A Slippery Contradiction
Everything is dissolving and falling apart. Our houses, the street outside our house, our body…let’s face it; our world is indelibly marked by change. We don’t like it because it’s unpredictable, and we want to always be assured of what’s happening now and what’s going to happen next.
Everything is dissolving and falling apart. Our houses, the street outside our house, our body…let’s face it; our world is indelibly marked by change. We don’t like it because it’s unpredictable, and we want to always be assured of what’s happening now and what’s going to happen next.
Being comfortable with not knowing—though considered
delightful by Buddhas far and near—is not our strong suit, so we seek security,
solidity and steadiness from a world that will give us none of that. Despite
our best efforts, the world remains out of our control. Still, we do our best; we
replace worn-out tires, we refrigerate our food…we might even take public
transportation in order to minimize global warming. It’s probably the best we
can do during our 80 year stint.
The world continuously, effortlessly,
falls apart and we spend our lifetime battling that. This struggle, although it
makes sense in our physical world, has less-than stellar-results in our
psychological world. Why? Because that unpredictability is even more problematic
with to our quest to establish “Me”. There is nothing more slippery and
evanescent than the thing we call “self”, or “I”…yet we live and die by it.
Although this world that is
constantly changing, we nevertheless feel compelled to find something that is solid
and steady—a bulwark against instability. We long so deeply for something that
can give us a sense of security while everything else around us is continually
morphing. We just want a rock that will stand still for us in the middle of
this wild river’s turbulence.
The point is that you cannot
stabilize self. Self is an arbitrary definition we give to ourselves, and as
meditators, all evidence shows us there’s nothing at all we can hang on to. The
holding on that we do happens in many ways. We give it the name ego if we are too arrogant. Then we take
a snapshot of that and present it to everyone we encounter—even when our actions
are nothing to be proud of. Ego can also be built from a snap-shot of how
long-suffering we are—and even when blessings come our way, we pull out that snapshot
to maintain our continuity of depression; because our need for security lords over
whatever vacillates, every time. Ego can
also be built upon anger, blame, or low self-esteem…all of them become
snapshots that we treasure because they make us feel secure and unwavering. We
don’t want doubt; we want to be defined.
Monkeys!
Our “Self” is a collection of observations that we cobble together for convenience’s sake. We could take an analytical approach to understanding this, but I like the traditional “monkeys in the house” analogy to understand how we build a solid self out of ever fleeting conscious moments.
Our “Self” is a collection of observations that we cobble together for convenience’s sake. We could take an analytical approach to understanding this, but I like the traditional “monkeys in the house” analogy to understand how we build a solid self out of ever fleeting conscious moments.
Let’s imagine a house filled
with monkeys…six monkeys to be exact. Each of these monkeys has a window to
look out of, and each window represents a sense perception. Now, we know that
there are five sense perceptions—sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch; but in
Buddhist psychology, there is a sixth, which is mind. Like the other five,
perception is comprised of hardware (the organ) and software (the process of
perceiving). So in the case of the sixth sense organ we have (roughly) the
brain and its ability to sort through the activities of mind. The house is
obviously our body (or it could even be the head.)
But back to our monkeys.
Let’s imagine that these five
monkeys are sitting in front of five different ‘windows’, and the sixth monkey sits
in the middle of the house and keeps communication flow with the five. Each
monkey can only do one thing: monkey #1 reports on what can be seen; monkey #2 reports
on what can be heard; monkey #3 reports on what can be smelled; monkey #4 reports
on what is tasted; and monkey #5 reports on what is felt throughout the body.
So our five windows—or better, apertures—are
our sense organs, or sense gates, and the sixth is the control room. Let’s
imagine we are in a restaurant and the sixth monkey (the coordinator, mind) –
asks the third monkey “What’s going on?” The third monkey says, “Man, something
smells good. It’s kind of like coffee, but something else happening.” The first
monkey says, “Hey, I see Jameson’s and they are putting whipped cream over it.”
