This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video No Core, No Problem ~ Diana Clark. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Diana Clark at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Welcome, welcome. Good evening. Nice to see you all.
So tonight, I’d like to talk a little bit, in a way of just throwing some seeds out. And in some way, maybe the seeds will take root and germinate and sprout into something, and maybe they won’t. Or maybe it’ll take some time. Maybe they have to sit in the darkness for some time, or maybe there has to be more rain or more sun or something like this until the seeds sprout. So, just this idea of—I’m doing this with my hand—kind of like just throwing out seeds and seeing if they land and produce something.
Partly, I offer this just as an encouragement to maybe see what’s being said here and maybe just feel into it. And if it feels like, “I don’t know,” can you just hold that “I don’t know”? Can you just hold that and take what’s helpful and just leave behind what’s not helpful?
I want to start by talking about thoughts. Like, what are thoughts? For me, this is such a fascinating topic. Like, what are they made out of? Where do they come from? I think we all know there are like these mental events that kind of arise and pass away. They’re temporary appearances that just show up on occasion, but it happens that they show up more often than just on occasion.
I’m fascinated by this. I saw that there was a study that said that people have up to 60,000 thoughts a day. I’m fascinated by, like, is somebody going, “click, click, click, one, two, three, four, five,” you know? Like, how do they measure this? I don’t know. I’m kind of curious about this. But I think actually just the act of being curious and wanting to count one’s thoughts means that they’re not lost in them, but instead, they’re observing them. And that in itself could be really powerful.
So, we have up to, according to some scientists, 60,000 thoughts a day. Also, to these same scientists, between 90 and 95% of them are repetitive, either because they’re what they had earlier that day or maybe they’re the same as what you had the previous day. That’s a lot, 90 to 95%. And then 80% of all of them have this negative tone. “Things should be different.” “I should be different.” “Why are they doing it that way? It should be done this way.” “Who’s responsible for this? I have to go fix it and tell them,” or, you know, all these different ways that these negative thoughts show up. “I’m not good enough.” “This isn’t good enough.” There’s cold air coming out of this vent, I’m not sure why in the winter, but you know, today the microphone had a little thing and the HVAC system’s been a little weird. It’s just the way it is.
So we have a lot of thoughts, but there’s something that—they’re repetitive, they’re arising and passing away. And so, what are some of the things that are these 60,000 thoughts? Sometimes we are worrying about the future. “How am I going to handle this?” Or maybe there’s a little bit of planning in there. “Oh, in order, this thing’s going to come up and so I better be prepared for it. So okay, I got to remember to bring this to work today and tell this person that,” and you know, whatever it might be. There’s a certain amount of planning.
A huge component of thoughts is self-judgment. This idea of like, “I should be doing better,” or “I should be better,” or “I’m inadequate,” or at least, “I’m doing better than that bozo over there.” Or maybe there’s this sense of like, “Well, why can’t I be more like this person who has X, Y, and Z or seems to be A, B, and C?” “Why can’t I have a physique like this person?” “Why can’t I be as smart as that person?” “Why can’t I be as spiritually mature as such person?” or whatever it might be. It’s amazing how much of this is part of our thoughts.
Or also, maybe part of our fantasies. Sometimes I find myself doing this a lot, like, “Hmm, I wonder what it would be like to live here,” you know, as I’m kind of driving through some place. Or, “I wonder what it would be like to have this job,” you know, as I’m interacting with different people in different professions. Like, “I wonder what it’s like to have that job, to be a barista.” [Laughter]
So there’s all kinds of things, you know, that we think about, these 60,000 thoughts that we’re having a day.
Not only are they temporary, just arising and passing away, but we don’t control them. They just arise when they arise, they leave when they leave. Right? If we could control our thoughts, you would not need a meditation practice. You would just only think about certain things and be done with it, not think about other things. They’re uncontrollable. We’re not making them arise. Nobody knows why they arise, nobody knows why they go away. They just do. This is the nature of thoughts, is that we don’t control them. This is part of the human experience, just having thoughts arise, thoughts that we don’t want, thoughts that we’re trying to not think arise anyway. I’m sure you’ve noticed this.
