Tag: No Self

• Being Like Trees

  In challenging times, we humans tend to fall back on our earliest and deepest understandings. We fall back on our earliest way of relating to the world, which is not in words, but through the body. We don’t usually think of the body as comprehending the ways of the universe. But the body knows things.

  In a time of overwhelm or uncertainty, the proudest atheists may find themselves thinking: “Help me.” They may dismiss the idea of God for very sound scientific reasons. And yet in the midst of a crisis they still find themselves looking up at the sky and the trees, thinking, “Help me.” I think this gesture of reaching out is as old as humanity. The body knows we are more than we think we are.

  In our Buddhist meditation group, we often speak of the practice of metta, or lovingkindness. But we also innately practice meta, a Greek word meaning “beyond.” This root creates the word “metaphysical.” Yet this impulse to reach beyond ourselves is not is very direct, very connected to life. We reach in two directions: inward, away from superficial distractions and outward, seeking to reconnect with life itself.

  On Sunday, we discussed new research that reveals that trees are not isolated beings struggling for survival, as Darwin and others once thought. They live as members of vast interconnected communities, sharing nutrients and information across species. Some call this system the “wood wide web.”  Some beings in this system, especially big old trees fondly called “mother trees” give big. A few others, Black Walnuts and orchids among them, steal more than their share of resources or even spread toxins.

  This week, if you wish, notice as we practice noticing our impact on the life around us, not just our words and actions but our presence, our thoughts. The Buddhist notion of emptiness is not a void or a nullity but a state fluidity and openness–interconnection or “interbeing,” as the Zen master Thich Nhat Hahn calls it. But you don’t have to call it anything. Just notice how it feels to experience yourselves as part of an ecosystem, not stopping at the border of our own skin.

  “If we surrendered to earth’s intelligence, we could rise up rooted, like trees.” –Rilke

  July 17, 2018

  Emptiness, Mindfulness, No Self, Tracy Cochran, trees, woods

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• On Being Nobody…and No One

  Notice how it feels to do nothing. Set aside a certain period of time to shift your attention to the experience of being present–not meditating in a formal way but noticing the gaps between thought. Our deepest insights often come when we are not doing, including thinking in a focused way, but just being. Ultimately, awakening takes willingness, not will. We must be willing to leave the known world of the thinking and rest in open awareness. We must let go of our incessant attempts to do and be How deeply we fear being nobody. One way to think of the ego is as a defense against pain, particularly the pain of being no one. It shores us up, reminding us that we are somebody. We update our internal resumes and narratives constantly. We seek new skills and go on self-improvement regimes of all kinds, including the practice of mindfulness meditation. And we may improve a little. We may feel a little more peaceful, a little more resilient and less quick to anger. This is good, and for many people good enough. Yet deep down we may sense that even in the name of spiritual practice we are seeking to plant a flag in ground that gives way under our feet. Nothing we do can stop time’s passage and all the things that keep happening that we don’t want to happen, like aging and loss. Even with a very deep and well-established practice that has grown new neurons and reduced stress and accomplished everything else that scientific studies promises, even then we still touch the sadness of life. We touch darkness and pain. And that fear of being no one. It may come as a relief that in ancient times, when people first heard of Buddha’s teachings on emptiness or no self, it was considered most auspicious to feel not joy but terror. One classical explanation is that to feel fear is to intuit what must come. The ego must volunteer to abdicate the throne in the center of your life. We must leave the skull-sized kingdom of our thinking and be no one, just presence, at least some of the time. We may begin a mindfulness practice just hoping for a little more peace or inner spaciousness, a better brain, and so on. But slowly, slowly the practice leads on to the realization that real peace and freedom come in those moments when we are no one. We notice that when we are more awake we are not thinking about a self–or not just thinking. We discover that being no one, or no one in particular, is not diminishment but expansion. It is awakening to our human nature, our shared nature, noticing that it isn’t frozen. It flows. We yearn to be part of a larger life. Yet sometimes, especially in winter, we discover that the way to a larger life is to be still.  We want to be in a place where anything can happen at any time, yet in our own “Fortress of Solitude,” as Superman called his polar retreat. We yearn to be in the world, but not of it. Superman, Spiderman, Batman, the quintessential New York-based comic book heroes, swoop in to perform astonishing deeds at crucial moments, but they also retreat into protective identities, becoming Clark Kent, a mild-manner reporter at the Daily Planet, the philanthropist Bruce Wayne, or Peter Parker, a high school student living in Queens, who anguishes about teenage themes, rejection and loneliness and belonging. These heroes dazzle with their superhuman strength or resourcefulness and agility. Yet none of them want to risk being unmasked. It’s so interesting. They don’t want to risk the very human pain of vulnerability. We all fear being vulnerable, exposed as less than solid or coherent, changing with changing conditions. At one point in the unfolding saga of Superman, he tells Lois Lane that Clark Kent is just two words, a simple fixed identity. In reality, he is “The Blur,” the term used by a bystander who witnessed him in action. If we could see ourselves from out in space, we would all be blurs, streams of experience. Batman became a masked crusader after the murder of his parents. He vowed to avenge their death by dispensing justice. He trained for years, creating his identity as a positive form of revenge. Peter Parker became Spider Man after being bitten by a radioactive spider. We are all like this. We make do. We compensate. We learn. And sometimes, our wounds become our great strengths. Maybe superheroes express a universal yearning to soar above it all–to help this suffering world but then return to a comfortable perch. Many of us turn to spiritual practice in the first place, hoping for a way to smooth out our bumpy lives, or at lease find a bit of respite. For a long time, I thought of meditation as a portable fortress of solitude. But most of us also yearn to draw closer to life., including our own experience.  It turns out that the real gift of meditation may be to allow us to be with exactly what we are and what is arising. We learn to take off the cape and the mask, trusting that along with the vulnerability that appears we discover an awareness that is very still yet also very open and suffused with a power greater than our personality. Allow yourself to notice–or remember–times when you let go of control, trusting that you could meet life with presence, moment by moment.

  June 6, 2017

  Awakening, Awareness, Buddha, Emptiness, Margaret Atwood, Meditation, Mindfulness, Moment, Moments of Being, No Self, Nothingness, Tracy Cochran

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