Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Exactly.
——Author unknown
Beneath it all, it is only true contentment—the glorious sensation of being utterly free, unencumbered, and relaxed—that we all desire. The goals depicted in many religions reflect this understanding of what we are shooting for: moksha or mukti (both meaning “liberation”) in Hinduism; nirvana (the great “extinguishing” or “sigh of relief” as one becomes free of all troubling thoughts and feelings) in Buddhism; the dropping of the old self and being “born again” into Christ; the release that comes from following God’s will and law in Judaism and Islam.
We all want to be free. So what, exactly, are the chains that bind us? What is the nature of the prison that we feel encloses us?
Being free isn’t just a matter of doing, saying, or thinking anything that comes into your head. That much should be obvious to anyone who has lived more than a few years in the company of other humans. We’ve tried that version of “freedom” over and over and over again, to no avail. Whenever some strong impulse arises, unless thwarted by fear of reprisal (or jail!), we usually just give in to it, consequences be damned! We yell back at those who yell at us, try to hurt those who hurt us, plot our revenge when we feel betrayed . . . just because we “feel like it.”
Until we have thoroughly trained ourselves, we are enslaved by our negative emotions, our mental afflictions. When anger, jealousy, pride, or lust raise their nasty little heads, we are usually rendered helpless in their thrall. Worse yet, we stick our head into the carnival cutouts of these irrational feelings and say, “I am angry! I am depressed! I am jealous!”
Among the large array of mental afflictions that plague and tyrannize us (the Buddha said we have 84,000 of them!), two lie at the root of our unhappiness and imprisonment.
They are desire and ignorance.
“Desire” here really means perpetual dissatisfaction—with what we have, with the life we are leading, and with who we are. It’s like when we have an itchy mosquito bite. We scratch the itch, hoping that by doing so it won’t itch anymore.
We’re slaves to our itches, and that’s one very important way in which we are not free. We get a hankering for a new iPhone and the itch begins: If only I had the new iPhone! You know, the one with that little computer voice named Siri that talks to you? Then I’d be happy. Or one or another of the myriad versions of the itch: If only that girl would pay attention to me. If only I had a better job. If only I were rich, famous, popular.
I, I, I and if only, if only—the repetitive call of incessant yearning and discontent, the “somebody self” always wanting more.
And so we try scratching. We save our money for the iPhone, or try to get the phone number from the beautiful babe or stud-muffin dude, or apply for a different job, or try to be more (more wealthy, more famous, more popular, more attractive) of a somebody.
And every time we scratch, it’s in the hope that there won’t be any more itches.
We all know what happens next. It’s just like those pesky mosquito bites—the more you scratch them, the more irresistibly the itch returns. The relief is at best temporary, and then after a brief respite the desire comes roaring back, more demanding than ever.
And so freedom, we could say, is nothing more than the exalted state of itchlessness—being satisfied with everything we have, with “nothing left to lose,” as Janis Joplin says in her famous song, and nothing more to gain.
The liberation we seek with all our scratching consists of simply not being beset with new and improved itches all the time. This is called by another name: “contentment,” and it is what we hope to attain with every attempt to satisfy our desires. We hope that, by fulfilling this particular craving, we won’t want anything more. We hope that each scratch will be the last one; that finally, with this one last scrape, we’ll be satisfied.
Maybe there’s more than just contentment at the end of our spiritual journey. Maybe there’s heaven or a Pure Land with all kinds of rainbows in the sky and unicorns bounding about. And maybe we’ll all be angels, blissfully flapping around with supernatural abilities and X-Men superpowers. I can’t, in all honesty, say with any certainty that there won’t be.
But I do know this: If we shoot for contentment—the Great Itchlessness—it won’t matter one way or the other. Once we become content, it will be impossible to be discontented with our lives and ourselves—with or without streets paved with gold and divine bodies made of beautiful light. It’s win-win when it comes to contentment! If there’s more in addition to that, great; and if there’s not, well, that will be OK too, because we’ll be content!
And, of course, all this itching and scratching is in the service of being somebody. We believe that status and personal fulfillment will come through scratching, through obtaining something we don’t already have or more (or less) of what we already possess.
This would be far more understandable if we were lacking the necessities of life. But for readers of this book, I’ll wager, it’s not for want of proper food or shelter or clothing, nor for lack of education or opportunities to make a decent living, nor due to the absence of friends and loved ones that we remain discontented with our lives.