There’s also this thing about thoughts that they don’t have a core substance to them. They are insubstantial in some kind of way. They are like clouds and rainbows. You know, they appear when there are certain—an example of clouds and rainbows, right? Certain atmospheric conditions are there, clouds arise. But clouds don’t have something in the center that’s like this core or essence. It’s just a diffuse cloud. Rainbows are the same way, right? There isn’t one thing that you could pull out and say, “Oh, okay, here’s the rainbow.” Instead, it’s just an experience, a process that’s arising when we could say, when rain and sunlight are there. So there’s this way that they have this real insubstantiality. We don’t control them, and they’re coming and going.
And it turns out that so much of the building blocks of our stories, our dramas, our suffering, are thoughts. So these things that are insubstantial and uncontrollable are so much of what is creating the stories we have about ourselves, the stories we have about what is good, what is bad, what is the meaning of life, what I should do with my life, what I shouldn’t do with my life. And there’s a way in which we could consider that we spend so much of our time going from one little mini-daydream to another. So much of what our inner life is about is kind of like being lost in these insubstantial mental events that are coming and going repeatedly.
But there’s one particular way in which sometimes these stories or these dramas, these big sufferings, difficulties in our lives, which all of us have, are intimately tied up with our thoughts. The thoughts we have about what’s happening, the thoughts we have about what it means to me as an individual, makes me a good person, makes me a bad person, makes me look good, makes me look bad. Or maybe it just doesn’t match the idea we have about ourselves. I want people to think that I’m kind, and when somebody is complaining about me, it just doesn’t feel good, and I have to defend myself or support myself in some kind of way with more thoughts—these insubstantial, uncontrollable things.
There’s so much about our sense of self that is just really tied up with a sense of our thoughts. I want to talk a little bit more about this, but first, I want to say a little bit about what do I mean when I talk about this sense of a self. I mean, we have this common sense model, this notion of what a self is. We have like, there’s this core, there’s this essence at the center to which, you know, other things happen. I talk about this, you know, sometimes in dharma1 talks, I’m pointing to this. And certainly our society and the way that we’re raised in our culture really promotes this. You could even say this whole idea of a horoscope: because you’re born at this particular location, this particular time, you’ll have these qualities, and that’s part of your essence or your core.
Or you might say, well, we have these personality tests, Myers-Briggs2 or Enneagram3, or I’m sure there’s others, that say, “No, no, no, this really is your core, your essence.” For me, I have something… I thought back when I was a research scientist, spent my days in a laboratory, I was thinking, “Oh, it doesn’t feel quite right for me. I don’t know what to do with myself.” This is a little aside. I took Myers-Briggs, and it came back that, “Oh, you might want to be a spiritual teacher.” I thought, “That’s so crazy. I’m never going to do anything like that.” For me, that’s just a funny thing to think about. Inconstant, one worldview, not knowing what our future holds, right?
Or there’s also ways in which I remember, also when I was a teenager, I used to love to do this. There’d be magazines and there would always be like a quiz, “What is your learning style?” And then you’d circle A or B or C, and then however many A’s you got means your learning style is this, or what’s, you know, whatever it was measuring. So we certainly have this idea that supports this notion that there is this core essence that we are, and it can be described with a personality test or the results from some kind of a test or something like this, or our horoscope.
So there’s this idea that this core, this essence, this way in which we think that there’s maybe this quality, this inherent quality that we have, and we say that it accumulates these different experiences. That is, maybe it has these memories. Maybe it has memories, and these memories are kind of like what’s part of this core. But memories are thoughts, in a way. They’re mental events, and these are insubstantial, coming and going, uncontrollable. We have desires, it’s part of what we might say is the experience of having a self. And for example, “more cookies,” “more well-being.” But those are also thoughts, which are also insubstantial. We have beliefs about the meaning of life, what happens after death, what it means to vote one way or another. These beliefs are also thoughts. They often are a little bit quieter and maybe perhaps hidden and not obvious, but those are also just thoughts. We have knowledge, maybe we’re trained in a specific field, but those are often just thoughts too, concepts, right? The knowledge is often concepts, things that we learn and memorize and work with, and these are just thoughts too.
