Daishin Morgan, Rev. Master

 

At the heart of religious life is a kōan.  How, as an individual, we can realize that which is greater than ourselves? Although we are individuals, when we define ourselves as such, we leave out the most important dimension of existence. And if we cling to being an individual, we make it impossible to realize our true nature. But should we try to dismiss or ignore our individuality, then in doing so, we lose the basis of compassion, love and wisdom.

When questioned about the reality of the self, the Buddha refused to say that the self exists, and he also refused to say that the self does not exist.  When pressed further, he explained that he taught the middle way between such extreme views. He pointed out that what we take to be our identity has no real basis of its own. We, like everything else in the universe, are the result of a myriad conditions and the whole universe is a network of inter-connected conditions.  This network has no centre.  There is no first cause from which everything springs, and no essence manifesting itself as this and that. There is nothing to grasp. And yet here we apparently are. The identity to which we cling is a notion created in our own mind.  If we look deeply, without clinging to a self image, we find some intimations of true reality. If we can see past our fear and desires, there is a vast freedom and sufficiency that is unimaginable while we insist on our self-made world.  It does not exist in the sense of being another thing ‘we’ can relate to. It is utterly all-encompassing.

In his doctrine of dependent origination, the Buddha describes how, out of ignorance of this true nature, we define ourselves as an isolated self.  Ultimately, this is the cause of suffering. This false sense of self is the self that we think we know.   We need to see how this all comes about.

We modern humans tend to think of ourselves as the owners of our body and mind. It is as though ‘I’ am a little being who is living inside myself.  He/she/they are the one who is happy or sad, who likes things or dislikes them, who gets offended or is compassionate and loving.  In short, they are one who we think we are, the self that experiences the world. The world is understood as something that happens to this person. We do not notice that thinking and believing like this divides us from everything and everyone else. It even divides us from body and mind. We believe we are the one who is inside looking out but this sense of ourselves is only our projection.

Knowing the world through the senses, we tend to assume that there must always be someone inside who is experiencing all that input. We take this person to be our soul or our essence. This feeling of being ‘me’ is often felt quite viscerally, but the more I define myself, the greater is that separation.  To define ourselves is to isolate ourselves. That isolation is not how things really are, but having invested ourselves in it, it feels very real to us. Feeling this isolation we are inclined to grasp at whatever seems like it might make a connection with us. We grasp at whatever might fill the gap. The more we believe in this false sense of ourselves, the more needy we become.

It is this ‘self’ that the Buddha would not confirm as real. However, it is not the case that there is no self in any way at all.  Plainly that is not true, and so the Buddha would not deny the self either.  The middle way that he taught is between the extremes.  We do not need to imagine a self (“I exist”) nor do we need to deny it (“I don’t exist”).  The point is to just see.  That requires a profound letting go of our projected self.  Such letting go turns out to be true nature, constantly revealing itself.

If we really were an inner self, divided from the world, then that inner self would be independent of our experiences. That inner experiencer would necessarily have to be present before any event that ‘we’ experience. It would be uncaused.  To put that another way, in order to be the experiencer, the inner self or soul would have to be unaffected by change.  It would be frozen, unmoved, in contrast to the changes it experienced. Such a view is known in Buddhism as eternalism, because if such an inner essence or soul really did exist then it would be eternal.   Yes, all of that really follows when we think “I exist”.

At this point you may be thinking, “Hang on a minute, I’m not assuming that I am eternal, I know I will die, I know I am subject to change, I just feel that there is a real me inside who knows this.”  This is how most of us feel before we really question what it is to be the one who experiences.

The Buddha often spoke about the self in a conventional sense.  He recognised that something appears to be born and dies; acts in certain ways and experiences the consequences of those actions. He then spoke of emptiness, describing how, when we look, the self we imagine ourselves to be, is nowhere to be found.  The Buddha then pointed to the true nature, that which is utterly beyond conception. We cannot truthfully say that true nature exists, nor that it does not exist – we cannot accurately say anything about it at all. We are at once human beings and utterly ungraspable.

