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

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Okay.

It's nice to practice with you.

I know that's it was better for me having been with you all than it would have been left to my own devices.

So,

so for... So for whatever reason, this morning I went back to my notes that I had saved from the very first arm first Darmatocs I'd given.

These are about 17 years ago.

And it's kind of a fossil record of my wisdom and delusion, you know.

And that was kind of interesting to look back.

And hindsight, of course, 2020, as they say,

but we know with certainty that the present will become the past.

And so until time stops, some humility is necessary.

And it was curious to see some, you know, kind of detect some measure of confusion in those notes, a kind of angular rigidity, but also some continuities, themes that preoccupied me then,

remain with me now.

And I'd looked back at a talk I'd given on a classic line from Jack Engler, who's I think trans-personal psychologist and Buddhist writer, teacher.

And he, as I recall it, he got this question about somebody with psychosis, highly unstable sense of self.

And so the questioner asked, like, okay, are they given this very kind of amorphous sense of self?

Is that person close to understanding anata, understanding not self?

And angler's reply was you have to be somebody before being nobody.

And the implication is you have to have a solid sense of self before you can shed that self.

And many years later, Engler was interviewed and was asked where he stood on that quote.

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