Good morning everybody. So my students and I just
finished a book called Buddhist Philosophy, David Kalukaha.
There's a lot of good stuff in it, but one set concept that
keeps sticking with me and honestly one I'm still
struggling with, is a concept called reification.
So I'm going to do what I normally do when I don't fully
understand something. I'm going to give a talk about
it like I do and hope that by the end I understand it a little
bit better. So reification, I think it means
something pretty simple and that is when we turn a process into a
thing. Helpful example is waves in the
ocean. So when does a wave become a
wave? If you're standing on the beach,
you can point out and say, look, that's a wave.
It's right there. It looks solid, it's distinct,
it's self-contained. It's a wave, right?
Well, as my son would say, actually, Dad, it's water moving
in a pattern, right? It's wind across the surface of
the ocean, it's gravity pulling and pushing, it's depth, it's
temperature, it's current, then it's you observing it.
It's really a convergence of all these different conditions.
There isn't really a wave hiding inside all of that.
There's really just a process. But the mind does what the mind
does, and it names it. And once it named, once it's
named, it feels real. It feels like a thing that's a
wave. And we do this with everything.
We take fluid relational processes and turn them into
something solid, distinct, and independent.
That move, that very human move, is reification.
And we don't just do it out there with waves.
We do it in here too, right? I, me, right.
But you know, a mood arises, whether it's anxiety, sadness,
or with me, irritation, complete irritation.
And almost immediately that mood becomes I am irritated or I am
depressed or I'm a very, very angry man.
What was a process? An amalgamation of events,
biology, history, relationships becomes an identity becomes a
thing. Something moving becomes
something solid, and it becomes me.
Now the Buddha saw that we do this and he said don't.
And this comes up when he talks about the five aggregates of
form, feeling, perception, formations of consciousness.
He's pointing at something that's really dynamic.
What we call self is really a coalescing of all of these
different processes. It's more of a dance, but we
take that dance and we freeze it into a statue, into a me.
And once it feels solid, well, then the real work begins.
Because then we defend it, or we despair over its, or we try to
perfect it. Whatever we end up doing with
it, we cling. And clinging requires that
something that we feel like is solid.
You can't cling to the concept of a wave if you understand it's
just water moving around. You can't cling to a self if you
see it as conditions that have changed or changing and will
change. But if you believe that the self
is a thing, something solid, independent, you will cling to
it real hard. So why does this matter?
Well, because that me changes Moods change your body, ages,
the roles you play, shifts in the relationships you have
evolved. But if I've turned that me into
something fixed into an identity, like this is who I am,
or this is how they are, or this is how my life is, then when
these conditions changed, it feels like something is going
wrong. Like something is breaking.
And then as we cling to it, we suck.
And not just because things are changing, but because we believe
that they were solid in the first place.
Reification is our very human attempt to freeze what is fluid.
And as I'm sure you all were aware, life refuses to stay
frozen. And the good news is that even
if we are tempted over and over again into this process of
reification, of turning dynamic things into thing things, we do
have a medicine that we can apply while we're doing it.
This is my favorite rhetorical question.
Can anybody guess what that medicine is?
Anybody. The dermal graph.
Yes, and more specifically meditation, right?
In meditation, we can watch this process unfold.
The sensation arises and very quickly becomes, ah, it's my
knee or my back, my pain, I can't sit like this.
But if we stay close to the experience before it hardens, we
might notice different sensations, like shifting or
intensifying or fading, and we may realize that whatever it is
we were noticing was never a solid thing.
It was just the changing sensation.
And the same is true with thoughts.
A thought appears, pops up in our head, and then another
thought comments on that thought, and then a story forms.
Well, then there's a me at the center of the story, and it
happens so fast we rarely even see that we've constructed a
story at all. Meditation and practice, It
slows down that process. It doesn't eliminate thoughts,
it doesn't stop us from naming things, but it puts a little bit
of space between the naming and believing that name is reality.
It creates a space between seeing a process, calling it a
wave, and believing the wave is a thing.
So my practice this week has been pretty simple.
It's that when something feels solid, especially by myself, I
am for these kinds of things. I am trying to pause more
instead of thinking this is who I am or this is what that is or
what I'm irritated. This I insert.
