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

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

So, hello and welcome to this continuing series on Insight, the center of Insight Meditation.

And this will be the last talk that specifically about not self.

And for those of you were here yesterday, you might recall that in sitting in the middle of

impermanence, in changing nature of phenomena, and we turn the attention

around 180 degrees to the one who is observing change, whatever that one is, the experience, the sense, the location of observing

or knowing or being aware. And to observe, that also disappears. That also comes and goes

is part of the river, part of the constant flow that has value.

Each current in the river is valuable for carrying the river along.

Each little wave of the river is part of the river for sure and so this sense of self that we have

is just another wave another current that shifts and change and comes and goes and then that

process something deep can let go. Any attachment we have to self, any clinging to self.

And whether there is or is not a self, that is not a self, that is not a question that the Buddha was interested in.

In fact, he was less than interested in it. He felt that

this whole question, is there, is not a self? Was a detour? Was a dead end? Was not useful?

And, but there is freedom from preoccupation with self, freedom from attachment, freedom from the

stress of self. And if you're paying really careful attention and mindfulness helps a lot,

we can start seeing that a fair amount of our self-concern carries with its stress, tension.

And sometimes it's quite extreme, so extreme that some people are,

it makes it their life so difficult that self-concern, the self-criticism,

self-feelings of, you know, not belonging and not being important, being somehow wrong, being guilty, that they cause self-harm.

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