Interdependence And Anatta

Today's talk was inspired by another podcast I listen to, The Way Out is In. We discuss the concept of interdependence and anatta in Buddhism, looking at the five aggregates, the twelve links, and our heart practices and connections with others.

Transcript

Today's talk kind of was sparked by,

It just got out of hand a little bit in my writing of it.

It was sparked by,

I was listening to,

I think as many of you know,

I mostly practice in the Vipassana or Theravada traditions.

And the kind of one piece of media I really consume from other schools,

The Mahayana tradition,

Is a podcast,

Oh,

I forget what it's called.

I think it's called The Way Out Is In,

And it comes from Deer Park Monastery,

Taking out Hans Monastery.

And they were talking,

I don't remember what the podcast episode was or what the topic was,

But they were talking about interdependence.

It kind of came up.

It wasn't the focus of the episode,

But they were talking about interdependence with other people and how in the Mahayana tradition,

It actually really relates to anatta or not self.

I don't know if I've done a podcast dedicated to not self.

I absolutely should.

I think it's an important teaching.

So I started writing a talk about this kind of interdependence and how it relates to not self kind of externally with other people.

And as I was doing so,

I realized that the teachings on interdependence are really teachings of not self internally as well with our own experience.

So we're going to start with kind of interdependence with what I would call mindfulness and internally,

And then move towards a more kind of external bit,

More relating to like the heart practices and how we interact with the world.

The idea of interdependence is not strictly a Buddhist idea by any means,

Nor is the idea of not self.

But this idea of interdependence is really,

Really linked to not self.

And not self or anatta,

And I'm going to use that term,

The Pali term anatta from here on out,

Because sometimes not self or no self or however people translate it can be a little bit confusing.

This anatta is one of the three marks of existence,

Right?

That all conditioned things have as qualities,

Dukkha or suffering,

Anatta,

Or not self,

And impermanence.

And the Buddha instructed his followers many,

Many times that to really tune into these and get to know these,

That it's a core piece of the practice and super important and perhaps even the goal of many of the practices.

Realization of anatta is taught to lead to the cessation of craving and attachment.

And I think it's a little bit of a challenge or call to view ourselves a little bit more clearly,

To step out of ignorance or delusion and see ourselves as constantly changing and interdependent.

As we practice this with ourselves and with others,

I had also in my experience built this sense of empathy or compassion,

Loving-kindness,

This interconnectedness,

This kind of connection.

I've heard not-self or anatta described in so many ways,

Kind of the more like pragmatic or simple one,

And I don't know where I read this,

It was definitely in a book,

But that we are simply just not the same person we were 10 years ago,

Right?

We may have some of the same thought patterns,

But physically ourselves have actually regenerated,

Died off.

This what we call ourselves is really a combination of a bunch of different factors that are always in a state of flux and always changing.

And this view we have of ourselves as separate,

Like there's me and then there's everything else.

There's me and then there's space,

And then there's sounds,

And then there's other animals,

And there's plants,

And there's my house.

This idea that we're kind of separate from everything is ultimately an illusion.

The idea of anatta in the Buddha's time was kind of radical,

Because in Hinduism they teach of Atman or like the eternal,

I'll say soul,

Perhaps may be the best word in English.

And the Buddha taught this is,

No,

This is actually a delusion born from the five aggregates in dependent origination.

So I want to talk about these two parts of the teaching,

The five aggregates in dependent origination.

And I'm just going to kind of offer a relatively brief introduction to them.

I will cover these topics in more depth in a future podcast,

Because they're important teachings.

So the five aggregates or five khandas or skandhas,

You might see it written in Pali or Sanskrit,

Are the five aggregates of clinging.

Can kind of think of them as like the five aggregates are what make up a self.

So the five aggregates,

And there's different translations,

But are form,

Sensation,

Perception,

Mental formation or volition,

And consciousness.

And these are the things that we kind of use to make up our sense of self,

This illusion of self.

So form is kind of anything that we can sense through one of our six sense doors,

Anything we can see,

Taste,

Smell,

Hear,

Feel,

As in touching,

Or think about.

Sensation is actually the word is vedana,

So it's a feeling tone,

It's pleasant,

Unpleasant,

Neutral or some combination.

The perception is our ability to sense and recognize.

