The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.

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So, hello, and welcome to this second talk on the insight into not-self.

And rather than addressing the topic directly, the topic of not-self,

it's important to know what we're talking about when we talk about self.

And not just I know about it, but to have a direct experience of what we're talking about

so that the whole topic of not-self becomes experiential, more than philosophical.

In Buddhism, in our circles, we often can use the word selfing, that's a

verb, and it points to the idea that whatever sense, feeling, ideas we have of self, it's a creation, it's an activity,

it's something that arises from our doing now. And as opposed to self being a thing, a fixed self,

a universal self, this is what the self is, I'm this way.

I've always been this way, or now because of X happened to me, now I'm this way.

So to see it as an activity, not a thing, see an activity and not a fixed state or fixed phenomenon,

is kind of the orientation we have.

And to begin to appreciate this,

it helps to kind of see if you can feel and sense that activity of selfing.

And it's not always easy to do, but one way to start is to get to know

the locus of self, meaning the place inside that's activated that somehow is energized or someplace that feels like the who we are, our actions, our thoughts,

our sense of self, resides in some place in our body or someplace in space.

And for, I think, quite a few people,

partly because when the self is very much associated with the thinking mind,

so the thinker, I think many people will point to their head, the upper part of the head, maybe the cerebral cortex,

...