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Finally, selflessness becomes clear, if you're able to just sit, just do it then no self becomes actualized and breath goes deeper. Actually, in sitting you don't consciously know what you are doing but if you your spine is clearly aligned, back straight, and your hands are making a circle with thumbs joined, resting easy, naturally, then breath goes deeper to the body level, to physical action. Through that practice selflessness is already there, at this time the notion of ego is not present and ideas of good and bad are dropped.

Sometimes you are distracted in practice and sometimes more elevated realms of consciousness appear and you think "this is not what I'm supposed to be doing" and you return to the breath, to the spine, but at other times it feels too exciting, too good, "this must be enlightenment!" "I'm getting close!" "I must push harder!" As soon as this happens it is ego operating, as soon as you start to feel good about it, it is the "I" operating but if you don't follow that then you are already perfectly practicing no self.

So in the midst of consciousness arising if you continue practicing with no self at the center then things are slowly integrated. So how we are meditating, how we are approaching the sitting is very important. If you are meditating to solve some problem you are totally in the realm of the selfish, this belongs to the 99% and you have very little chance to be selfless but as soon as you drop this, take a deep breath and start to breathe naturally then nearness comes and nearness has nothing to do with good and bad this is just the way it is. Just here, just breathing, there's no why or how involved just nearness.

From the beginning everyone is already gifted, everyone has the full potential to actualize it but very few people see that selflessness is a kind of treasure that we have, that is the source of freedom, freedom from self clinging. Everybody without exception works on self. So when we talk about selflessness first we need to talk about what it means to you as an individual person then this sitting practice starts to make sense. The relationship between self and selflessness doesn't get mixed up and you don't get confused "Am I being compassionate by sitting like this?" When you clarify what it means to you as an individual person you don't mix things up. This individual sitting space of absolute value is like your own home, your home, you can relax you can be yourself, relax settle down. You don't need to say I, I, I. At home you don't need to say anything but out there you have to say "Shall I do this? Do you want me to do this?" and so on.

Sitting practice should not be mixed up with something you do, with activity that you do outside. Outside is in relationship. However, if we develop the right understanding about practice and the way that we practice, we practice in this kind of very limited way, settling ourselves, then no self can easily apply to various situations, various activities. The center is being held, the core of it, which is selflessness, is not being missed. But if you are busy with something like "I caused a problem to the other person, I was so selfish" or something like that then you are caught up with that kind of stuff and you always go into the viscous circles of ego driven activity, sometimes you feel good about it "I was very compassionate, I was so selfless" sometimes you feel bad and on and on.

Those are the things that the ego, the self does. We need to know those things and if you are too busy with your own self dealing with mundane stuff then you have very little chance to know about your own self. Dogen Zenji speaks about the way in Shobogenzo Genjokoan "To study the Buddha Way is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self" So to learn the self we need to forget the self and as long as you are interested in thinking about whether I'm doing good or bad or all those things you will never get to the place where you can talk about these things. This can be overcome by practice, you can come to nearness very quickly if you just learn to yawn. In yawning you are very near, not too far, yes it's that simple! Then the arguments stop, some thoughts may come but no one continues to argue after yawning! It's too silly to do something after it. In that sense animals are much better than us, they know, they put themselves back into position, they tune their position and they can resume their life after taking a nap, on a warm day a cat takes a nap, wakes up, stretches as if nothing had happened, right back in the spot, very near.

So we are not trying to become like a cat but the example of an animal is just to point out that way. If you are not quite sure about the body part, the physical part, then at least you can pay attention to the breath. Breath is important -if we just reach pure breath, just breathing without operating your consciousness then it's wonderful. On retreat, towards the end of three or four days, you start to think it's wonderful to breathe! I feel wonderful just being able to breathe because you are so near to it. Ultimately, if you put your body into practice, if you put the practice forward it doesn't matter what your mind is telling you. When the body acts in accord with selflessness, in a selfless mode everything is revealed.

And so to be truly selfless, even this body is thrown away, this body itself is offered. That is the final thing. Throughout history spiritual teachers have pointed this out and have shown examples of offering their very own bodies in the practice and also in social action. People who don't know anything about spiritual practice see it as a self sacrifice but the practitioner doesn't think of it as his own body, that part is dropped.