That's no, no, this is what is happening right now.
And I'm not trying to deny it. I'm not trying to minimize it
and I'm not trying to spiritualize it.
I'm just trying to loosen the process of reification because
maybe awakening isn't just about becoming a better or a more
perfect thing. It's about relaxing our habit of
turning everything, including ourselves, into something solid
that we have to defend or we have to do.
Maybe it's about more about letting the wave just be water
again and letting the self be a dance and letting the moment
stay alive instead of freezing it into a conclusion.
And if we can do that even a little bit, then there's less
around us that we have to defend and less to protect.
And most importantly, thanks, Buddha, for us to cling to maybe
a little bit more freedom. It just to just be part of the
process of things unfolded. Thank you.
What?
What an awesome topic. And I feel like I.
Scored a goal because as you were in the.
First couple minutes of. The talk.
Describing reification, what came up for?
Me with a self was, you know, this, this idea that I am
something solid rather than a set of processes playing out.
And then you mentioned it's, you know, the self, and I said,
yeah, I got one in a row. One right one in a row, I'm in.
Alignment with Joe. But you know.
It's it's it's. Kind of a beautiful thing to
think of all things. As the processes that they are.
Even this? Chair that I'm sitting on is
whirring. Around at an incredible.
Speed and vibrating and. Though I can't feel it.
It's actually. Happening and there's just
something. Very beautiful about.
Seeing the. Processes play out everywhere
where it relates to this idea. Of me, I kind of lean into
something I I read. In a book about emptiness that
describes A conventional reality, this 3D5.
Sense. World that we're all kind of
trapped in and how that. Is different from the ultimate.
Reality where it doesn't matter what you name it, everything is
just a process in process and it's wonderful to see.
The beauty. In that, like I said, and to
just have that moment in meditation to separate and kind
of see the the self doing its thing, the mind relating to
every little experience through this idea of me is is just kind
of a trip. And it's beautiful.
And it does actually for a short time for me, allow a little bit
of separation to where, you know, maybe my sense of self
isn't completely in charge for a little while.
Thanks again. Yeah, it's interesting that you
brought up emptiness and my original Tarpon I want to talk
was about twice as long because they had a sexual emptiness and
suchness and dependent origination and something else
that was like, this is just entirely too long.
But yeah, it's it does pair nicely with those things and I'm
glad you brought it up because it was one of the ways that we
can understand emptiness is in that undercutting of
reification. That's all things are kind of
empty of that inherent thing that we want to give them that
thing this. And I do realize that my as I
was giving it, I used thing a lot in many different contexts.
But anyway, no, sorry. Thank you, Perry.
I'm sorry, wrestling. Thanks, Jared.
Really nice talk. I I was struck by how this
process of reification is set by language, and I'm pretty sure
that in Japanese the phraseology or understanding is very similar
to English. Of I am angry simply because
some of the Zen stories, some of the Coens are about someone will
come to a master and say I am angry.
And he deconstructs that and then says, well, where is the
anger? Obviously you are not angry in
English. We also do that.
I am angry, but in the Nordic languages, and I believe, Beth,
you'll have to correct me. I believe Gaelic as well.
Yes, and. He's crazy.
I have anger or I have sadness, which really which removes it.
That one step is no longer something that I is, no longer
something that I am. It is simply something that I
have and if I have it, I should let know of.
It I think of all the how many things are just accidents of
language, right? Yeah.
In our western, sometimes western construction of how
things, senses are formed just causes this process to happen at
an accelerated pace. So when you were talking about
meditation, which, you know, we always come back to, I was
thinking about a few years ago, I think Vincent was like 13.
And he said, you know, what do you do when you're really mad
about something? And I said, well, the best way
to kind of get through that is to instead of like telling
yourself the story of why you're angry over and over again,
especially in the moment when you feel out of control, is, you
know, just take a deep breath, blow it out, take a deep breath,
blow it out. And just do that for like once
or twice or a minute or two until it dies down.
And you can think through it. And I can tell he was like,
super frustrated at the simplicity of that.
And I can relate to that so much.
Like, I am mad. I am angry.