The sixth monkey puts two and
two together and says, “Oh yeah…Irish coffee.” He then calls out to #2—the
sound perception monkey, “What’s going on over there?” “Someone dropped a tray
of dishes. It’s so loud in here, I can hardly hear myself think.” #4—the taste
perception monkey shouts, “Oh yummy, wine, Full bodied. A bit oaky!” Then
#6—mind monkey says, “It’s a Chardonnay. California, Sonoma Coast, I suspect.”
Monkey #3 is back online: “Wow,
where’s that nice perfume coming from?” Monkey
#5—“My nose itches.” Monkey #6, “Posture! Sit up!” Monkey #1— “Forget it, she’s
wearing a ring.” Monkey #6, “Alright everybody. Let’s all calm down.”
When you meditate—when you sit
down and calmly take notice of what’s happening—what phenomena arise; what
phenomena disappears…it works in exactly the same manner; the messages from our
sense perceptions continue unabated, but rather than being in a restaurant, we
are in a meditation space and #1 says, rug;
#2…siren; #3…incense; #4…a lingering
coffee taste in my mouth; #5…my knees
hurt; #6…”When is the damn gong going
to ring?”
The Panoply of Thoughts
Brain research tells us that all of these perceptions are happening between 60 and 100 times per second; just like the frames on movie film…giving us the illusion of seamless motion.
Brain research tells us that all of these perceptions are happening between 60 and 100 times per second; just like the frames on movie film…giving us the illusion of seamless motion.
And of course there is more: there
are thoughts, opinions, judgments, memories—and all of them carry on the same way
as perceptions—moment by moment, and in a constant cascade. Brain research also
tells us that we can experience upwards of 50,000 thoughts per
day. This means approximately 40 thoughts per minute per person. A lot is in
play.
Let’s get back to “Self.” How
many of the 50,000 thoughts are nice, and how many of them are mean? Which ones
do we grasp to convince us that we are a nice person? How many of those
thoughts make us think. “I am a depressed person?” Which thoughts do we select
to cobble together to define “Me?” Which thoughts default to define “Self?”
This self, this thing we want
to protect, is ever-changing; nevertheless, we take a sample of all those
thoughts, emotions, feelings, judgments, and we decide we are like this or like
that. But there is nothing solid there at
all. We are simply trying to hold together what is always changing and
falling apart. We try to freeze a fluid situation, but it won’t freeze. One day
I’m depressed Alan; the next day I’m confident Alan; an hour later I am sad Alan.
Who is Alan?
As much as I hold tightly to
identify myself as ‘depressed’ on a particular day, I hold myself just as
strongly to the idea of being ‘smart’ or ‘cheerful’ on the next. It doesn’t
matter if I’m happy or depressed, really—our “Self” just wants to be sure. It wants
to be uncontested. Ego, self, I—whatever we call it—it wants to be assured of
something solid in an ever-changing world…which is basically impossible.
We’ve been trained for this
since we were infants. We have heard, “Oh look isn’t she cute?; Oh naughty boy;
You are bad. Stop that…that’s a good girl.” The die was cast decades ago.
Practice Brings Familiarity
When we practice mindfulness meditation, and we practice with humor and curiosity, we train ourselves to be interested in whatever arises. We learn to become comfortable with contradictions. Instead of being addicted to who we are, we get to be far more interested in what we do—and how we conjure up a reality that is no more solid than the cloud I am looking at outside my kitchen window.
The very sights, sounds, tastes,
thoughts and feelings that you experience at this very moment, also occur on your
meditation seat. The meditation seat is our laboratory; so can we give
ourselves some time to see whether or not these monkeys, thoughts and opinions manifest
the way that Buddhists have described for centuries?
In Tibetan terminology there’s
something called jung, ne, dro sum. Arising,
abiding and ceasing—all three. These terms are fully aligned with this idea of
monkey mind. Thoughts and perceptions arise, stay, and then disappear. Then the
next one arises and disappears, ad
infinitum. Everything is in constant flux, and so are we. There is no solid
and definite “I”. Instead of fighting to freeze what will not freeze, we could
let go of our “Me” construction project, and trust our perceptions which are so
good, and so accurate.
What do you think?
© 2016 Alan Kent Anderson
© 2016 Alan Kent Anderson
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