So there actually isn’t this core or this essence. The center doesn’t exist. It’s a model. It’s a common sense model. We feel like there is, but so what is there if there isn’t this essence here? There’s a way in which the components, we might say, of our experience are connected. They belong to one body and brain, so they’re not happening to somebody else. But there’s a way in which we might say that the sense of self is a narrative. It’s a way in which there is this sewing together of different events into a story. There’s a way in which we’re linking things together. The linking is happening with our thoughts. The events are just happening. The memories are just happening. The sensations are just happening. They’re coming and going. We can’t control them. And then we want things to make sense and to be neat and tidy in some kind of way, so a narrative gets created. “Oh, this happened because of that.” But that’s a thought. Thoughts are insubstantial, uncontrollable, coming and going.
And there’s a way in which we say, “Well, things are connected,” also means that, well, we do things because of other things. Maybe we could say that what we desire is related to what we believe. Our beliefs are thoughts. Maybe what we desire is a certain amount of well-being, happiness, peace, freedom. And then, well, we’re doing something because we have that desire. But the way that we think that we’re going to achieve this well-being or peace and freedom are thoughts, which are insubstantial, coming and going, and we can’t control them.
So there’s all these things—these beliefs, desires, experiences—and they’re all related to each other. And there’s just a way that these connected things are you, you might say, or a self, we might say. So that’s different than having a core or an essence. It’s more like, well, there’s just maybe this cloud here that is a self.
And then often when we hear things like this, I know this certainly was the case for me, there’s a certain like puzzlement, like, “What? Huh?” And there’s often some like disbelief because like, “I don’t really just… I mean, of course there’s a self. I mean, I’m here and I’m not there, and I’m this person, I’m not that person. What is she talking about?”
So when we hear these things, often we have this experience of maybe we want to dismiss it because it runs counter to our experience. It runs counter to kind of like what society is pointing to and promoting. And so I’m just planting seeds. I’m just throwing seeds out there. It’s perfectly fine if they don’t sink in and germinate. But I’ll say, and probably you know this too, that so much about this practice is about maybe having a sense of inquiry or curiosity or investigation of, “Hmm, I don’t know.”
Maybe investigation is a factor of awakening, and this is part of what gets investigated. Like, what is this sense of self, the sense of identity that we have? How does it feel? What is it made out of? When is it really strong? When does it seem like it’s not so strong? When does it even feel like it’s completely absent? This spirit of inquiry, this spirit of, “Hmm,” maybe willingness to not completely dismiss it, but just have some openness to the notion that there isn’t this core. So this isn’t so much a belief to adopt. This isn’t a doctrine to sign up for. Instead, it’s an invitation to investigate, be curious about, be open to, and maybe, you know, poke around and see and feel. I’m using this maybe like, feel into, are there times when there’s a really strong sense of self?
And often the way that we can tell this is when it’s countered with an “other.” Me versus you. Us versus them. When there’s a real strong sense of, “Oh my gosh, they are a problem,” implicit is, “I am not the problem.” And that’s when there’s a strong sense of self. So just get curious, how does that feel when you have this sense of righteous indignation or saying somebody else is wrong? This also means that this me, I’m right, dang it. And just feel how, and sometimes there’s a sense of energy and maybe that feels nice. Maybe to feel like I’m in the right and everybody else is wrong, maybe that feels nice in some kind of way. But wow, is that limiting. It’s really limiting because really what we are is so big and expansive and this flowing and generosity and freedom and peace and well-being, as opposed to this, “I’m right, and now I have to make sure that everybody else knows that I’m right. And now I have to make sure that people treat me the right way. And if they’re not, then I have to push away all those thoughts that make it think that it looks like I’m not right or that I’m not here.”