You know, they did this and this was, you know, hurtful and
whatever. And it's hard to get out of that
moment. And just like you were saying,
Joe, it was a learning moment for me too, because it's always
easier to see a problem when it's not your problem.
But I realized, as realized as I was telling him that, that that
was my problem is I was looking for some, I don't know, cosmic
type answer to getting out of certain feelings.
And then by telling him how simple it was, I also realized
how simple it was to go from I am this to this is a thing that
will pass. And not owning that feeling and
not having to stick to it was very freeing for me from the
very beginning of my study. But good talk.
Thank you. Language is an amazing thing.
It it it both. Helps us understand the world
and what's happening. But it also limits us.
I don't remember where I heard it, but it helped me a lot.
Rather than that I am angry or that I have anger, it's anger is
arising and. When I notice the.
The impulse to say I am this or I have this.
It it it. Becomes really.
The process that I name self is arising or is reifying right
now. So, you know, we don't
necessarily have to be trapped by, you know, colloquial
language and the way we we refer to everything interacting with
us as I this and I that. I I think that the, there is the
ability, the our language does have an out for this and it, it
does help me to just, you know, from more of an equanimous place
to say this is arising, that is arising etcetera.
No, I fully agree that what was it that Changersencia used to
say? Something, something get a
different result, think differently, get a different
result, something that there are our language sometimes collapses
into these dichotomies, right? Because if I am angry, then by
necessity, I am not all of these other things that I am also
clearly at the same time. And by introducing these, I
don't want to say tricks of language, but by rephrasing it
in such a way that you can be more than one thing at once, or
you can allow for process as opposed to identity, then you
can get to a much different place in a much healthier place
than if you were to almost pigeonhole yourself into this
one model of language, which I think is, you know, I think
sometimes I think of term in terms of, you know, poison in
there though, right? Well, if if the one thing is the
poison, then the other thing is the antidote.
And I know that's also a dichotomy and you know, here we
are. But but these things also exist
in kind of a circular relationship, right?
You can't avoid all of the poisons of life and all of the
things that lead you down certain paths, but you can turn
those very easily into antidotes if you have those, If you've
practiced those anecdotes and you can see what is arising as
it is arising. And then it's not like an either
or thing. It's just the circular thing
that you keep doing and doing and doing until you don't need
either one, right? You exist in this place where
neither the poison nor the antidote need to arise because
they're just not part of the way that you've processed anymore.
Which is I guess a an allusion to my but or one way of looking
at it. I really wish Curtis was here
because this whole talk evolved out of a 45 minutes conversation
that left both of us really irritating.
When he was asking, you know, I don't understand, in this book,
there's a discussion about karma and he's like, is it?
Is it turning karma into a thing?
And I was like, I don't know what you're talking about.
What do you mean by thing? And he's like, you know, like a
thing. And I was like, no, I don't.
And this went circularly for far longer than it should have, but
it led me to this term ratification, where we take
different things and processes like karma and we say, no, it's
this thing that exists outside of us.
If it has this outside of us, then we can react to it, these
kinds of things and do all this other stuff that the mind does
as opposed to just letting it exist as a process of a bunch of
different things. And so that's kind of where this
came out of. So I'm sure Curtis right now is
somewhere chuckling like you still don't get it, but yeah, I
try. We'll finish with the
Bodhisattva bow, followed by the four measurables.
Creations are numberless. I will strive to free them.
Delusions are inexhaustible, I will strive to transform them.
Reality is boundless, I will strive to perceive it.
The awakening area is unsurpassable.
I will strive to embody. May your thoughts, words, and
actions be corrective and encompassing of the pragmatic
Buddhist path. May you approach this week with
deference and dignity, and may you spread your personal peace
to all those you encounter in every place and through all
time. May all beings enjoy happiness
and its causes. May all beings enjoy fear from
suffering and its clauses. May all beings find joy in the
joy of others. May all beings divide and
equanimity, never overpowered by attachment or aversion.
Swaha of cupped hands filled with our limited understanding,
we offer our world of great mountains and subtle valleys,
it's ever moving clouds and overarching sky.
The universe we see, we offer to the universe we barely
comprehend, and remembering the assembly of enlightened ones
who, having been, are with us still.
We wish all merits deriving now or in the future from these are
practices to be distributed everywhere for the good of all.