We aren’t among the three billion people living on two dollars and fifty cents a day or less, nor are we among the 80 percent of the earth’s population subsisting on less than ten dollars a day, nor among the one billion fellow human beings dwelling in slums, nor among a similar number who remain illiterate.1
What we really desire is the freedom from endless desires, especially when we already have so much. It’s liberation from our incessant whining about how we don’t have enough or aren’t somebody enough. As for the first, when it comes to wealth, consumer goods, leisure time, access to education and information—the nuts and bolts of the good life—there’s really no excuse for folks like us. We’re just forgetting the basic facts of our lives; we’re just spacing out. Say the mantra:
Om, I have enough, ah hum!
Our problems—our itches—are “First World problems,” which hardly deserve the name “problems” at all. Since our “problems,” when it comes to what we own and the material lives we lead, are of such an entirely different order than what others face, we do have a real shot at being content with the material circumstances of our lives.
But when it comes to what is termed “self-fulfillment,” well, that, you might say, is a different kettle of fish.
So now let us turn to the second of our two great mental afflictions: ignorance. As we shall see, there is a fundamental misunderstanding when it comes to who we think we are, and it lies at the heart of our problems.
In the Eastern spiritual traditions, ignorance performs the same quintessential role, when it comes to our unhappiness, that disobedience plays in the West. Readers brought up in Western societies all know the story: In the beginning, everything was jake. Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden and swung in hammocks all day long. When they got hungry, they would leisurely pick fruit from the trees that God had generously provided for them. But there was one tree whose fruit God commanded them not to eat. And we know how the story goes from there: of course, they perversely did the one thing they were told not to do, and the rest is history. Adam and Eve were cursed, and they were thrown out of the Garden to fend for themselves. And so, according to the myth, our tale of woe begins.I
In the religious traditions stemming from India, it is ignorance, not insubordination to God’s will, that’s at the root of our problems. And in these Eastern traditions, there’s usually no myth of origins offered to show how ignorance came into our lives.II Ignorance has been with us since time with no beginning, and each of us is simply born with it. It’s a standard-issue part of the makeup for us as human beings (not to mention other life-forms).
Because of this ignorance, we make fundamental mistakes about who we are and how to live a good life. We really don’t get it when it comes to what’s what. And because we don’t get it, we’re really in for it!
Ignorance (avidya in Sanskrit) is not so much not knowing as it is mis-knowing. Our minds invert things; we mistakenly think things are one way when actually they are another. In the ancient Yoga Sutra, ignorance is (and this is the norm in South Asian scriptures) said to be the “field” or “breeding ground” in which all the other mental afflictions grow. As long as the “root” of these negative emotions remains uncut, we will continue to suffer through life instead of finding true happiness.2
The Yoga Sutra’s definition of this Mother of All Mental Afflictions is interesting and comprehensive:
Ignorance is the belief that what is impermanent is permanent, what is impure is pure, what will bring suffering will bring happiness, and what is without an essence has an essence.3
This is, I know, quite a mouthful. But it does, I promise you, have direct bearing on both the real cause of our unhappiness and the disastrously wrong view we have about our individual identity.
So let’s look carefully at what is meant by each of these four ways in which ignorance works to turn things upside down in our lives:
1. We believe what is impermanent to be permanent.
Does this ever happen to us, do you think? All the time! We are perpetually thrown for a loop when impermanent things, things we thought wouldn’t change, actually do change—or else don’t change precisely the way we wanted them to.
Our relationships, our financial situation, our jobs, our possessions, our very bodies and thoughts and feelings—everything in our lives is transitory and fleeting. When our partners change (“Don’t go changing,” sings Billy Joel—but how can any of us not?); when our once-operative computer freezes up; when the boss suddenly alters our job description; when we get depressed, sick, old, or die—what is it but impermanence smacking us upside the head? Wake up! Did you think this would last forever?
No, you might protest, I know that things and people change. But I wanted them to go this way and instead they changed that way! Well, welcome to reality. We can’t govern the specifics of how external things and other people will change any more than we can magically stop change from occurring at all.
We’ll return below to the fantasy of the “controlling self,” that ignorant sense that we can, in the moment, micromanage our lives and the events and people in them to suit our own whims. But here’s the point: change is, and the exact direction of how things change is not within our control. Thinking that changing things won’t change, or believing that we can decree the precise direction in which change will occur, sets us up for a big fall when reality makes its presence known.
2. We believe what is impure to be pure.
The classic example of this misunderstanding involves the way we normally think about the human body. We sometimes, in our vanity, admire our own body for its good looks; even more often, we lust after the attractive, “pure” bodies of others.
