This transcript was made by speech-recognition software, so names and some words may be misheard. The recording is the original: watch on YouTube.
Okay, Silo Bob, so why people suffer? They suffer because they've got a false idea or image of what they believe themselves to be. Of investigating and seeing for themselves, is the word the thing? Is the concept the word or idea? They have about themselves, is that what they really are? All of us, you, me, everybody else, we start off with the belief that we are a person, an individual, a separate entity. Parents, schools and everybody else has reinforced it, put that belief on us, and we believe it ourselves and reinforce it. Down through the ages, there are so-called saints, saviours and seers that have seen through it, and pointed out that there is no individual.
A person, a separate entity. That's what all the great scriptures have been written about. That it's the one essence, the pattern, the shaping, the forming, and expressing as everything. Even to cause an essence, it's just a label that we put on it. It's all vibrating, intelligence, energy, or essence, the pattern, the shaping, the forming, all this manifestation. That's in Hinduism, they put it on Nama Rupa, and the form. The name is the label that we put upon it, and the form is the pattern, the shaping, and we're putting it in. Like, person, body, mind, and all this, it shapes the form. The trees are shaping it, the clouds, and everything else.
It shapes the form, it patterns. So, and then why do we think we are the shape or form? Because we've been told, when we learnt words, reasoning started about the capacity of two, two and a half. We've taken ourselves to be this name, or this label, or whatever, and we've never investigated and seen that it's false. But it feels like, when I have the body, you know, I can see only through my pair of eyes, I can only feel my pain. But who is the one that's feeling it? Is it a separate entity, an individual? Or is there just a sensation there, that we've labelled, like we've labelled everything else, me and mine?
Those are the two main concepts that are our problem, me and mine. Me and mine. If we think there's a me, it's got to have some, take on board some concept right here, this is mine. I tell you that me and mine are the two concepts that cause this problem. But why can I know only sensations through one body and one set of eyes? Why cannot I know all the sensations through every body and every eyes? Well, each pattern is used, and each expression is a unique expression. It's all the one essence is an expression through each and every pattern. And it expresses in the myriads of different ways in this manifestly.
As the tree, as the flower, and everything else, but the tree doesn't know I'm a tree, and the flower doesn't know I'm a flower. But we have the capacity of reasoning, the ability to reason, which is a very useful capacity, but it's self-destructive because it's a vibration of energy, and it must vibrate realistically. It must vibrate to good, it must come to bad. Because the pleasure must come to pain, but the happiness comes to sadness. So how can it know itself? It is still all an essence which is not being discriminated. What can you say about anything at all then? And would it appear, what would the use of the so-called appearance be if it wasn't discriminated, still with us, with no thingness, the silence, the stillness, the emptiness, which it already and always is.
But to know itself, to express itself, it's got to vibrate into different shapes and forms. The Buddha told us that emptiness is form. It is the emptiness that is patting into all these forms. And he says the form can be nothing other than that emptiness. We've taken on board the shapes and forms as to be what we actually are. How can I experience myself as formless? Well, you can't. In this case, the selfish formless is the form. He's trying to experience himself as a formless. But the resolution, the real actuality of knowing, when you look into it, so that the emptiness is form, and the form can be nothing other than the emptiness, when you investigate this form and have a look and see how substantial and solid it really is.
Take the body. Are you the body? Innately you know the nothingness. Just the same as you say my body. Just the same as you say my coat, my house, my car. Are you the coat? Are you the house? Are you the car? You know you're not that. And maybe you're not the body either. So what am I? You are that one essence, if you like to call it that, that's vibrating into the different patterns, shapes and forms and expressing through it with the concepts, words and ideas which are compatible. The human form has the capacity of reasoning, which is more developed than what it is in other animals' versions.
And with that capacity it's learnt words, labels. And we put all labels or names and forms on that which is unlabelable and unformable. Emptiness. I am that emptiness and I put label on myself and on everything else. And it's all appearance. It's all seemingly so. All that emptiness is form. And the emptiness of the form can be nothing but the emptiness. But it appears and seems to be real. And it's a phenomenal manifestation, I tell you. And your definition of phenomena is that which appears to be. Pointing out the phenomenon of that which appears to be. Seemingly being so. Shape and form is taken to be real by the conceptual imaging that's going on.
The concepts that are going on are coming from that seeming persona. A mask of conceptual reproduction. A mask of conceptual reproduction. A mask of conceptual reproduction. A mask of conceptual reproduction.