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

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So, hello everyone. Today I can greet you from Nevada City, California at the Insight Center.

That's the sibling to IMC that's called Mountain Stream Meditation Center.

And I think one of the delights of the name that the founder, my good friend John Travis,

emphasized many years ago, is the initials for Mountain Stream is pronounced empty.

And so pointing to the wonderful Buddhist teachings of emptiness,

and which brings us to the

kind of a, maybe a kind of final talk on this topic of not self, the insight into not self.

And perhaps we'll continue with another week, kind of finishing up the whole series.

But in the Taravan Buddhist tradition that I teach from, the expression not self is comparable

or maybe the same, almost the same, as the Mahayana teachings on emptiness.

That as valuable as self is in a certain way, the Buddha didn't reject all forms of self.

And I'll talk more about that.

But he did emphasize that all forms of self have a certain form of emptiness,

in that they're empty, because they're always changing and shifting,

because they're in some way or other constructed

built up by life experience, by different mental constructs we have, understandings we have,

that we inherit from our society, our cultures,

that there's no inherent, no original, timeless self.

There's no soul, but rather it's all contingent, it's all in flux, all dynamic.

And so that rather than taking self as the center of our experience, as the center of who we are,

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