Mental formations or volition are the kind of thoughts that arise,

That generate karma,

The emotions,

The narratives,

The decisions we take in relation to what's being perceived.

And then the consciousness is being aware of the sensory experience,

Recognizing that it's happening.

One of the first kind of things that jumped out to me when I first learned about the five aggregates is perception comes before consciousness,

Right?

We're kind of perceiving things in non-conscious mind before we're actually conscious of it.

We're perceiving things that we're not even necessarily conscious of,

Which is wild,

Because today we know that to be true,

But the Buddha identified this thousands of years ago.

It's really incredible to me.

I just told this story on another podcast that I recorded yesterday,

But I was sitting on a retreat at Spirit Rock once and there was a bird chirping outside the window.

It was like lovely to me.

It was,

I believe,

A morning meditation.

And it was such a clear example or one of the first moments I really recognized this,

The five aggregates of clinging happening in my life.

So there was a form,

Right?

There was a bird chirping or the chirping rather,

The noise.

The bird chirped.

There was a feeling,

A vedana.

I found it pleasant in that moment.

There was the perception.

It was hitting my eardrum and my brain and mind were perceiving it.

And then the mental formations came up.

I named it in my head as a bird immediately without even intending to.

And I even had this little experience of picturing a bird in my mind.

I have no idea what kind of bird it was,

But I just pictured a bird.

And then I was conscious of all of this happening.

So it was kind of like hindsight.

I suddenly had a moment where,

Whoa,

All of that just happened without any input from me.

And that's what kind of develops a sense of self,

Both for the bird and for me.

Recognizing these five aggregates or these five kind of things that make up something is how we build a sense of self.

Another example I've used in talks before,

Based on an experience I had in meditation,

Was I was meditating in my backyard.

There's a bunch of,

We live,

Like,

Our backyard is just like jungle,

Rain forest.

And so there's all these,

Like,

Tall trees and the sunlight kind of peers through the canopy at some times and other times,

No.

And I was sitting there.

It was kind of shaded.

It was the morning.

And maybe,

Like,

20 minutes into the meditation,

The sun had moved and began hitting my arm and my shoulder.

So there's the form,

The sun's heat.

The feeling or vedana was pleasant in that moment.

Sometimes the sun beating down on us can be unpleasant.

In that moment,

I found it pleasant.

I was perceiving it,

Right?

The body and mind were perceiving the contact with the sense door of feeling as hot on my skin.

If my eyes were open,

I would have perceived it as bright.

I had the thought of enjoying it,

Maybe even,

Like,

A little bit of craving for more.

And then this consciousness of the whole experience unfolding.

So the teaching here on interdependence and on not-self is that all of these things are intertwined and dependent,

Right?

We can't have this consciousness of all of this without the sun.

Without our eyes to perceive it as bright.

Without our skin to perceive it as hot.

Without the nerves firing the signal to our brains and the rest of our body.

None of these things really exist by themselves,

But we let these five aggregates kind of run rampant and give us a sense of self.

Oh,

The sun's beating down on me right here.

I'm a being sitting here in the sun.

But really,

It's the five aggregates are teaching and how we can kind of break that apart and look at the interdependent nature of this experience that I might call the sun is beating down on me is actually composed of a bunch of different little experiences or little factors,

Specifically the five aggregates.

We also,

In addition to giving ourselves a sense of self,

We give the sun a sense of self.

Right?

The sun is made up of so many different reactions and gases and is so dependent on so many different things.

But in that process of the five aggregates,

We're kind of giving the sun a sense of self as well.

And this speaks to what is called conventional truth and ultimate truth in Buddhism.

So the conventional truth is,

Yeah,

I was sitting there.

The sun was beating down on me.

The ultimate truth or ultimate reality is that there's a ball of gas in the sky caused by so many different things that I can't even begin to understand.

That's emitting heat and radiation,

Again,

Quite frankly,

In a way that I don't even understand.

And it is hitting this part of a body that I'm conscious of that feels heat,

That sends an electrical signal to my brain or the brain I identify as mine that generates a feeling tone that causes some reaction or response in the brain,

Like,

Oh,

I like this,

Or I don't like this.

And I'm able to be conscious of it because of my sense doors.

