Welcome to the Commune podcast. This is Jeff Krasno. From time to time, I will record an

impromptu video for Instagram on a topic that's clanking around my head. And on rare occasion,

these extemporaneous exhortations actually warrant a publishing here on the podcast in audio form.

While these improvs can be a little looser in their organization, they can sometimes produce a spark that the Flintstone of formal writing cannot. You can visit my Instagram at Jeff

Krasno to watch the many, many, many videos that don't make the cut. The topics range from

the microbiome to sprouting, from Taoist musings to piano noodlings. And today's episode is a spin on the nature of self.

I hope you find it interesting.

Okay, so for the next few minutes, I'm going to use this prop here to explain a very different kind of conception of self. Not as a thing,

made of stuff,

but as transient pattern.

Now, if I were to light this candle,

just so,

what's happening here what is it going on here well there is a chemical reaction between oxygen in the air and and the fuel source which is this paraffin or wax

and the wick there.

And as part of this reaction, it's producing carbon dioxide and it's a thermal event, so it's

producing heat and light. And if you're to stare at the flame itself, you'd certainly recognize it.

And there it is, and there it still is, and there again it is.

But you would never mistake that flame for a thing or stuff.

You would understand it as a pattern.

That it takes on a certain form that gives it some continuity that allows you to recognize it, but the molecules that have

been burning, they've moved on, right? That's very clear to you. The molecules in the

wick and in the wax and it's just gone. It's moved on.

...