But beauty, as they say, is only skin-deep, and really it’s not even that. Even at skin level, up close and personal, we’re all pretty much the same, and it’s not that fetching. The epidermis of you, me, Angelina Jolie, and Johnny Depp is equally hairy, pocked, flaky, and mole-, pimple-, and freckle-marked.
And when we go subterranean, deeper than skin-deep, well, it’s sort of a horror show, isn’t it? One Buddhist text describes this “pure” body we’re so enamored of as a bundle of “hair, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, marrow, kidney, heart, liver, membranes, spleen, lungs, stomach, bowels, intestines, excrement, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, serum, saliva, mucus, synovial fluid [whatever that is—we probably don’t want to know!], and urine.”4
Not a pretty picture, when we actually think about it—which we definitely don’t like to do, especially in the throes of either narcissistic self-admiration or sexual longing for another.
One of my teachers used to argue that supermodels, as they promenade down the runways exhibiting their external exquisiteness (here’s me on the outside!) should also be mandated to carry and display a colostomy bag (and here’s me on the inside!). But that would sort of spoil the show, wouldn’t it? Our attraction to the physical body as something “pure” and desirable requires a dose of fantasy and a dollop of willful overlooking of the disagreeable details.
While it’s important to maintain a certain level of self-acceptance when it comes to our own bodies, and while there’s nothing intrinsically wrong in being appreciative of or attracted to the physical beauty of another man or woman, our ignorance comes in being unrealistic about what the human body really is. We suffer because of our illusions about our physicality. And these illusions include thinking that beauty, youthful appearance, strength, and flexibility are inherent and unchanging in ourselves and in others. (See above for mistaking impermanent things for permanent ones.)
3. We believe what will bring suffering will bring happiness.
This one is sort of a catchall category that describes our ignorance when it comes to what we think will really pay off for us. Throughout our lives, we scurry about pursuing money, things, experiences, and other people, in the hopes that somehow they will make us happy. But instead, we are repeatedly let down and perpetually left dissatisfied. What we thought would bring happiness ends up leaving us feeling unfulfilled and discontent.
We’ve set things (and people) up to fail. External things and beings don’t have it in their power to make us happy; at best, they can only bring a temporary spike in pleasure. Only we have the power to create real, deep, and lasting satisfaction within ourselves and our lives.
True happiness can only come from within. It’s not “out there” somewhere, oozing out from something or someone else. And when we go looking for it in other people or external things, instead of discovering happiness we find ourselves disappointed, disheartened, and sometimes infuriated.
4. We believe what is without an essence has an essence.
When it comes to ignorance, this one’s sort of the “root of the root” and will lead us directly to our mistaken view of ourselves: We think that things that have no “essences” (the word in Sanskrit is anatman, often translated as “no self”) do have some kind of enduring and definitive quality or characteristic (an essential “self” or atman).
Here’s an example of this kind of mistake. Just imagine that you have an annoying person in your life—an angry boss, an exasperating ex, or a troublesome relative. When we encounter (or even think about) such challenging people, we feel strongly that it’s obvious to us that they are defined by the traits we ascribe to them: they are irritating, exasperating, or troublesome (or provocative, mean, hurtful—pick the adjective that is apropos of your own annoying person). Any fool could see it! That’s the way they really are—essentially.
The proof that there actually are no essentially angry, exasperating, or troublesome people in the world is rather obvious, although we choose to ignore it all the time: These people have friends. They have loved ones. They have loads of people in their lives who do not find them angry, exasperating, or troublesome.III
This some find perplexing—so much so that they go to the bother of trying to convince this annoying person’s friends, family, and acquaintances how wrong they are. How can you be friends with her? Let me tell you the real deal about him! But alas, the annoying person’s friends, family, and acquaintances often persevere in their error, don’t they?
I once had a student raise his hand in class and say what we all think before the filter goes up that prevents really stupid things from coming out of our mouths: “I know someone who everyone would find annoying.” Like we should all get on a bus and go on a field trip to visit the one essentially annoying person in the world. We’d all file by that innately objectionable person and go, “Ooh, yeah, that’s right . . . so annoying!” Like a lighthouse casting its beam, this annoying being would just exude annoyance, and whenever we entered the purview of The Essentially Annoying Person, we could not help but be annoyed.