I had a teacher that used to joke when talking about the aggregates or ultimate truth and conventional truth,

He would refer,

It was Noah Levine,

And he would refer to himself as the five aggregates that we call Noah.

Right?

That doesn't make any sense for pragmatic purposes in daily life.

Like,

You're not going to go out to order a coffee and say,

The five aggregates that I identify as Matthew would like the beverage that you call a macchiato.

It's not practical.

But this ultimate truth we're called to be aware of,

Of these different factors that make up this clinging to the sense of self.

We don't need to necessarily drop all of them or get rid of them or something like that.

But just to be aware that this is what kind of makes up our sense of self and that it's ultimately not true.

This sense of self we have.

This sense of self we have is so dependent on so many little different things.

So as the aggregates make up this sense of self and what we cling to,

The dependent,

12 links of dependent origination.

There's other words,

People,

Codependent arising or dependent co-arising,

I think it's also called sometimes.

They can be seen as the kind of factors that make up the cycle of samsara.

So the idea of dependent origination is in a sense similar,

That all phenomena arise from other factors,

Including the sense of self.

It's kind of a sequential process.

And this is definitely a topic that is super crucial in Buddhism.

I think it's not talked about enough.

And I'm guilty of that too.

I've not recorded a podcast episode about it.

I literally,

When writing this Dharma talk,

I put it on my list of things to cover.

But I'm going to go through them rather rapidly.

Not rather rapidly,

But I'm not going to give it the time that I really think it deserves.

Because it's not the focus of today's topic.

But the 12 links,

They are sequential.

They do kind of happen in order.

So I'm going to go through them in order.

There's ignorance.

And I think sometimes we,

When I first came to practice,

I heard this word.

Elizabeth tells the story,

It's her story.

So I hate to speak for her,

That she went to the meditation center that I went to.

This was before I had met her,

My now partner.

So this was 15 years ago,

Maybe.

And they were talking about,

I don't know,

Killing bugs or something.

And she said,

I have a really hard time because I see like a cockroach or something like that.

And I kill it,

Like just as a reaction.

And I know I shouldn't,

But it's like a reaction.

And the person said,

Yeah,

But that's just born from ignorance.

And she told me this after the fact.

It was like six months later,

I think I met her.

She got so turned off because she was like,

They called me ignorant.

And I was like,

Yeah,

I know the teacher very well now who had said that to her.

And he can be a little bit,

I think he can be a little bit blunt in a way that is sometimes doesn't land well for people or even causes harm,

Especially back then.

But ignorant in Buddhism doesn't mean,

Isn't like a diss or putting someone down or anything like that.

It's not a judgment.

Ignorance is ignorance of the true nature of existence,

Of the three marks of existence,

Of not self.

So not recognizing or seeing clearly.

It's the opposite of kind of wisdom.

So we all have this,

This ignorance of not seeing things clearly.

If we don't have ignorance at all,

We're fully awakened in a sense.

So ignorance,

Then formations.

So this is kind of the predisposition to see things as more concrete and with more self than they are.

It's born from ignorance.

It's kind of the stories we have about things.

It's going back to the bird story,

Hearing the sound and going,

That's a bird just immediately.

Then there's consciousness,

Which is as described as above,

Above,

Essentially with the five aggregates,

This ability or quality of being able to be conscious of things.

Thank you.

Thanks to our,

Our mind and our sense doors.

So ignorance,

Formations,

Consciousness,

Consciousness is born from these formations,

Right?

We have this kind of story that,

Oh,

That's,

That's a bird.

And then it comes into my consciousness already as a bird.

Then there's Nama Rupa,

Which is often translated as a mind and body.

I,

I put the Pali word here because I don't like the word.

I love that translation of mind and body.

So Rupa is indeed body,

But it's not just our body.

It's all bodies and not bodies just as in the body that an animal or sentient being or plant or fungus inhabits.

A body as in an object.

It's like kind of,

I think can be most related to like physical form.

And then Nama is the movement of the mind or the naming.

So I,

I actually think name and form is a better translation here.

And this is the kind of conscious naming of it as a bird,

Right?

That I'm there looking at this body,

This in my mind,

This bird,

And I'm naming it as a bird.

The kind of opposite of Nama Rupa or the not engaging in this,

This link would be just experiencing the sound of the bird singing,

Not falling into naming it and giving it a body.