To maybe illustrate this idea, what does it mean to be a sense of self? I’ll borrow this idea that I… this is terrible, I didn’t write it down and his name is slipping my mind right now. It’s an American philosopher, I think his name is Julian Baggini, I want to say. It’ll come to me in a moment probably. But I am stealing this idea from him. He gave this in a TED Talk a number of years ago. I think it’s… I just love this. He said, let’s take the idea of the notion of water, H₂O. Two H’s, one O. H₂O. Two protons and an oxygen. H₂O. We’re all familiar with this, that water is this. For water, we don’t take this word “water,” this concept, this idea, this thought of water, make it be the essence, make it be the core. And then we don’t like stick an H here, an H over here, and an oxygen, an O over here and say, “Oh, okay, water is H₂O.” We don’t have like this thing “water” in the center that then has an H and an H and an O. No, of course not. It’s a collection of two H’s and an O. And then later, we kind of like put a label on top of it, but it doesn’t need that label. These two H’s and an O, H₂O, are perfectly fine doing whatever it is that they’re doing without this label getting put on top of it. It’s just this collection of atoms that are in a particular formation that we call water.
Or the same way for the microphone. Microphones have a diaphragm in them that vibrate in some kind of way, and they have magnets and coils and wires and I don’t know all the things that are in a microphone. Somebody does, though. And so a microphone is just a collection of all these little bits of wires and coils and microphones and diaphragms and stuff like this. And when all these bits are collected in a particular way, associated in a particular way, we call it a microphone. But it doesn’t need that name “microphone.” It’s just this collection of things that happens to function in a particular way. It’d be perfectly fine without the label.
So these are collections of bits. For a microphone, that’s a diaphragm and a magnet and stuff. For water, it’s protons and oxygen. And then later, we put a label on top of it, but that label is extra. Sense of self is the same thing. It’s a collection of, we might say, mental events, experiences that are just happily doing whatever they’re doing. And then we put a label of “self” on top. And we might say, “Well, but is it real?” [Laughter] Is it not real? This microphone is real. We’re not saying it’s not real. We’re not saying that it doesn’t exist. And the self isn’t different than anything else in the universe. And I mean, like neuroscience shows us that there isn’t a portion of the brain like, “Okay, there’s the self right there.” And then psychology, they often aren’t talking about this. I’m not a neuroscientist nor a psychologist, but this is my understanding. They’re not pointing to, “Yeah, there’s all these psychological patterns or there are all these neurochemical reactions, and then here’s the self that’s, you know, right here and has these particular unique things.” They’re not saying that at all.
So this doesn’t mean that we don’t exist. That would be silly to say that we don’t exist. Instead, we’re just saying that there isn’t this nucleus, this core at the center. Instead, it’s a collection, it’s a process, it’s the cloud. It’s not clearly defined, doesn’t have like clear edges in the way that we think it does. And there’s this way that acknowledging this or being tuned into this allows for some growth and some change, allows for some sense of freedom, allows for some liquidity, maybe, in the way that we think about ourselves or the way that we think about the world that can really support freedom.
And we could even say that this whole entire practice—this mindfulness practice, the insight practice, concentration practice, loving-kindness practice, listening to dharma talks, reading dharma books—all of this, we could say, all of it is pointing to this: that our identity is not necessarily what we think it is. And that greater freedom goes with the more ease we have with this sense of identity, this sense of self that we have. And we could say like awakening, liberation, these types of things—I’m doing this with my hands because it’s like imagining that maybe it’s a road that goes over here, it’s not quite like that, but often how it gets conveyed—we could say it’s just this shifting, shifting of this identity.