This is a self-justifying fantasy, and one that’s often fortified when we find a few other people who agree with our evaluation of the person in question. See, we say to ourselves, she really is annoying. It’s a groundswell, a veritable movement, a bandwagon of right-thinking folks, all of whom agree with me!
Well, in fact, no. It’s not that you and your fellow travelers correctly see some definitive unsavory essence that eludes the perception of others. It’s that you (and, OK, perhaps some others) respond in a certain disagreeable way to some aspect of the personality of another. It’s not that someone is annoying; it’s that you are annoyed.
We don’t see the world and the people in it as they are; we see them as we are. There are no difficult people in the world until and unless you find them to be so.
And as a result of not comprehending this fundamental fact of life, we suffer. Instead of working on what it is in us that is aroused by the annoying person, instead of locating and then fixing the button inside of ourselves that gets pushed, we just complacently assume that the difficulties we experience with our annoying person are the annoying person’s fault—because “annoying” is what they are, not just what they seem to us to be.
The same error can be made in reverse. Let’s say you enjoy Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, as I do. Chunky Monkey flavor, let’s suppose. Mmmm. Tastes so good! It is good-tasting ice cream, and anyone in their right mind would agree!
And then we encounter someone who doesn’t like Chunky Monkey! Maybe they don’t even like the Ben & Jerry’s brand. Possibly, they don’t care for ice cream at all!
If Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream had the essence of being tasty, everyone with working taste buds, and who was not insane, would find it so. But (amazingly to those of us who like B&J’s CM), there are people of apparently sound mind and taste buds who don’t take a shine to it.
The qualities that we assume are in the people, objects, and experiences in life are not really there. These qualities are coming from us, not at us. We’re projecting them, not perceiving them. Sure, we have our reasons. They say this or do that, and this pisses us off. But others hear or see the same things and don’t get pissed off. We find a person “difficult” only because we have difficulties with him or her. They are not intrinsically, inherently, or essentially “difficult”—in spite of the way they may appear to us.
Thinking otherwise is a serious blunder, and one that we make all the time, much to our detriment. This kind of error is the condition of possibility for the kind of judgmental attitude we talked about in chapter 2, and for all the nastiness that comes in its wake.
This is, bottom line, raw and unadulterated ignorance. Wisdom 101 is the dawning of the realization that we got it all wrong, all back-ass-wards.
There’s an even more fundamental application of our tendency to err in our perception of how things and people really are, one that lies even deeper than the mistake of thinking that our “annoying person” is annoying, or that Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is delicious.
If the Mother of All Mental Afflictions is ignorance, the Mother of All Ignorance is the belief in a kind of a “self” that has never existed. What we have called the “root of the root” when it comes to ignorance—thinking things have an inherent essence when they do not—has a root of its own: the “root of the root of the root” is ignorance about the nature of the self.
We believe that we ourselves have a fixed, inherently existing, definitive essence, a self (atman)IV, when there actually is no such thing (anatman). And it is really this foundational error that not only undergirds all our misperceptions but also undermines any chance we have for finding true happiness and real self-knowledge.
The “self” here is not what we’ve been referring to as the true or higher self (the Self, Buddha nature, or soul) that we can and do access when we cease thinking we’re somebody and relax into being nobody. What is meant here is an individual, particularistic lower sense of identity—the egoistic self, the being somebody self, the little-voice-inside-your-head self.
It’s “you” (say your name to yourself) that we’re talking about here. It’s the self that rises up in defense of itself when falsely accused—“You stole my car!” “No, no, I didn’t!”—it’s that “I” we’re now focused on. It’s the self that has a birthday, and so will have a death day. It’s the “itchy self” that’s unhappy, discontented, and dissatisfied, and that, fortunately, has no essential existence as such.
And until we see this caterpillar for the chimera it really is, we’ll only have a passing acquaintance with our true butterfly nature, that part of us that is free, spacious, and unbounded, that real Self who has never been born and so will never die.
Trying to locate the individual “somebody self” that we’re so sure, in our ignorance, is really there is like trying to find that bespectacled little guy with the red-and-white striped shirt and beanie known as Waldo (aka “Wally” in some markets), hidden inconspicuously within a vast crowd of people.
Only it’s worse, because in this case “Waldo” isn’t there at all. No needle to find in the haystack. Attempting to locate the self that we are so convinced really exists but can’t be found is like playing the “Where’s Waldo?” from hell!
• • •
When we think of ourselves, who is it that we are thinking about?
Who is it that we think sticks his or her head inside those carnival cutouts: the groups we identify with, the jobs that help define us, the roles we assume in our skein of relationships (father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter, friend, enemy)? Who is it that we think is angry, jealous, proud, envious, or depressed?
