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Instructions at a Dharma Session
Karma
Mindfulness
Patience
Desire & Fear
Ego & Self
True Listening
Parents
Continuous Practice
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Part 5, Ego and Self

Letting go these collections of attachments

Ego, Self and the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas …

At this point in your life, you have invested a lifetime of energy into your ego and self. While the ego is undeniably an integral part of the self, it is not yours alone. It is also the ego of your parents, culture, and society at large. They have invested a lot of effort to encapsulate, mold, protect, and nurture that ego.

CTTB is like an ego vacuum. When most people come here for the first time, they do not realize that there are very few other places in the world that are such an honest ego vacuum. Here at CTTB, “finding your Buddha mind” is not just used as a rhetorical device. You truly have the potential of the Buddha mind, and you can find it here. It is a unique place and you will have a unique experience here. Part of that experience comes from dealing with the resistance and states that arise from the self coming to terms with this ego vacuum. The enlightened mind has found a home but the self will resist and try to gain back the upper hand right away—it has invested too much effort into your ego to go down without a fight.

The Self and the Buddhist Retreat …

When you attend a weeklong session at CTTB, it is absolutely important that you make the following two vows:

1. To stay until the entire session is over
2. To attend every part of the session

Coming into the session, you are bringing with you an ingrained set of behavioral patterns that define who you are, and you are trying to surrender them for the week. It will not be easy. The critical ego voice in you will start up and manifest in a million judgments—what else you could be doing, the creature comforts you are missing, and so on. There will be reaction in body, in mind, and in everything you do.

Taken from another viewpoint, the Buddha’s science of the session is for the self to come under some form of attack. Whenever and wherever resistance and tension arises is when and where your ego is battling the Buddha mind. If the self rises up to take control and gains the upper hand at any point, then you have defeated the science of the entire session. So you will just need to wait it out and not leave under any circumstances. Making it through a moment or state that you thought you could not have tolerated any longer is the greatest amount of cultivation you will ever do. When you leave CTTB and go back to the outside world, what you take with you are the moments that were the most difficult because they represent the control and freedom that you have gained over the self and the karmic patterns of your past that you did not have before.