Hi there. Welcome, and this is Josh Darmapung's New York. Just a couple of notes before tonight's talk.

Meditation. I do do everything, as noted by donation only. Don't charge for anything. Don't hide any teachings behind a paywall.

Don't believe in any of that.

Just follow the 2,500-year-old model of the Buddha,

which is you present the Dharma without any charge,

and you just rely on the kindness of people who get something from the talks to make

small donations so that you can live. So if that's something you can, if you do get something from

the talks and you feel capable of making even a tiny donation.

The Venmo is Dharma Punks with an XNYC,

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And that's the entirety of tonight's notes.

Now we're going to jump into tonight's talk,

which is about the idea of the real me,

the authentic self.

So there's so many ways to work our way into this theme, but to my mind, one of the most appropriate is by starting out with the date 1956, which was the year that the sociologist Irving Goffman published a very, very important book in

the annals of sociology called The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. It's still considered

to be one of the ten most important books in that field of study.

And in the book, Goffman noted that our everyday social interactions and behaviors take

on the quality of a performance. We interact with people as if on stage and we present a curated performance, the goal being ultimately to avoid

embarrassing ourselves. We withhold expressing views or beliefs that might lead to judgment or rejection.

We adjust the tone and choose words carefully so that we don't

create conflicts. We figure out which themes might agree. And so if you haven't noticed by now,

...