Beneath all the superstructure of personality makeup, memories, emotions, conditioning, and role-playing, who is the “I” that has a personality, a past, mental afflictions, an occupation, a set of relationships, and all these various roles to play?
In the Buddhist scriptures, it is said that the self we think exists but doesn’t exist is one that (if it truly existed) would have three essential traits: it would be unitary, independent, and unchanging. But a particular, individual self—the “you” that your name refers to—with any of these three qualities is totally unfindable.V
Now, dear reader, be forewarned: you might not appreciate how the proof for this unfolds. Your egoistic, self-infatuated but ultimately imaginary self will try to protect itself from being exposed for what it is. It will protest; it will feign boredom; it will say,
Oh, whatever. Let’s take a break from reading this bit and get something to eat!
However, ignorance is not bliss. The truth is what will set you free. But first, as Gloria Steinem once observed, it will piss you off.5
So here we go . . .
Unitary means we believe there’s only one of us. Unless you have a serious case of multiple personality disorder, you think of yourself in the singular, not the plural. When we think or speak of ourselves, we say “I,” not “we” (monarchs using the royal “we” excepted).
The classical analysis when it comes to trying to find this particular Waldo is called “The One or the Many.” Is the self one thing, or is it many things? If the self were to exist in the way we think it does—as a real thing, something perceptible—it would have to be either one or the other.
Although we normally assume that the egoistic, personalized self is unitary, we should ask ourselves, “Does this supposed singular thing have parts?” And yes, we could say we are indeed made up of two main components: physical and mental, the body and the mind.VI And we do, at different times, identify with one or another or both of these parts.
If I were to ask you, “How old are you?” and you gave me a number in response, you would have just identified with your body. And if in reply to the question “How are you?” you said “I am upset, aggravated, pleased, OK,” or whatever, you would have identified with your feelings, with your present state of mind.
So already there is a problem here. How can the one self be both the body (“I am six feet tall”) and the mind (“I am stressed out”)? That’s two things, not one—two kinds of selves, one physical and one mental, but not a unitary “I.”
And when we look at either one of these two great portions of the supposed individual and indivisible self, we find that they themselves are not really single things either. What we call “the body,” as if it were one organism, is itself composed of many constituents—the torso, the limbs, and then all those yucky things inside the body that we talked about earlier in this chapter. And each of these separate parts is infinitely divisible into its own constituent parts. Even a single finger can, upon investigation, be dissected into the part above the knuckle and the part below, the fingernail part and the part beneath the fingernail, the left side of the fingernail and the right side—and on and on, ad infinitum.
There’s no part of us that isn’t further divisible into its own parts. That’s what’s entailed in saying “a part”; it’s something that has a right side, a left side, a top, and a bottom (the parts of a physical object), which makes it different from other parts. And the same is true with a moment in time: a thought arises, lasts for a while, and then ends, and each of those three parts of the moment itself has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
When we say something like “right side” or “beginning,” these parts of a part can always be further partitioned: “right side of the right side, left side of the right side, top and bottom of the right side;” or “beginning of the beginning, middle of the beginning, end of the beginning.”
And so it is that if we think we are the body and/or the mind, that self cannot be unitary, but in fact would be endlessly multiplied and fragmented.
Oh, come on! I didn’t really think I actually was my parts. I’m not my body and mind; I have a body and mind. Now can we please stop thinking about this and get something to eat?
OK then. So while we might sometimes carelessly identify with one or another of the various constituents of the self, maybe the “I” we think we are is separable from those parts. And this would be the second of the three qualities that we attribute to the personal self: independence.
The investigation applied to this second kind of misconception about the self is called “The Same As or Different From?” It goes like this: Is the self the same as the parts that comprise the self, or is it different from (i.e., independent of) those parts? And like “the One and the Many,” if the self really and truly exists the way we think it does, it can’t logically be both. It’s an either/or proposition.
So let’s check. If the self were the same as its parts, it couldn’t be a unitary self, for as we’ve seen there are lots and lots of parts, physical and mental, that would comprise a self that was the same as its parts. If I were identical to the parts of me, there would be as many me’s as there are parts to me.
That leaves the other option, that there’s a self that is different from the parts. This would be a self that is independent of the parts, a self that has a body and mind. And “independent” means “doesn’t need them.” The body and mind could then be heaped together in London while the self could somehow separately be in New York City.
