Who Am I?
When I was about 12 years old, I used to climb to the top of Skull Rock in the afternoons to look across the verdant green
rice paddies and watch the sun retiring behind Mt. Fuji’s beautiful snow capped peak. Some days it seemed I could see
the individual rays extend like paths from sun to earth. In the midst of all this peaceful natural beauty, I would find great
silence and in this silence, occasionally I would wonder Who am I? Why am I here? Why does suffering exist and what can I
do about it? What is truth and how can I know it? How can I be happy?
These are mankind’s greatest questions, and answers to these questions have been pursued over the centuries by all the
great philosophers and spiritual leaders. If I describe a man who exhibited critical reasoning, an unwavering commitment to
truth, advising his followers to question the truth of popular opinions, a man who argued that no human ever knowingly does
evil; we all invariably do what we believe to be best and that improper conduct is the product of ignorance rather than intent
to do evil. Am I describing the Buddha? Actually, I am talking about Socrates, the Greek philosopher who gave us the Socratic
method of questioning our most cherished assumptions and who asserted that, “the unexamined life is not worth living.”
I might also be describing Henry David Thoreau. There have been many bodhisattvas from all eras and geographical locales who
have pointed the way for those of us who have followed and asked the great questions. We are in very good company, walking
in their footsteps.
I thought I might speak tonight about the illusion of duality because it is in the space around or between pairs of opposites
such as inner vs. outer, good vs. evil, samsara vs. nibbana that we find not only the answers to these cosmic questions, but
true happiness. The Dalai Lama has said that happiness is the aim of Buddhism. Everyone agrees that happiness is a good thing,
but it’s difficult to pin down just what happiness actually is. Is it absence of pain? Is it a new car, job, love, or
(you fill in the blank here)? Almost everyone knows that chasing happiness doesn’t seem to work and yet the pursuit
of happiness is clearly what most newstand magazines, advertising, and email spam are trying to sell us. If any of you haven’t
been caught at least once by one or more of these methods, raise your hand.
On the other hand, what happens when something we thought would bring satisfaction doesn’t? Does the thought run through
your mind that somehow it’s your fault? John Tarrant, author and Zen teacher, says that “Whether the needle on
the blame meter points to yourself or to others, that particular machine will always seem to be malfunctioning, since it never
gives a diagnosis that is useful for fixing the problem. You try to do the method better, rather than looking at whether the
method works.” In short, the method we usually use is to define happiness as a fix for a particular problem or condition.
If only I could get rid of this pain in my back, I could be enlightened. If only my mind would cease its restless wandering,
I could be happy and progress in my practice, and so on.
This is a pretty limited picture of happiness and yet we all play the “if only” game more than we probably realize.
Happiness is what you realize in the space between conditions. John Tarrant provides a wonderful definition of happiness:
“To be happy is to experience life not as a series of struggles but as a gift, one that has no known limit. This doesn’t
mean ignoring your difficulties: it means not assuming that they are what you think they are. If you throw away everything
you believe about your difficulties you will notice that many of them disappear and the rest become interesting.”
So let’s return to the illusion of duality and our cosmic questions about the way things work.
There are examples of duality all around us and expressed in our language: me and you, good and bad, white and black, up and
down, far and near. Heaven and hell, nibbana and samsara. Taoism talks about the 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows. Buddhism
tells us that the Eight Vicissitudes (pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and disrepute) are a part of
every life without exception. No matter what our intentions and actions are, there is no protection against loss, pain, blame
and disrepute. We live in both samsara and nibbana. Happiness is in the space encompassing both.
What we cannot understand until we can break through the veil of illusion is that each aspect of these vicissitudes or polar
opposite pairs is the mirror image of the other, that one cannot exist without the other and that in the final analysis, both
are empty and ephemeral. Like all conditioned phenomena, they arise, sustain for their allotted time and then conditions change
and they pass away. Why is this and how can we come to know it?
