The Buddha’s Experiential Alternative to the Brahmanical “Self”

This talk was given by Gil Fronsdal on 2026.10.01 at the Sati Center in Redwood City, CA. ******* Whoever intentionally placed as the Discourse of the Root of All Things as the first discourse in the Middle Length Discourses, did so strategically so these teachings serve as the entry point to the succeeding 151 discourses. The text functions somewhat as ritual text pointing away from any perception that impute a essential soul-like self in what is perceived to perceiving phenomena in their simplicity without an overlay of “self.” The Buddha’s teaching are explicitly contrasted to Brahmanical idea of “self” (atman). ******* Video of this talk is available at: https://youtu.be/4HeH9DVCpTY. ******* A machine generated transcript of this talk is available. It has not been edited by a human, so errors will exist. Download Transcript: https://www.audiodharma.org/transcripts/24919/download ******* For more talks like this, visit AudioDharma.org ******* If you have enjoyed this talk, please consider supporting AudioDharma with a donation at https://www.audiodharma.org/donate/. ******* This talk is licensed by a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License