The Self

On the Unfettered Mind Ning discussion forum about people's favorite passage from Ken's podcasts, Jim Ellsworth wrote the following:

Reply by Jim Ellsworth on April 5, 2009 at 12:07am

Ann...Here's a zinger from the Power and Presence #5 podcast (about 35 minutes in):

"Everybody’s trying to get rid of the self. You know, we have this little thing in Buddhism called the “non-self.” Can you get rid of something that doesn’t exist? Can you wake up a person who’s pretending to be asleep? One way of looking at the “self,” it is a fiction that arises as a way to give the appearance of continuity and rationality to what is actually a long series of random events."

A few minutes later, Jeff suggested that "response to the environment" was a better choice of words than "random events," to which Ken agreed. I find letting go of the "self" by opening into a simple, yet completely full, experience of the present moment to be the heart of practice. It's still so hard to trust that this moment is all there is.

And here is the corresponding clip (with an extra minute added):

The Self (from Power and Presence (retreat) 00:35:06.00 - 00:37:26.70)

(download into iTunes)