This first step in a retreat, Muhasibi, is called in Buddhism Jhanana Darshana, which consists in observing yourself as though you are another person without identification.

[Long pause]

It shows to what extent identification with what we think we are thrusts a bias upon our ability to be clear about ourselves. Therefore one is looking at oneself subjectively instead of objectively.

Now, of course, in Buddhism this is part of a whole series of practices where you observe your body and you observe your thinking and you observe your personality and, finally, you observe your consciousness in this kind of subject-object relationship where there’s a gulf between subject and the object in order to elimate the subjective bias, due to identification.

And so the method used in Buddhism is to consider your body as the product of the formative process that happens in physical, at the physical level. The whole cosmos has molded itself into this body without any reference to you as a person—and on this I disagree with Buddha, with all due respect, because not only do we have an impact on upon this, our bodiness, but also we may have had an impact upon its formation already in the womb of our mother, and perhaps even prior to that.

But, anyway, it is the method that is important rather than the metaphysics. So that method is going to help you to watch yourself and allay any tendency to justify yourself by your subjective bias.