So it’s not that we have to get rid of our self. It’s not that we have to transmute our self into some beautiful thing. It’s not that we have to transcend our self. And there’s spiritual teachings that point this way, but this tradition is just to notice, “Yeah, it’s just not there the way that you thought it was.” That’s all. That’s all you have to do. And there’s this way this recognition, often if it’s been again and again and seen in a particular way—this is not something intellectual, it’s not something that you’ll get having just hearing a dharma talk—but it’s an experience, then that’s what brings greater and greater freedom. This recognition like, “Oh, there’s this letting go that can happen of this sense of, ‘I need to be this way and the world needs to be that way.’”
So one way that we can practice with this is often on meditation retreats when the mind is a little bit more quiet that we start to notice all the ways in which we’re creating ourself, in which we’re in some ways thinking ourself into being. I don’t want to make this be wrong. I don’t want to make this be a big problem. This is what most humans are doing. But here’s just an opportunity to think like, “Hmm, maybe there’s another way.” These are things that we’re just assuming. The thought or the thoughts about the self, we’re just assuming there’s a self there and viewing the world, viewing our experiences through that framework. It turns out that that’s extra. This framework is extra.
And one way we could work with this is just to notice thoughts. Just notice your thoughts. Often not so easy because we’re lost in them. But if you can even just for like, you know, two minutes at a time and say, “Okay, I’m going to count,” maybe one minute, maybe 30 seconds, just count like, “Okay, how many thoughts?” And then you’ll have like, “Oh, wait, was that a thought? Oh, that’s a thought. That’s a thought.” Okay, then, you know, just… but the fact of just observing them, and then it becomes easier and easier to observe them. And then we start to see their insubstantiality and uncontrollability. And then just seeing this again and again, we start to see how, oh, they are making this self, they’re creating this self. That’s one way in which we might work with this notion that we have that there’s this core, this essence, when in fact it’s just a collection of experiences. And often what’s stitching them together are thoughts, which of course are insubstantial. How many times have I said that today? This is my new favorite word.
So maybe I’ll end there. But maybe before I end, I’ll say there’s a lot that we could say about not-self. This is just, you know, I just took one road in. There’s so many different things we can say. I am not expecting that having heard this, you’ll be totally convinced. And I know that the first time I heard this teaching, I kind of got mad. “What are they talking about? I thought this Buddhism thing was going to be good, but what is this? I don’t know.” I just, I found myself irritated. And that’s okay. Irritation is okay too. So I just want to offer that, take what’s helpful and leave behind what’s not helpful.
And now maybe I’ll open it up to see if there’s some questions or comments. Thank you.
Questioner 1: So, in Tibetan Buddhism especially, there’s a lot of talk about reincarnation. So if there is no self, what reincarnates?
Diana Clark: I know, right? This is such a great question. I have no idea. Yeah, because it almost seems to contradict itself, right? You know, like they talk about the five aggregates4, and then there’s no self. Then okay, it’s very peaceful when you’re very still, but then what reincarnates? I don’t know if it’s helpful, I’ll say in this tradition, we don’t use this word “reincarnation.” We use “rebirth,” with more the idea that what gets reborn, if such a thing exists—it’s impossible for me to know that—it would be like the momentum of some of the mental patterns that we’ve had or habits or something like this. The momentum, maybe. But that, this is what I can offer. Yeah.
Questioner 2: I had kind of a comment, but then also just to touch on the question you just, or the comment you just brought up. Because a big part of why I started coming as well was trying to unpack this concept of non-self. And one thing I was able to gather from a talk, and perhaps, you know, feel free to correct me, but there was a talk on this about a year ago at Spirit Rock, and it was on the concept of no-self. And the thing that I gathered was that it turns out to just be a really awkward translation. Turns out what the Buddha was saying was not that there is no self. He wasn’t metaphysically proving that, “Oh, we don’t exist and there is no actual self.” Not that, but the actual like sutta5 and the teaching is that, “Think, look at your thoughts, observe your physical habits, the aggregates. Do you control any of them? And if you don’t control them, there is no self there.” So the idea of self is tied up a lot with the control, is what I had gathered. And that’s merely what the Buddha was saying. And so to meditate on non-self is to realize like we just have like a modicum of control versus a self that can control, you know, our thoughts and all these other things. So that was actually very helpful. But it also pays to like read more and go to these talks. That really clarified it for me, though. It was just a tough translation.