But that’s impossible, isn’t it? For one thing, whose mind is it that’s thinking about a self that exists apart from the mind that’s thinking about such a self? And in any case, that’s not the you-say-your-name-to-yourself self we are so sure must be somewhere floating around inside the mind-body complex.
A room has four walls, but where is the room that has four walls? The self that we imagine has a body and mind is as unfindable as a unitary self that’s the same as the body and mind. “The self,” like “the room,” cannot really exist independent of the parts that make its shadowy semblance possible.
Now this is really enough! Why can’t he just leave us alone? What about that snack?
Finally, we turn to the third impossible thing that we believe when it comes to ourselves: the idea that there is an unchanging personal self. This is sometimes called the “witness self”—an invariable “I” that has observed “me” growing up as a child, graduating from school, getting married, having a family, moving from one house to another, and is presently watching “me” get old and moving nearer and nearer to death.VII
We all have this sense that there is an unchanging witness self that carries on continuously as everything else—life as a whole, one’s thoughts and feelings, and every individual part of the body—is perpetually and ceaselessly changing. So where’s that Waldo? Can we really believe that there’s a tangible, perceptible present self that is in any real way whatsoever the same as the self we were when we were three years old?
Yes, we can believe that, as long as we don’t have to think about it, so just quit it already! Like Popeye said, “I y’am what I y’am and that’s all that I y’am!” Why bother with all this! Let’s just stop this thinking about things, OK? I’m hungry . . .
To “The One or the Many” and “The Same As or Different From,” we can now add a third kind of analysis to our “Where’s Waldo?” search from hell: “Changing or Unchanging?” Where is the individual, particularistic self that remains unchanging as everything else in us and around us changes? Or more subtly, where’s the self that undergoes change? If there’s only a constantly fluctuating self, there’s not also an unchanging witness self, let alone an unchanging self that also undergoes change.
So the exercise is now complete. Disoriented? Confused? Filled with objections? Well, it’s no wonder. As I warned you above, the ego doesn’t like this “Where’s Waldo?” game one bit! All kinds of resistance arises in ourselves when we try to find the “somebody self” we think is ourselves!
But I just know I’m somebody! There’s probably some trick here. How could it be that I’m really nobody when it feels so obvious that I am somebody? And I still didn’t get my snack!
• • •
And there is a trick here, actually. The self can be thought of as both unitary and plural, as both the same as and different from its parts, as both changing and continuous—because the self is just an idea, not a thing. From one perspective, the self can be conceptualized as singular, independent, and unchanging; and from another perspective it can be thought of as plural, contingent, and fluctuating. It depends how you look at it—because the “somebody self” is not really there at all apart from our thinking it’s there.
When it comes to the little, individual, particularistic, snowflake, caterpillar self, there is not a findable unitary, independent, unchanging entity either inside or apart from the body and mind. The “somebody self” is not a discrete, discernable object; it is only a conceptualized image.
When we say we have a “self-image” or a “self-conception,” we’re way more accurate than when we say we have a self or when we claim to be somebody.
The “Waldo” we try to find when we go looking for it turns out to be only imaginary. Remember the movie Harvey, with Jimmy Stewart? The one whose lead character was always accompanied by an invisible six-foot rabbit? Well, the self we think we are is just as imaginary as Jimmy Stewart’s friend Harvey the rabbit.
But imaginary things can feel quite real and can function quite well to bring us a lot of difficulty in life. The Mother of the Mother of All Mental Afflictions—ignorance about what kind of self we think we have—leads to all kinds of problems.
Our belief in the “self-existence” of the personal self—the feeling that Waldo (or Harvey) is really there apart from our merely thinking he’s there—inevitably engenders what is called in the Buddhist texts “self-cherishing.” We become enchanted with and seduced by an illusory impression of the individualized self, and then we grasp and cling to it for dear life.
All the other mental afflictions—desire, anger, lust, pride, jealousy, envy, greed—arise either to defend or to promote what is, after all is said and done, just a misconception. Ultimately, we are imprisoned not by these negative emotions, but by the imaginary self who is adversely affected by them.
There’s another false notion we have about ourselves that we haven’t examined yet. It’s the sense we have that there’s a self who’s in control of the present, a “master self” that rules over the current state of the body, the mind, and, indeed, all aspects of our life.
I like to think of this version of “me” as the “Captain Kirk self.”
