Welcome to The PATH (Monday Meditation) — A weekly reflection with three timeless insights for daily life. This week’s reflection is inspired by a question raised on the separate self (mentioned in last week’s Reading & the Good Life). To do so, I’m going to share a few insights from three books that I believe can help us to (better) understand this insight in practical terms.
1. Seeing Clearly
We have a problem, Houston! What is the problem, you ask?
The philosopher Nic Bommarito, author of Seeing Clearly (and previous podcast guest), explains the problem is how we see ourselves and the world around us.
In a chapter titled, Who do you think you are? Bommarito writes,
Put as abstract questions about independent self-essence or existence, these philosophical questions can seem impersonal and academic. They certainly can be, but one way to see their importance beyond philosophical theory is to remember that these issues also apply to you. You, the person currently reading this sentence.
In the same way that there isn’t really a pile, there isn’t really a you. If all things are essentially relational, one of those things is you. These aren’t merely questions about how the world out there works, they’re also about you and what kind of thing you are.
Buddhism's basic insight is that the source of this fundamental problem is a mismatch between our most basic feeling about the world and how it really is, writes Bommarito. Our existence and various roles depend on everything else to be what they are. This doesn’t mean that you are everything or anything mystical like that. It means that our being (what we are) relies on everything else being what it is.
Bommarito stresses,
You don’t exist prior to relationships and then enter into them. You emerge out of them in a web of mutual dependence. This can all sound bleak. What seemed like a self was just a composite series in constant flux, dependent on everything else.
Take a moment to imagine a person who mistakenly thought “New York City” was a particular building; they might be sad to learn that there isn’t, and never was such a building. But they’re better off knowing how things are than endlessly running around, looking in vain for a landmark that can’t be found.
2. Beyond Distraction
What is liberation? How does one actually find peace? Questions have many answers; for example, I’ve asked more than one hundred guests on In Search of Wisdom the question — What is Wisdom?
My conversation with Shaila Catherine (author of Beyond Distraction) discussed wisdom and liberation. Catherine writes,
Liberation requires letting go of the illusion that we exist as a permanent self, an observer, a witness, or the controller of activities. Self-grasping is not abandoned through effort but by understanding that the illusion of self is constructed through layers of mental habits, misperceptions, and attachments.
For Catherine, the lesson from four decades of practicing Buddhism is that inner transformation does not come about by trying to form a better identity or gain a special experience. “It goes far beyond self-improvement projects. Powerful, liberating understandings occur by directly experiencing the “nots” — not-clinging, not-self, not-mine, not-fabricated, not-identifying.”
When asked about the project of becoming wiser?
Catherine responds,
We are not cultivating a grander, more polished identity. Letting go of habits and unbinding the mind from the forces of delusion are the route to freedom. Liberation comes not from becoming, but from letting go.
How can a silent retreat help?
Catherine says that silent retreats provide an opportunity to step outside the usual patterns that structure our daily existence. They provide an intensive and efficient context for shedding the burden of becoming. “During that retreat period, you do not have to be the mom, dad, teacher, nurse, employee, boss, and so forth. You do not need to carry a self-image around.”
3. Losing Ourselves
It may sound strange to distinguish between being a “self” and being a person. In one of the final chapters of Losing Ourselves, the Buddhist philosopher Jay Garfield explains: “To regard ourselves as selfless persons is not to denigrate but to make sense of our reality, and to recognize that our lives are only possible and can only have meaning in the context of a world.”
Garfield writes of studying a beehive to illustrate the point,
One does not come to understand a beehive by studying individual bees and scaling up; instead, one understands an individual bee by understanding how a hive works, and what that bee’s role is therein. You don’t first observe a lot of theatrical roles and then put them all together to figure out what the theatre is; instead, you understand a theatrical role by first knowing about the theatre.
The same is true regarding our understanding of persons: one does not come to understand our cultures by understanding how an individual Homo sapiens organism works, and then scaling up; one understands how a person works by understanding our cultures and our multiple roles therein. And there is no place for a self in the story that these analogies suggest.
How does all this sit with you? Interesting, not interesting?
Is there a “yeah, but” running in the background? Garfield explains that one might have thought that the discovery that we have no self, no ātman, no psyche would be the discovery that we are somehow less than we thought we were, that we are diminished in dignity, freedom, and moral worth.
The truth is our lives are better for the fact that we are selfless persons than they could ever have been were we selves. “The self you might have thought you were would only get in the way of leading a flourishing life,” observes Garfield, “thinking that you have a self does not enhance but instead impoverishes your life.”
Notes and Additional Resources:
Although we’ve covered some ground — some of you might want additional resources. You can listen to Jay Garfield on Making Sense or the Ten Percent Happier podcast. In reference to the three books listed (all great reads), I’d recommend starting with Seeing Clearly. Lastly, here are a few articles from the archive that you might find helpful: How to Get Over Yourself, On Becoming Nobody, and How to Know Thyself.
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful for daily life.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
P.S. Feel free to comment, ask questions, or make suggestions!