Then there's a senses,

The sense doors,

The contact.

Sorry,

Those are two separate ones.

The sense doors,

The ears,

Nose,

Eyes,

Skin,

Or sense of feeling,

Tongue,

And the mind.

And there's the contact.

Comes into contact with one of these sense doors.

There's feeling or vedana.

There's craving or the Pali word is tanha,

Which actually translates to like thirst or sometimes heard it translated as unquenchable thirst.

So we're like seeking more pleasure and less pain.

There's the clinging upadana,

Which is not the same as craving.

Clinging is when things become a bit more fixed.

When we begin to identify things as good or bad,

Worthy or unworthy.

When we identify somebody as a friend or an enemy.

When we kind of really begin shrinking around something,

Getting stuck in kind of a story about it.

Then comes becoming or arising.

So these are the kind of thoughts or experiences of like,

I'll be happy when I get this.

I'll be,

I'm going to be sad if this happens.

Or even I am angry,

Right?

We're kind of becoming or arising as an angry being or as a person who will be happy when this or that.

There's birth,

Which can in a sense be taken to mean both literal birth,

But I think is largely meant to be the kind of emergence of an identity,

Right?

So,

Oh,

I'm an angry person.

Becoming is this,

I'm experiencing anger.

Rather than there's anger present,

Or there's this kind of combination of factors that's making me feel that I'm identifying as anger,

Right?

Because that's name and form.

So what we identify as anger is not really,

It's for conventional purposes,

We call it anger.

But the kind of ultimate truth behind something like anger,

And perhaps it's a bad example because I've heard therapists say anger is a secondary emotion,

But anger is actually a combination of different experiences.

It's some thoughts going on,

Perhaps.

It's a feeling in many parts of the body,

If we tune in.

At an even deeper level,

It's kind of neurons firing,

Our nervous system activating.

So as we become,

We suddenly get birthed as an angry person.

We identify as an angry person.

And then there's death,

Or aging and death.

This kind of loss or change or passing away.

So I know that's,

I'm gonna give an example,

That's a lot of information.

I'm gonna use the example of smoking cigarettes.

So ignorance leads us to just kind of be unaware of not-self and unaware of not-self.

Unaware of the nature of existence.

The formation is kind of a predisposition towards smoking,

Right?

Like we seek pleasure because we have the delusion that pleasure will bring lasting happiness.

Or perhaps we have kind of a story in ourselves that we need something to relieve some anxiety.

We have consciousness,

We have the ability to sense the input of smoking,

To feel the burning in the throat,

To feel the effect of nicotine in the body,

To see the cigarette,

To smell it,

To taste it,

To have a perhaps change in the mind when we smoke.

We have this consciousness.

We have Nama Rupa,

We can see the body of the cigarette and identify it as a cigarette.

We have sense doors that are open,

Right?

We can't necessarily control.

Like the way you can close your eyes and stop or avert your eyes and stop looking at something,

We don't necessarily have that ability with all of our sense doors.

We can't just close our ears in the same way.

We can plug them,

But we can't really close them in the same way.

We certainly can't do it with the sense door of the mind in the same way.

So we have sense doors.

We have contact when we drag the cigarette.

We have the contact with all those various sense doors,

Right?

The taste,

The smell,

The feeling of the burning,

The feeling in the body,

The mind.

Perhaps we can hear the crackling of the cigarette.

I don't know.

We have Vedana.

So in this example,

I'm going to say that it feels pleasant.

Then we have craving.

We crave that pleasant feeling.

We lean into it or lean toward it.

Maybe when we're done with the cigarette or hours or days later,

We crave another one.

Then we begin clinging to it.

We see them as good or helpful.

Maybe not ignoring that cigarettes are horrible for our health in general,

But we see them as good or helpful as maybe a coping mechanism.

I went through a period in my life where cigarettes were maybe the best coping mechanism I had available to me at the time.

When I was struggling or in a difficult situation,

Especially with family,

I would step outside and have a smoke and it helps me reset.

It's not the best way to handle something like that,

But it was the best available tool I had at that time.

So there can be this kind of clinging to it.

Then comes the becoming.

I'll be happy when I have a smoke or I'm in need of a smoke.

The birth,

The birth of a smoker.

I'm a smoker now.