In the original Star Trek television series, the spaceship Enterprise was overseen by Captain Kirk, played by William Shatner. He was often depicted sitting in his commander chair—a replica of which I’ve seen for sale, priced at over two thousand dollars!—on the upper deck of the starship, gazing out at the cosmos through that cool wraparound windshield. And Captain Kirk would bark out orders to his crew: “Scotty, raise deflector shields!” And Scotty would dutifully obey: “Aye, aye, sir! Deflectors raised.”
Somewhere ensconced inside the head, just behind the eyes (our own personal windshield of our own personal Spaceship Me) is where we usually locate the Captain Kirk self. And just like the dear captain, that commander self barks out orders: “Legs, prepare to walk!” “Mouth, commence talking!” “Mind, remember to pick up some milk!”
And often enough, our lackey crew obeys. The legs move when ordered to walk, the mouth flaps when instructed to speak (sometimes even before the mind is commanded to think!), and frequently we do remember to get the milk when Captain Kirk enjoins us to.
These kinds of experiences give us a strong conviction that this master self is in charge not only of what the body does and the mind thinks but also of everything else in our lives. And when confronted with incontrovertible evidence that contradicts our conviction, it’s usually quite upsetting. When we don’t get our own way, the old Captain tends to pitch a fit!
If there really were such an all-controlling self, why would that ruler ever decree that we have a bad day, or get upset at an annoying person, or have a headache, or get sick or old, or choose to be anything other than happy and content all the time? If our own personal Captain Kirk truly existed, wouldn’t some of his commands seem sort of wacky? “Scotty, let’s get really gloomy today. Raise depressors!” Wouldn’t Scotty’s clear retort be, “Captain, are ye mad? Have ye gone insane?”
In fact, there is no real Captain Kirk self, just as there’s no unitary, independent, or unchanging personal self. And here’s the real proof of that: we can’t change the present in the present. If there were a Captain Kirk self, we would command everything in life to be just as we wished. And that’s obviously not happening—have you noticed?
As you can probably tell from all my references, I watched a lot of television as a kid. Readers of a certain age might actually remember viewing two shows I used to like from the 1960s—Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie. In the first, Elizabeth Montgomery played Samantha, a full-blown witch with all kinds of supernatural powers, married to a pretty hapless ordinary mortal named Darrin. When Samantha wanted to effect some change in a situation (often to fix something poor Darrin had messed up), she would simply wiggle her nose and—shazam!—the world would bend to her witchy will.
Bewitched met with some success—it was the second most watched program on television in 1964, and nearly forty years later TV Guide magazine included it in a list of “The 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time”—so it wasn’t long before a similar program, I Dream of Jeannie, went on the air. The premise again involved a match-up between a magic-making woman (a genie this time) and a normal guy (who was, however, an astronaut, whom his devoted wife called “master”—a patriarchal fantasy, simultaneously subverted by the mismatch when it came to actual power).
In addition to offering a genie instead of a witch in the lead role, the other major difference in the two programs (product differentiation!) was that Jeannie didn’t wiggle her nose to magically transform reality whenever she wished. Her modus operandi was to fold her arms and forcefully nod her head such that her long ponytail would flop around a bit. And that was enough to change anything she wanted, right there and then, in the moment.
Most of us go through life wiggling our noses and shaking our ponytails, trying to miraculously transform the present in the present. But things don’t work like that; we’re not witches and genies, and the confirmation of this is all too apparent. The traffic doesn’t unsnarl just because we wish it would; the headache doesn’t disappear simply because we don’t like having it; and the annoying person doesn’t magically stop being annoying when we, metaphorically speaking, twitch our nose or bounce our ponytail. We can’t wriggle our way out of tight spots just by wiggling our appendages!
The desire to change the present in the present is perhaps the biggest and most recurring itch of all, but it’s the one we clearly can’t alleviate by sorcery scratching. That mojo ain’t working. The Captain Kirk/Samantha/Jeannie self is really (to switch the pop-cultural reference yet again) the Wizard of Oz, just a humbug behind the curtain, ineffectually moving nonfunctional levers and pulleys.
The realization that the “somebody self” is just an idea should come as really good news. If there were essentially a unitary, independent, and unchanging individual self, it would be, well, unchangeable. But luckily, as we’ve seen, there is no such self. And so it’s a good thing that we are not really the somebody we think we are.