Diana Clark: Great, great. Thank you. That’s right. That at the time of the Buddha, there were other spiritual teachers and they were saying, “Oh no, there’s a self and here are the characteristics of it.” And one of the characteristics was that you could control it. So thank you. Yeah. And he said, “No, no, no, we don’t control it. Try it.” And it turns out you can’t. Yeah.
Questioner 2: And then just to comment on, I really appreciated the talk tonight. And one thing that I think is a barrier, it’s tough when we hear things like this, is just linguistically. You know, we grow up and for me, it’s like we, there are nouns and there’s verbs, right, to keep it very simple. And nouns are everywhere. In fact, concepts become nouns and we’re like, “This is, yeah, is this.” And so one exercise I try to do, and it feels just impossible, I occasionally try and do it, is take something that comes to us as a noun but turn it into verbs. Yeah, like this is “verbing” or this chair, it’s actually a bunch of verbs. It’s “chairing.”
Diana Clark: It’s chairing, yeah.
Questioner 2: What are the atoms inside or whatever we want to describe? Or some, you know, ideological ism that we say is happening, like it’s actually just this thing that’s verbing. I found that to be helpful, but it’s really tough to break. I feel like every time I hear this concept, that what’s the essence, linguistics is a huge barrier to it.
Diana Clark: Yeah, very nice. Thank you. I heard Leigh Brasington once say, “There are no nouns, they’re just slow verbs.” It’s kind of a playful way to think about this. Just slow verbs.
Questioner 3: So I was remembering about 30 years ago, the Dalai Lama came to Shoreline Amphitheater. I don’t know if anyone else was there, but he gave a four-day talk on, and I wrote it down, “The concept of self is empty of objective reality.” And I understood the first five minutes of the four days. Yeah, I wasn’t ready for that. But what you were describing was something I kind of stumbled on to about five minutes into tonight’s sit, which was that what I do about thoughts when I’m meditating is I energize them. I think it’s when I do that that I turn them into self. And there’s a sensation when I’m energizing them, and if I’m paying attention, it’s not pleasant. So I have a motive for not doing that anymore. And then sometimes I’m, you know, supposed to be meditating, so I shouldn’t have thoughts. So instead of pushing them, I’m trying to stop them, and that’s unpleasant in a different way. And what I was trying tonight was just stuff would arise, and it’s not like that’s the intermission between the good meditating, that’s doing it right. And I would just greet these thoughts with love and would be like, sit next to them in the sun on a park bench and hear what they have to say. And then they go away. And it was, it was quite lovely. Thank you.
Diana Clark: Can you say a little bit what you mean when you say energizing the thoughts?
Questioner 3: Yeah, so the thought is telling me this, and then this, and then he said that. And it’s like there’s this other part of me that’s going, “For sure, for sure. And then actually this other thing.” Yeah. And it’s as if I get involved with it.
Diana Clark: Yeah, yeah, getting involved. I kind of like the word “get tangled up in them” somehow. Yeah, yeah. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Phil.
Questioner 4: I’m super new here, so I don’t know much about the traditions, but I was wondering what your thoughts are on prayers as thoughts.
Diana Clark: Can you say a little bit more? Prayers as thoughts?
Questioner 4: Because it’s not about yourself. It’s about… can you hold the microphone just a little bit closer? Thank you. Yeah, I mean, it’s not necessarily a replay of what’s happened to you. It’s not commentary necessarily about you, but it is about what you would like or what your intention is.
Diana Clark: So I know very little about prayers, but this is my idea, is that praying is, there’s still mental events, and it’s about a wish for something or an intention for something. Is that true, would you say?
Questioner 4: Yeah, I mean, I would have called it an intention.