And then the death and not in the sense of the horrible effects of smoking,

But the death of maybe no longer being a smoker or you're only a smoker when you're smoking.

Or maybe you quit and you're no longer a smoker.

So these 12 links,

And again,

I know that's kind of a lot of information,

But the first couple of times I heard about the 12 links on retreat or read things about them,

I quite honestly just went,

This is too much for me.

I will come back to that.

But I think if you take nothing else or you can't remember all of them,

That's fine.

But if you take nothing else from it,

It's just a way to the cycle of some sorrow.

Suffering continues.

The call here,

Unlike the five aggregates,

Is to actually break the chains through mindfulness and heart practices.

So to actually stop this process from continuing.

It's often in my experience,

And a lot of teachers talk about it,

It's easier to break the chains in the later stages.

So in the birth,

Death,

Becoming,

Clinging,

Those are much easier places to start and break the chain rather than ignorance and the formations and the consciousness.

But it is really at its core a teaching on interdependence.

Like if you just take the,

Let's say,

Just take quitting smoking.

I was a smoker.

I quit smoking.

That's giving me some sense of self,

Right?

But when we really look at that through the lens of the 12 links,

There's so much more going on.

It's kind of,

It's almost,

And I don't want this to get taken out of context,

But it's almost like scientific in a sense.

In the same way that we now understand our bodies are made up of different molecules and cells and atoms.

And when I was a kid,

We learned about atoms.

Now there's subatomic particles.

I mean,

There always were.

We just didn't really have as many names for them or understand them as deeply.

We're made up of chemical reactions happening and electrical signals.

Like there's all these things that are making up our experience and what we call self.

It's all so interdependent.

We couldn't have the contact with the scent store if we didn't have the scent stores.

We won't be able to taste the cigarette if we didn't have a tongue.

It's kind of a dark example,

But our experience is so interdependent,

Just personally.

And mindfulness,

Both through the five aggregates and the 12 links,

The Buddha called for us to really understand and know the five aggregates and to understand and know and break the chains of the 12 links.

Deconstruct this kind of sense of self and see everything as the interdependent processes they are.

We can also see this externally.

Like I'm sitting at my desk reporting this.

And I have no idea what my desk is made out of,

Some composite wood.

But even just there,

My desk,

Like exerting ownership over it.

And when we look at what's going on there,

Just dropping everything I just talked about,

There's so much interdependence happening.

This desk couldn't exist without some trees growing to make it,

Without the soil and the sun and the rain and whatever fed the tree,

Dead leaves or dead animals breaking down.

It couldn't exist without the people that put it together.

It couldn't exist without the transportation that got it from whatever poor forest it came from.

It couldn't exist without the metal handles.

If I took it apart,

It would just be a bunch of planks of wood.

And identifying it as my desk is so complex.

It's only my desk because I paid for it with money that I earned from doing a job that someone else gave me money to do.

Our experience is so interdependent.

We think of ourselves sometimes or certain things as just a thing or just ourselves or just another person.

But we're really looking at things and experiencing things that are such a wild combination of different things happening and different processes.

And for conventional truth and for simplicity,

Yeah,

This is my desk.

It's not a great desk,

But it does the job.

It's my desk.

The ultimate truth is that this is just a combination of different materials and energy and natural processes too that created this.

And I call it a desk because it's easier that way.

So this interdependence,

As far as mindfulness goes,

Is really about recognizing the true nature of things,

Including ourselves.

I don't want to in any way advocate for this or endorse it.

But I think most people that listen to this podcast know that I'm in recovery from addiction,

Which implies I've used drugs or that I stopped using drugs 15 years ago.

And I think that people often have this experience with higher doses of psychedelics.

And I know I certainly have.

And I'm not equating that to the same insight and wisdom that I get through my Dharma practice.

But for when people take higher doses of psychedelics,

They have what is called like a breakthrough or ego dissolution.

And it's,

To be quite honest,

It's painful.

My experience and experience of other people I know that have gone through that is that it's painful.

It's like dying in a sense.

And what's happening in those moments is,

In a way,

I never understood it like that at the time.

But in hindsight and reflecting on my experience,

It was kind of this understanding of interdependence.

When you lose yourself and you have this kind of ego death and you feel this connection with nature,

With other people,

Even with the non-organic material that you sometimes get on psychedelics,

It's kind of a version of recognizing not-self,

Of recognizing that some ultimate truth.