Until we achieve stream entry or become scientific experts in subatomic particle theory, there are some things we accept on
faith. For example, science tells us that there is no distinction between matter and energy, that all form is energy. What
we perceive as solid matter is simply an inaccurate conclusion based on our inability to speed our perception to a pace at
which we could actually see matter vibrate. Scientists have found a way to extend perception with particle accelerators, electron
microscopes and the like, but an easier way to understand this is to think about what happens when we view a movie. For our
purposes, we’ll talk about film on a reel, not digital images. We know that the movie happens because light is projected
through the images on the film and onto a screen. The movement we see reflected on the screen comes from the fact that the
film frames are moving so rapidly that what we see appears to be life unfolding in front of us. Now unless we’re completely
engrossed in the movie, that is, unless we’ve temporarily suspended our disbelief, we know that what we are watching
is a two dimensional illusion. While our visual and mental sense doors cannot slow perception down to the point where we
can perceive each individual frame, we are at least aware that what we are making contact with through our sense doors is
an entertaining illusion.
In the same way, we are incapable of slowing the mind down sufficiently to perceive what is actually happening and that all
material forms, our bodies included, are collections of various attributes, but not one solid thing that we can point to and
say this is a person, a table, a tree, a cat and so on. We cannot point to ourselves and say definitively, “this is
me.” Makes it tough to answer the question, “Who am I?,” doesn’t it?
In Buddhist thought, we human beings are actually composed of five aggregates including material form (cells, nervous and
circulatory systems, bones, etc.), sensations (unpleasant, pleasant, neutral), perceptions (of form, sound, smell, taste,
bodily impressions and mental objects), mental formations (mental activities like attention, joy, discrimination, resolve,
concentration, etc.) and consciousness (sense consciousness which arise out of contact between an object and its corresponding
sense organ). It is the five skandhas that give rise to craving and attachment and the illusion of solidity. It is the skandhas
that condition a self which is born, suffers illness, ages and dies. In Buddhist philosophy, there is no more pernicious a
delusion or mental defilement than the belief in a solid, impermeable self.
When we believe in the existence of a self, we conceptually limit ourselves and others. Julius Lester, wrestles with aspects
of this projection in his poem, “Who I Am.”
I am who I am.
Must I give a name to that?
Must I say
I am black
I am a man
I am a writer?
Those are statements of fact
(the sky is blue, water is wet, snow is cold.)
But what is black?
Not even the color of my true love’s hair
(which is red)
What is a man?
The figment of a penis’ imagination
What is a writer (doctor / lawyer / Indian chief)?
What you put in the space of income tax forms
That says OCCUPATION___________.
So who am I?
I am
who I am
and if that leaves you perplexed,
will you accept that
I am
you?
Concepts are certainly useful for navigating in the relative world. It is not concepts that are the problem, but our inability
to let go of them when they are no longer useful, that is when conditions change. Concepts are descriptive metaphors, tools
for working with particular situations. But they must be periodically, if not continually, evaluated because otherwise we
stop being open to life as it unfolds in our moment to moment experience. Think about someone you know who is caught in the
snare of concepts which may have been useful but now are not.
I read a novel by Walter Dean Myers years ago, The Legend of Tarik. It describes the understanding that comes when
we transcend the small self and the illusion of concepts. In this passage, the wise old teacher instructs the young boy, Tarik,
trying to help the young African boy Tarik transcend his anger towards his enemies and connect with the universal life force:
There is but one life, and it flows through all things. When it flows through the water, it is easy to feel. As it flows through the stone it is harder for us to feel. . . .
You must learn to feel this flow of life, Tarik, that has flowed through all your ancestors and now flows through you. Go back to your room and feel the flow of life in the cup from which you drink. When you begin to understand that the cup was not born in your hands, you will understand the cup. Feel the flow of life in the walls about you and of the one who put those walls in place. They say that objects are created, that people are born. That is not true, Tarik. Nothing is created or born, nothing falls away or dies. Nor is there a form or stick that has not lived before. When all this is known to you, no man can surprise you. . . . .
This description is part of the Buddhist realization known as stream entry.
Philip Dick writes, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” Because we
believe in the illusion of self, which is to say, we also believe in the solidity of the Eight Vicissitudes, of a world divided
among polar opposites which attract or repel us depending on our contact with them, we can describe some events as triumphs
and some as tragedies.
The mark of your ignorance
is the depth of your belief
in injustice and tragedy.