The opposite view to eternalism is annihilationism, which is the view that the self does not exist. This is just as problematic as eternalism. When people encounter the Buddha’s teaching on the emptiness of self they sometimes misunderstand and think he is simply denying the self. He is not.  He declined to either affirm or deny the self.  When we seek to affirm, we impose a self.  When we seek to deny, we have to first assume the very self we seek to deny. Affirmation and denial end up implying each other.  True reality that the Buddha points to is not contained by any category.  This is a difficult thought to hold because we are so used to thinking dualistically – something must either exist or not. Also, to us, if someone declines to affirm our self-image, we are inclined to feel that we are being denied. But the whole point is that our self-image, and what we really are, are not the same thing at all. Whatever we do, we cannot grasp true nature, or co-opt it as ourselves.

In our apparent isolation, we cling to our conception of ourselves, because it seems to be all we have. Indeed, such conceptions are all that the little person inside can have.  He/she/they are an imaginary figure who is in turn imagining a world. To see the emptiness of this conceptual dream is vital.  When we do not invent a self, then everything reveals the truth, and that truth goes on revealing itself endlessly.

The Buddha described how someone with true wisdom looks at the world – they do not categorize it into ‘exists’ or ‘does not exist’.  They just see. Nothing is separated, because the world is not really divided up by our categories.  This is right view, and it arises when we let go of the mental activity of self-making.  Zazen really helps. The instructions for zazen are the epitome of the middle way. “Neither try to think, nor try not to think, just sit.” If we are making the little person inside – then we need to see that taking place. To just see takes us beyond the opposites of “I exist” or “I don’t exist”.  We do not need to come to a conclusion, nor do we need to condemn ourselves, we need just to see.

Most of the thoughts that we get entangled with come down to fear or desire. We do not need to grasp at anything, and yet we believe we do. What happens when we neither make a self, nor reject a self, but just sit? For all of us, there are those moments when we are not self-making, when our thoughts fall away and the mind is peaceful.  Such experiences do not amount to enlightenment, but they do show that when, for whatever reason, we let go of making ourselves, things are fine – more than fine – there is a peace of such depth we cannot hope to describe it.

Even when there is right view, we will still need to form images of ourselves and the world.  We need images in order to remember anything. What is food, what is dangerous, what is love?  We need memories – and therefore images – in order to navigate our world. Any conscious being relies on mental images.  The problems come because we do not recognize these images for what they are and take them as real in a way they are not. We typically do not notice that we are forever making the world we experience.

To see this, we need to recognize the difference between just seeing and the making of mental images. It requires a commitment to zazen.  When we sit, there is often a procession of thoughts centred around ‘me’. Even if I am thinking about others, it is often about others in relation to me.  Perhaps we justify ourselves to ourselves and make a case for our defence. What we are doing with all these thoughts is continually making and remaking a sense of ourselves. There is no need to judge it, it is enough to see it.

There is a difference between the mental objects we form in our minds and our direct experience of the senses. To just see, is different to seeing this and that. To divide the world into this and that is not to just see. In just seeing there are no categories. When we are seeing this and that, we have already made a world. To just see does not make a world.  It does not need to make a world; there is no grasping for a world when we just see. When there is no grasping, our mental images are just mental images and recognised as such. There is no need to deny them. Just seeing, is seeing without grasping.

To refrain from making ourselves in our own minds takes a lot of practice. We fear that we will be swallowed by a void of nonexistence if we don’t keep making ourselves. We need to see that does not happen.  Sitting in zazen you can know this. The Buddha tells us that one with correct wisdom has no need to make a world around a self that either exists or does not exist. There is that which is free, even free of being itself.

 

There are some wonderful views here in Wales.  Standing before such a view it sometimes feels like I am at a performance of the most beautiful music with a friend who just cannot stop talking. This self-talk typically arises when I am disturbed or upset. To let it go is to let myself go. Silence is profound, but we cannot cling to silence either. There is another kind of action that goes beyond speech and silence. To let go of self-making is to be free to live and express true nature.