The good news is,

In my opinion,

We don't necessarily have to do psychedelics in order to uncover that or experience it.

I,

As I said,

I don't want to endorse it or I don't want to advocate it.

But I also don't want to bash it.

I think people have different paths all up the same mountain,

Right?

Ram Dass said we're all just walking each other home.

The good news for me is that I can find these insights and this understanding of ultimate truth,

Of the interdependent nature of reality,

Of the lack of a true self through meditation practice,

Through the teachings of the Dharma.

You can begin to kind of,

Oh,

The word just left my brain.

We used to have a teacher against the stream,

Molly,

Who was forgetful.

I don't think she'd have a problem with me.

I was trying to think if that was mean or if she would object to that.

She wouldn't.

Uh,

Who is forgetful sometimes.

And sometimes she would be mid-sentence.

She would say,

Oh,

That thought's gone.

Just like with utter equanimity of,

Oh,

Forgot what I was saying mid-sentence.

Uh,

Okay.

It's a calling to not dissect,

But to,

I can't think of the words on the tip of my tongue,

But to kind of take ourselves apart,

Deconstruct,

To deconstruct this self that we have a little bit.

And it's not to say that we need to walk around feeling selfless,

Right?

Like in psychology or in developmental psychology,

Developing a healthy sense of self is super beneficial and an important part of childhood,

Young adulthood,

Adolescence,

In my opinion,

Adulthood,

But that's,

That's conventional reality,

Conventional truth.

We also can tune into this ultimate truth and really know it as the Buddha called for,

Um,

Through experience,

Not just through reading about it.

So I want to shift gears.

That took way longer than,

Um,

Than I intended,

But that shouldn't surprise me.

Uh,

I want to talk about what actually sparked this idea,

Which is interdependence with others,

Because in my,

My Hyena schools,

And this is something that I had never heard.

Um,

Interdependence and connectedness with others or connection is taught as a part of non-self.

We can't exist without others.

And this was kind of a radical teaching or not radical,

But it was,

Yeah,

For me,

It was kind of,

It was radical,

Impactful.

I'd never heard that.

Um,

It didn't,

It made sense to me immediately when I heard it,

But we can think about,

Uh,

You know,

We can't exist without others.

We literally can't exist without somebody birthing us,

Um,

Or sperm meeting an egg.

We can't exist without our parents or the people who gave birth to us or the people,

Uh,

Who helped,

People or person who helped to raise us,

Right?

I have two children.

There's no way they would have survived one day old by themselves.

They're not,

You know,

You see like the baby giraffes being born and just kind of walking it off.

That is not a human child.

Um,

They,

We can't exist without others.

We can't exist regardless of how much love or nurturing,

Uh,

You received as a kid or how much your needs were met as a baby or a kid.

You wouldn't be here without others.

We wouldn't be here without others,

Um,

For many reasons,

Like the desk I have couldn't be here without other people,

The food I eat,

And we have the,

Um,

Great privilege of having like a tiny,

Tiny bit of land where we grow a lot of things.

Um,

But we don't grow all of our own food.

We couldn't exist without,

Uh,

Some support from the people that grow food,

From the people that do everything from plant the seeds and harvest the crops to transport it to the store,

To the,

I'm sure there's a middleman,

A distributor,

Uh,

Who distributes it to the little stores we buy it from or whatever,

From the people that work at the store.

We're so dependent on other people.

There's like kind of a conventional sense of like,

Oh,

I couldn't make money without other people,

Right?

My job,

Um,

Or anyone's job kind of relies on other people existing.

But even like at a,

In a more kind of foundational sense,

We couldn't exist.

We couldn't be alive.

We couldn't sustain ourselves.

Um,

We have,

Uh,

Drinkable water out of the faucet.

Somebody works at the water sanitation plant.

Um,

Somebody maintains the pumps and the water line.

Like there's so many ways that we are dependent on others and interdependent working together to stay alive,

To exist.

So the calling in this podcast I was listening to that I loved was to cultivate this loving kindness and connection,

Um,

Kind of with the intention of finding some dissipation of the separate sense of self,

Right?

Finding some kind of,

Uh,

Breaking down of these barriers.

