stretching. It's more like just becoming like the lungs inflating, the abdomen inflating to accommodate the breath. Our life enlarges to include more of it.

[15:27]

And some experience of enlightenment, which is much written about, is perhaps a momentary experience of being one with everything and not being separate from other people and from the universe. And each time we sit in Zazen, watching our breath, bringing our mind back to our body and our breath, we renew our intention to just be here and be our experience, not to judge it, but just to be it. And that effort continues forever no matter how strong one's experience of enlightenment may be or whether one ever has such an experience.

[16:59]

And to sit every day practicing attention and awareness is very important. But my own experience is that it's not enough. My own experience is that it's necessary to practice bringing the mind back into the body bringing the mind back to this moment letting go of judgments really being aware of the quality of thoughts and feelings and particularly the judgment that goes with them

[18:12]

That is a 24-hour a day effort that if I can pay attention for 40 minutes or 4 breaths or whatever in this room, it may or may not impact my behavior in the world. We say that if you sit a lot, if you sit every day and you sit Sashin and you work in the temple doing mindful work practice, that gradually will generalize to your life. I think it will if you make that effort to have it generalized to your life. And I think the more, as our lives become very complex, that simple practice of returning our attention to the body and the breath becomes increasingly important.

[19:30]

I think the main, one of the the confusions that we have is kind of what to do with all the stuff in our mind that we're paying attention to. What kind of attention do we pay to it? Certain things are going to come up over and over again like the phone ringing demanding our attention. And some of those things need to be taken care of like we need to take care We need to take care of our posture when some part of our body shouts that we're mistreating it and we need to change our position. We need to take care of the phone by answering it. And when there are recurrent themes in our thoughts and feelings, we may need to pay some attention to that.

[20:40]

People sometimes ask me what kind of therapy is sort of congruent with Zen practice, what kind of therapy will help them in their practice, or to recommend a Buddhist therapist. I'm never sure quite what to say because I think that therapy has helped me a lot in my practice. But I think that it's also been a hindrance at times. And I think any effort that we make or any help that we get to integrate the conflicting and confusing and diverse aspects of our experience to whatever we do to make it possible to tolerate that which we have been unable to tolerate, to include

[22:09]

that which we have excluded. Anything that helps us do that is a part of practice and is a part of studying the Self to be the Self to not be separate which is, I think, what Dogen means by forgetting the Self Not forgetting the self as in forget this or I forgot it. I left it at home Huh, I don't know the Japanese so I can't suggest a better word but To include everything is our effort In trying to make Zen practice psychologically healthy for Westerners various smart people have written about taking care of the psychological self and the wounds that have damaged it as a kind of a prerequisite to practice that you can't drop

[24:01]

your ego or forget the self until it's kind of more or less intact that you can't give, you can't give up what you've never had and this used to make a lot of sense to me and I think it's, it may be partly true but as I work with my own pain and my own woundedness and watch my tendency to be attracted to situations and people that will kick me in the same old sore spot, what I notice is that It's a bottomless pit, this pain.

[25:03]

It doesn't really end. We get more comfortable with it maybe, but there's always something to include. There's always some new pain. that's very similar to the old pain. There's really nothing to wait for. I think that we can just let go anytime. And at the same time, maybe there's no rush. just to allow our life to unfold at its own pace and try not to interfere too much to feed the body and water it and care for it to pay

[26:28]

close attention and not... to pay close attention and at the same time not to pay too much attention or to attach any particular importance or lack of importance. to our experience is our continuous effort. So maybe I've confused you enough.

[27:46]

Would you like to ask some questions or say something? I have two questions. And that, I think, translates itself out into those four main lines. I think the good thing, like, for me, it still takes a bit of an effort to bring whatever I find, I think, whatever it may be, I want something to find, whether it's a feeling or something. And if I want to recreate that out there, I have to assess what it feels like. So I do need to make the effort to do that. And I think what happens is I'm meeting my true self.

[28:51]

And in that way, there's a certain attachment to how I feel. And I have to watch that also. And since I miss my true self, it's that or anywhere. and what I call the false self, the ego, that still comes up out there. And why do I have a choice about it? God is giving me a choice which way I want to live my life. And so that's where the translation threshold is. I don't have a choice. Before I had a choice. I didn't realize I had a choice. I only had one way that I could ask. What does it feel like? Whatever that is.

[30:20]

Very much an inclusiveness. The lack of a need to be aggressive and fight to be honest. Living out the window of love. Not the qualities one generally associates with being out on the freeway or in meetings

[31:24]

There's a corporation that happens, especially in machines. So we see how numerous a corporation in some way maybe happens. And so this is a microcosm. I'm going to taste it now and see how we can move on. So it's a little difficult to see what a lack of cooperation appears in the work situation. Or even seeing, going out on the street and seeing the lack of cooperation in maintaining the streets. So maybe the question is how, if the universe

[32:42]

cooperating in its own way to help you realize your true self everywhere. One of the therapists that I had to study in school talked about resistance as each person's, each patient's unique way of cooperating with the treatment. I don't know. He kind of thinks that resistance is maybe in the mind of the therapist who can't appreciate the patient a unique way of cooperating, that we have some judgment that, oh, you know, this person isn't cooperating, they didn't come, they're not doing what I told them to do, or whatever it is.

[34:20]

So what does that, rather than looking at what does that say about them, what does that say about me? without kind of getting into blaming ourself for all the problems in the world. How can we appreciate the opportunities that we're given? I don't mean to make it sound easy. I really think that a great deal of our life is kind of like the third day of Sashin where everything hurts and we're tired and irritable and every little thing that comes along looms large.

[35:37]

And in Sashina, after you've done a few Sashinas, you say, oh yes, well, it's the third day again. It always gets over with. And then by the end, we're always glad. But we can't sort of wait for our life to be over with to be glad that we got through the hard parts. You know, we kind of only get one chance here in this body. And it is very hard. And I think that it's important to be kind to ourself, whatever that is, and to appreciate the effort that we're making and that everybody is making in their own way.

[36:48]

Thank you very much.

[37:21]

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