Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Blog #8 You Can't Save Yourself by Saving Your Self

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.

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.

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.

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

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