Diana Clark: Yeah, yeah. So in some ways it is related to yourself in that it’s like an intention that I wish for world peace, for example, or I wish, you know, for everybody to have enough food, whatever it might be. That it’s related… wait, so your question is about the relationship between prayers and thoughts or prayers and…
Questioner 4: Well, when you talked a lot about thoughts, they seem to be very inwardly directed or about yourself or about how you relate to the world. But sometimes your thoughts are not about yourself.
Diana Clark: Yeah, that’s true. The majority of them are self-referential. And I don’t know what happens in people’s prayers, so maybe they’re not self-referential there. I imagine many of them are, though, that, you know, “I am praying for something in particular,” and there’s this fact that “I want this so that X, Y, and Z.” And the “so that” part is often related to somebody’s wishes and desires. So there are thoughts of like, “Okay, so the pasta is going to be done in two minutes, so maybe I should put the sauce in now so that it’s done at the same time as the pasta,” right? Has nothing to do with actually, you know, ourself. And that’s just thoughts that are just arising and passing away and solving the present moment, what’s arising or what’s being experienced at that moment. So those aren’t self-referential and they’re not a problem. Is this helpful at all what I’m saying here? I’m getting a little lost.
Questioner 4: It’s just that, you know, when you talked about thoughts, it was like, “These are not yourself,” right? And I kept thinking, “Well, of course those are not myself because that’s not… I wasn’t thinking like myself had nothing to do with those thoughts.” Does that make sense? Like, I have a friend with cancer and I hope she heals and I hope her treatments work. Yes. And I pray for her health, but that has nothing to do with me or how I would relate it to me. So this is what I mean by thoughts that don’t have to do with self at all.
Diana Clark: Are you sure?
Questioner 4: Yeah, I feel pretty confident about that.
Diana Clark: Um, yeah. So I’m trying to feel into the best way to talk about this. There’s a way in which… maybe I’ll just use this language in which we get tangled up. No, that’s not the right word. Who is it or what is it that’s wishing for your friend to heal? What is it? Who is it? What is that experience of wishing your friend to heal? That’s maybe the question. And this doesn’t have an easy answer. This is sometimes a question that people work with for a long time because they come up with one thing and they go, “Oh, wait, no, that’s not quite it.” But it can be interesting to just explore, “Well, what is it exactly?” And it’s helpful to say this word, “what.” What is this? What is this wishing for my friend to heal? Beautiful wish.
Questioner 4: What is a wish? What is a prayer? Is that the question?
Diana Clark: Or like, what’s where is it originating from? Where is it, what is it coming out of?
Questioner 4: And you would say not the self?
Diana Clark: No, this is something to investigate. What is, is there, what’s inside here that’s fuel, that’s giving rise to this wish? It’s not an easy answer. It’s not something that you’re going to find this moment, or if you do, you might, but then you can just say, “Am I…?” and continue to work with it or something like this.
Questioner 4: Love.
Diana Clark: Love. Like love. There you go. Love is nice. Is love self? What is love?
Questioner 4: Combination of stuff.
Diana Clark: It’s a combination, yeah, it’s little bits of stuff, I guess. Yeah, yeah, that we call love. Yeah, love it. Nice. So with that, maybe we’ll close here. I’d love for you all to have a lovely rest of the evening. Thank you all.
Dharma: In Buddhism, this term refers to the teachings of the Buddha, the path to enlightenment, and the cosmic law and order. ↩
Myers-Briggs: A self-report questionnaire indicating different psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. ↩
Enneagram: A model of the human psyche which is principally understood and taught as a typology of nine interconnected personality types. ↩
The Five Aggregates: In Buddhism, these are the five components that make up a sentient being’s experience of existence: form (or matter), sensation (or feeling), perception, mental formations (or impulses), and consciousness. ↩
Sutta: A discourse or sermon attributed to the Buddha or one of his close disciples. These are collected in the Sutta Pitaka, one of the principal bodies of texts in the Pali Canon. ↩