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Sanzen-kai January 28 2001.

Selflessness is central to all Buddhist traditions. Without tapping selflessness all other aspects of Buddhist teaching and practice are peripheral; you may talk about compassion, you may talk about wisdom but if selflessness is not in the center of the whole thing then these things are just peripheral. From the beginning of Buddhist teaching and practice the teaching of no self and the practice of no self has been central, without selflessness there can be no genuine compassion or genuine wisdom. That is very clear as far as tradition is concerned.

In earlier times in the West people couldn't connect with this idea of no self and took it as a very negative idea, an idea of self denial or something like that. In those times Buddhism itself seemed to be very negative. Of course as long as our ideas or practice are based on the self or on a strong sense of ego then when we hear something about selflessness and no self it clashes with that, goes against those strong ideas of self and seems very negative. The tendency then is for us to try to grasp selflessness or no self as a kind of idea or understanding and we end up with difficulties - you just can't get it! So again we have a kind of clash, from this point of view we can't get it and we can't grasp it but we make a tremendous effort to try to figure it out. People generate ideas about it and start to talk about it and once again it's not true selflessness it's just peripheral.

How do we overcome this? We're not actually interested in ideas or in the concept of selflessness, what we are interested in is how that is possible, how to actually do it, that is what's most important. Trying to understand by words, trying to figure it out by definitions or through somebody else's experience is very difficult. We may get some good ideas about it and gain some knowledge about it but those ways will never get into the core of it, to the heart of it.

So how are we to overcome this dilemma? We put ourselves into practice, we engage with practice and in this way this central point is directly pointed out. We need to understand, however, that human beings are 99% selfish! You are selfish. I am selfish and as soon as you forget this there are problems.

So the approach that we take to the practice of selflessness is very important. What kind of approach? Of course, any attempt to get into the practice of selflessness or no self can only start from consciousness levels. This very self is what your consciousness is, you don't need to worry about getting totally unconscious about it. But as long as you remain in the domain of consciousness you never get out from self: self-seeking-self or self-affirming-self. You may have good intentions but it's always I. I that's doing it. I'm doing it. I have a good heart. I do that. Of course this doesn't work and sometimes people get upset. In this approach self is always the doer, it's always self that is doing and it's very, very difficult. The question is how do you overcome that difficulty?

The point is to learn about ourselves, to recognize that we have limitations, we are 99% selfish. You know, as soon as we become conscious of what we are doing our egos start operating, our activities become ego orientated but even so, we can come close to selflessness, near to selflessness or no self, near to it, not exactly 100% but near.

It's interesting at the Buddhist Summer School a Tibetan teacher from Denmark, the Venerable Tarab Tulku, was talking about nearness and that is usually something that a human tries to do, we try to do - to get close, to get near, but as long as you have some kind of understanding, some kind of idea about what selflessness is, as long as we are operating from that basis then you never get into the nearness, it is just the self operating. It is your own self moving forward against reality. Thinking "this is selfless action" or "I am practicing selflessness," is no help either, thinking like that is just delusion.

Nearness. If we can point to a deeper place in practice, not at consciousness levels but more toward the level of the breath then nearness occurs. In just taking a breath, in that moment the ego that abides in consciousness levels is removed. The natural act of taking a breath is outside of the cycle of consciousness. It's a very simple thing when you think about, in the sitting meditation, in practice, you may be thinking "I'm doing good" or "No, I'm doing bad" and so on but when you just rest your mind, just breathe naturally and if you're able to do so, suddenly some sense of peace, some sense of quietness arises in your body and mind even in the midst of the pain. And because this natural sense of peace feels like something is happening, that you are getting some sense of what practice is, then sometimes you push harder, thinking that you are somehow near but expecting more and pushing harder does not bring you to nearness. On retreat you notice when you sit for seven days all you can do is work the breath and all that the breath can offer is nearness but you expect more than that and push it. That is - you forget that the breath functions as nearness naturally and you push away from that nearness.