What the caterpillar
calls the end of the world
the Master calls a butterfly.
Richard Bach, Illusions
In Buddhist discussions, we talk a lot about mind, our mind, mindfulness, monkey mind, and so on. But what is mind? Guess
what—it’s just a concept! When we examine the mind, we find it to be as empty of substance as any other aspect
of what we take to be ourselves. What we commonly think of as “our mind” is really just consciousness. Consciousness
is pure awareness without the overlay of concepts. Where do concepts come from? It is the mental factor of perception which
creates concepts. Concepts are born based on sense contact with a sense object. This is true even with memory of the past
and future projection; these are thoughts constructed from past sense contact. Concepts are not a problem as long as we are
aware that they are notions that were born when we responded to our initial feeling about a sense contact. When we do not
examine or question our notions, we can be way off in our conclusions.
In John Godfrey Saxe’s famous poem, “The Blind Men and the Elephant,” we see what happens when we accept
our concepts without questioning them.
It was six men of Indostan to learning much inclined
Who went to see the elephant though all of them were blind,
That each by observation might satisfy his mind.
The First approached the elephant, and happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side, at once began to bawl;
‘God bless me! But the elephant is very like a wall!’
The Second, feeling of the tusk, cried, ‘Ho! What have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp? To me ’tis mighty clear
This wonder of an elephant is very like a spear!’
The Third approached the animal, and happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands, thus boldly up and spake:
‘I see’, quoth he, ‘the Elephant is very like a snake!’
The Fourth reached out an eager hand, and felt about the knee
‘What most this wondrous beast is like is mighty plain’ quoth he;
‘ ‘Tis clear enough the Elephant is very like a tree!’
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, Said: ‘E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most; deny the fact who can
This marvel of an elephant is very like a fan!’
The Sixth no sooner had begun about the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail that fell within his scope,
‘I see’, quoth he, ‘the Elephant is very like a rope!’
And so these men of Indostan disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong!
Moral:
So oft in theologic wars, the disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance of what each other mean,
And prate about an elephant; not one of them has seen!
We can laugh about the blind men and how far off they each were in their opinion of the object “elephant,” but
in fact this process of conclusion jumping and concept creation is going on in each of us all the time. This problem is compounded
as we’ve already seen by the fact that our ability to perceive the process is seemingly limited by the capabilities
of our equipment. On the one hand, we are told that buddha-nature can only be found within us but we can’t seem to connect
with it. There are days when the road of life seems paved with stopping stones instead of stepping stones. What to do?
Fortunately, Buddhism provides a path. As Reginald Ray writes, “Buddhism is not a set of concepts or beliefs but a method.
While the tradition certainly has its share of doctrine and philosophy, it holds that these are to be judged by the extent
to which they lead to awareness of the non-self within, and to concrete, personal liberation. . . . The Buddha’s method
also implies a vry specific method of transformation: meditation. If the awakened state already exists in its fullness and
perfection within us, then obviously all we need to do is remove the obstacles obsuring our own inborn wisdom and cultivate
awareness of it.”
Joseph Goldstein describes meditation as paying mindful attention: “The more we practice careful attention, the more
it becomes our habit of mind. We then find that awareness comes into our activities at whatever speed we are doing them. Slowing
down is simply a training that helps us get into the habit of mindful attention.” Mindful attention helps us to examine
our concepts and see them for what they are: useful, conditional tools, that like all phenomena empty of inherent, unchanging
existence, arise, sustain and pass away.
Kalu Rinpoche taught that
We live in illusion and the appearance of things.
We live in the world of concepts.
There is a reality; we are that reality.
When we understand this, we see we are nothing
And being nothing, we are everything. That is all.
Ultimately, concepts are useful because they can point us to freedom like the finger pointing at the moon. As the Buddha cautioned,
we should not, however, mistake the finger for the moon. I don’t know that I am any closer to answering the cosmic questions
we began with, but somehow it doesn’t seem important to develop concepts about the answers, but rather to become the
answers.
How fortunate are you and I, whose home
Is timelessness: we who have wandered down
From fragrant mountains of eternal now
To frolic in such mysteries as birth
And death a day (or maybe even less)
