Nothing Has Self Nature

The first line of this text was about realizing the meaning of selflessness, the absence of self in ourselves, and now this line is dealing with the absence of self-nature in everything else, outside of ourselves. So when it says the absence of any self-nature, it is referring to the fact that we receive stimuli through our sense organs, like our eyes, ears, nose, taste and touch, which is then reified, made into a thing by our mental consciousness, by our mental construct, so that we see things outside as existing in and of themselves from their own side. Whether we are here or not here, these things are exactly how we perceive them to be. And so there is ourselves and then there is everything else which is not myself, but it is just how I perceive it, solid, truly existing from its own side. And this again is our misperception. Just recently we were listening to a presentation by an eminent neuroscientist, and he was also saying the same thing, that things are not what we think they are, that we basically make it all up, and that actually what is out there is inconceivable through our ordinary sense perceptions and the brain which analyzes it. It's not that, but because we share the same kind of brain structure and sensory organs, and I would say the same karma, we perceive things in a way which we can all agree on. But actually what we are seeing, we cannot really explain to others, and also what is actually out there that we are perceiving is also something which with our ordinary sense faculties we cannot know. So therefore always in traditional texts, our external phenomena is described as being like a dream, an illusion, a mirage, a rainbow, all these ideas of things which we perceive and which come together due to causes and conditions, but which are ungraspable. They seem very real and self-existent from their own side, but when we try to find the thing in itself, it falls apart like a rainbow or a mirage. You could say like a movie. Movies look like very real, but they're only a movie. And especially when they're 3D and all this special stuff, it seems like it's a real self-existence from its own side. But in fact, when we try to find the thing in itself, it is unfindable. Even from its own side means that if we take something, I take this, it's a clock. We all agree clock, clock, right? Everybody agree, clock? Okay, so then, I mean, this is lesson number one in Buddhist philosophy, right? After 20 years, forget it, but lesson number one, this is a clock. So, right. Which bit of it is the clock? Right, so is it this outer plastic cover? No, that's the cover. Well, how about these buttons? No, they're buttons.

Well, how about the face? No, that's just the face. So then we undo it and we have the batteries and so and so inside. But if we keep going down and down and down, even each battery, well, what makes it a battery? Is it the outer cover? Is it the inner this? Is it that that going down and down even to the cellular and pre-cellular level, we can never find anything which is self-existing from its own side and not in relationship to anything else. This is the point is that we name things, things we they come together, they they are, you know, we put them all together and then we give it a label. But if behind the label, we look for the very thing in it and of itself, we cannot find it. So that's one side of it, that nothing exists by itself. It all exists in interdependence with everything else. That's one thing. But the other thing is that we do cannot know. This is when neuroscience gets interesting. And why people like it's on a satellite llama, etc, are fascinated by neuroscience is because what they're showing is that the data which is received through our sense organs, for example, the eye, we think we see everything that we see in great detail in color and vividness. But actually, what we are seeing according to neuroscientists is something which is really a very blurred image, which the eye picks up, it's not anything like what is reinterpreted by the brain. This neuroscientist was saying that probably 80% of what we actually receive is made up by the brain only 20% is what we get through the senses. So we are moment by moment by moment creating our own reality. And of course, in quantum physics, likewise, they say this also solid table isn't solid at all, just as we are not solid at all. If we keep trying to reduce ourselves down and down and down to the ultimate part, which exists of itself without being interrelated with anything else, we end up with space and energy. So this is why nowadays, so many llamas and others are fascinated by especially quantum physics and neuroscience, because they are gradually coming to exactly the same perceptions as was reached by sages back in India and elsewhere millennia ago. And when the Dalai Lama was discussing something with a quantum physicist, the quantum physicist said, well, I don't know how you understand this without machines. And his own said, well, I don't know how you understand this without meditating. But what is interesting is that more and more they're coming into recognizing that actually, this is the closest we can get to how things really are understood with a conceptual mind, a non conceptual mind understands. But with our ordinary thinking mind, then it's very difficult because we make things into things, right? We reify, we make something solid and enduring and unchanging, whereas actually at a molecular level, as we all know, it's all in constant movement, but we don't see that. I mean, we have the kind of sense organs and the brain mechanism which allows us to function as human beings in this realm. On the level we are at other beings with other apparatus would see things very differently because we are just reinterpreting our reality for ourselves so we can live in it. It's not a bad thing. But the problem is only that then we believe in it that everything is just the way we think we are. And this gives rise to a great sense of grasping and attachment or aversion and hatred and all the other negative emotions. It's based on the fact that we think that there is an entity called me which is responding to the outer world which is likewise very solid and enduring and exactly the way we see it is. So therefore it gives rise to all sorts of unwholesome states of mind. If we have wholesome states of mind, then it's not such a problem, except we're ignorant, but apart from that. Wisdom is always seeing things as it really is. Then we lose all attachment naturally. So therefore the supreme remedy, the remedy for what? The remedy for our poisonous emotions. Our poisonous emotions are attachment and grasping and greed and our anger and resentment and annoyance and depressions and our envy and jealousy and pride and arrogance and basic delusion and confusion of our minds are all based on our misapprehension of the way things really are. How we really are, how everything else really is. That we solidify it and make it something permanent and real from its own side and not recognizing the interrelationship between the viewer and the viewed. And this is what causes all our problems. So we ratify a self, an ego, and then we project this ego and solidity onto everything else that we see. We don't see it as a mirage or a dream or a rainbow. And so therefore this gives life to all our poisonous emotions. And so the remedy is to recognize things are not the way they are, it's just a movie. Why are we getting so involved in a movie? The movie may be playing for this lifetime, but next lifetime we change the channel. So why are we getting so believing in the projection that we are creating moment to moment to moment? So when we realize that, then all these poisonous emotions just fade because we're not defending anything. We're not gratifying anything. We're not looking at things at a whole different level of consciousness in which there is not the division. When we say that the ultimate nature of the mind is non-dualistic, it means that normally when we perceive anything, it's the perceiving eye and that which is viewed the object, even in mindfulness. We are mindful of the breath, we are mindful of the postures, we are mindful of the mind. So there's a subject observing the object. But in non-dual nature, our unborn primordial awareness, the whole point is that dualistic level of mind is it just doesn't pertain. So this is why it's compared to space because you can't grasp space and say this is my space, that's your space. It's just space. But in not when the problem with space is it makes us think we're all spaced out and everything becomes one. But it's not like that. Everything becomes sharper, clearer. But there's no sense of boundary. There's this deep sense of interconnection with all beings. We're not separated. It's our dualistic mind which makes a separation. But at the fundamental nature we're all deeply interconnected. But it's a sense, as I said yesterday, of waking up. We become more alive, more aware, more present. But it's not motivated by this me sitting in the middle so that our actions of body, speech, our mind are said to be spontaneous. They're spontaneous because we don't have to think, how should I act in this situation? It's just obvious how to act in that situation. And then other people see that as being very skillful. But from the point of view of the realized being, it's just a natural outflow of their wisdom, compassion and mind. So it's a whole different level of our consciousness. In the Lankavatara Sutra it said it's turning around in the seat of the consciousness. It's a whole different way of perceiving. So this is why it's the remedy for all our problems.