I don't eat,

I don't eat meat,

But,

Um,

If you do,

You're dependent on other living beings,

Animals in giving you food.

I do have things like honey where I'm dependent on bees making it.

So we can turn towards loving kindness practices or begin kind of working with our ethics and our morals and,

And really,

Uh,

Practicing loving kindness as a form of tuning into interdependence and this illusion of separateness that we have.

I kind of think about the five aggregates and the 12 links as more like internal mindfulness and this piece of interdependence with others as external mindfulness.

So internally,

We can be,

Uh,

Aware or conscious of our own experience.

We can even break the chains and externally,

We can be aware of how interdependent we are on others,

Other people,

Plants,

Minerals,

And non-organic material.

How interdependent we are and how silly it is in a sense to identify as separate from that.

We're part of it,

Like all meshed together.

We've been watching The Last of Us and I won't spoil anything,

But,

Um,

It's a show about zombies and specifically they,

Uh,

It's a fungus that takes over.

And the crazy part is,

Uh,

The fungus are all in a sense,

Um,

One organism.

That's how,

That's how fungus works in real life.

There's that giant,

Uh,

Fungus in,

I think it's in Oregon,

Maybe part of it's in Washington,

Um,

Where it's all kind of one mesh underground and each mushroom we see is part of that same network.

It's not separate.

We see it as a single mushroom,

But it's actually part of this whole greater living being,

Right?

And same with,

In The Last of Us with the zombies,

Like they're all,

Sure,

Individual zombies,

But they're part of this greater kind of living being.

And I think we can see ourselves with the world around us as that,

That we're just part of this kind of bigger network,

This web.

So those are perhaps some far out thoughts,

Um,

For some people I know,

But I encourage you to investigate where you can find an opening to this.

Where can you find,

Um,

Kind of a doorway into sensing the interdependent nature of ourselves with the world around us?

Where can you find a doorway to enter into awareness of the interdependent nature of our experience and what we call self?

And where can you get glimpses,

Just glimpses of anatta?

Anatta may not come in the form of an intense ego death.

I think that sometimes it comes in the form of connection,

Or connectedness.

If you,

I love,

Um,

I love going to live music shows,

And specifically punk shows.

And when you're standing there in the crowd,

Whatever genre,

Whatever it is,

And everyone's singing along,

You feel this connection.

You feel this kind of power in it.

That is like somewhat mysterious.

We have like scientific explanations for it and whatnot.

But it's somewhat feels like mysterious in a sense.

But even in those moments,

We can kind of lose ourselves,

Right?

We can kind of become a part of the whole.

I've also had it,

Um,

When we were living in Sonoma County,

There were,

Um,

In Northern California,

There were some wildfires that broke out.

And we were on like evacuation notice,

Which meant we had to have all our stuff packed.

And we did that.

And then the fire that was really close to us,

They handled,

The first responders handled,

And it didn't come near us.

And we were very privileged.

But there were a lot of people that just weren't as privileged.

And there was,

Um,

They set up at the fairgrounds,

The Sonoma County fairgrounds,

They set up like a shelter and all this stuff.

And Elizabeth and I and a few other friends went there like nearly every day to bring stuff,

To,

Uh,

Sometimes we just went and like people were there,

Like their cars burned and they had errands to run.

So we like helped them with stuff like that.

And we were there with,

It wasn't just us,

There were thousands and thousands of volunteers.

It was beautiful.

Every day we were there,

It's just thousands and thousands of people.

Um,

And it,

You lost yourself in a sense,

Not in like the true meditative sense.

Um,

Not true.

I wouldn't say untrue,

Not in like the same sense as meditation,

But in a sense,

You really lost yourself.

You became part of this community of the whole.

It didn't,

Uh,

You're no longer identifying with what you want or with what you need or with the five aggregates even necessarily.

You're identifying as part of this kind of whole,

Part of this network,

Part of this community.

So I encourage you to look for kind of a doorway into interdependence and not self.

Maybe it's through meditation practice and really reflecting on the five aggregates or looking,

Learning more about the 12 links of dependent origination and noticing how they come up in your life.

Maybe it's watching it in daily life.

Maybe it's connection with others.

But this teaching tells us that if we can really tune into anatta and fully realize it,

We can eventually end craving and clinging,

Which is a hefty promise.