But, then again, you could equally say that we are just the somebody we think we are, and that’s all the “somebody” any of us is. It’s the conceptualization of somebody that makes us that somebody—and really nothing more than that. As one ancient Indian text puts it, “The one who thinks he is free is free; the one who thinks he is bound is bound. It is true what they say: You become what you think.”6
To say that the “somebody self” we usually desperately clutch to is illusory is not the same as saying it doesn’t exist at all. The individual self does, of course, exist . . . but only as an idea, a concept, a label. As philosopher Julian Baggini puts it, “The idea of the self as a construction is one that many want to resist, because it seems to imply that it is not real. But of course constructions can be perfectly real.”VIII
And there are different kinds of constructions or conceptualizations of the self, some more beneficial than others. The belief in a unitary, independent, and unchanging self; or the conviction that there really is an all-powerful Captain Kirk self—these are not helpful concepts. Besides the fact that there’s no findable “Waldo,” the very idea of a self like this leaves us feeling either paralyzed (how could we change such an unchangeable self?) or frustrated (Captain Kirk’s commands so often go unheeded!).
The “somebody self” is just like the room we talked about above. The room has four walls, and there’s no room without the four walls, but “room” is just a name and a concept that arises due to the empty space enclosed by the walls. And it’s just the same with the individual self: it’s nobody that makes somebody possible.
We’re nobody apart from thinking that we’re somebody, and when we stop thinking we’re somebody, we’re left with really nobody. This observation points us to the true methods for “self-improvement,” which we’ll investigate at length in the next chapter.
The question is not whether our individual sense of identity exists. It obviously does; we hear that little voice inside our heads pretty much constantly. The crux of the matter is how such a self exists—and how we could improve it.
By recognizing that we’re nobody (that is, that we’re not a hard-wired somebody who exists essentially and unchangingly), we have the possibility of conceptualizing ourselves as a better somebody—a more contented, happy, and fulfilled person.
And by doing so, we will have moved closer and closer to the Great Itchlessness we all desire.
Action Plan: Scratching the Itch
Stop for five or ten minutes each day and pinpoint your biggest desires, your most persistent itches. First identify what it is that you want. Is it more money, a better house or car, or a new iPhone? Or is it an improved relationship with your partner, your family members, or with someone at work? Maybe it’s more recognition and popularity, or a holiday in Bermuda. Or perhaps it’s losing a few pounds or feeling healthier.
Once you’ve identified the itch, focus on what you hope will be the outcome if the itch gets scratched—on what you think would happen if you actually obtained what you desire. See if you can’t get to the realization that what, in fact, you wish for is actually just contentment—the end of the itchiness itself.
Then revisit the particular desire you’ve identified. Would getting what you want really bring about the hoped-for satisfaction, or would it just provide some partial and temporary relief from the wanting? While we may not be able to achieve contentment immediately, this action plan helps us train ourselves to be more aware of what it is we really desire.
I. Overachieving, type-A personalities who are obsessed with their careers might recall that God’s curse for humanity as he kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden was to cause man and woman thereafter to work for a living and look after their children, instead of granting us a permanent holiday.
II. There are some exceptions. For stories of how ignorance originated in the Hindu and Buddhist texts, consult Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).
III. Another indication that people are not essentially the way they sometimes appear to be is that they don’t always seem to be that way. Sometimes angry people appear angrier than at other times, and sometimes they don’t appear angry at all. If the angry person were essentially an angry person, he or she would always be an angry person, to exactly the same degree. For an “angry person” would always be that and couldn’t essentially be that and something other than that at the same time. Isn’t that what “essentially” means, after all?
IV. In some Indian texts, the Sanskrit word atman is used differently than it is here in the Yoga Sutra and in many Buddhist scriptures. Elsewhere it is synonymous with the “true self” as opposed to an individual, egoistic self (which is sometimes designated as the jiva to contrast it with the atman).
V. The latest research in the neurosciences is validating the ancient Buddhist observations. As one recent summary puts it, an unchanging and continuous self, a “unifer” self, and an “agent” self (similar to the “Captain Kirk self” talked about later in the book) are all “mistaken beliefs” or “illusions” that “do not withstand scrutiny.” See the special issue of New Scientist magazine, “The Self: The Greatest Trick Your Mind Ever Played” (February 2013). See also Julian Baggini, The Ego Trick: What Does It Mean to Be You? (London: Granta Books, 2011).
VI. There are neuroscientists nowadays who believe that the mind’s activities—consciousness, thought, emotions, and so forth—can be reduced to the brain and its firing of neurons. While only a few researchers would be so reductive as to say there is absolutely no difference between the mind and the brain (most still acknowledging some sort of “ghost in the machine”), there does seem to be a trend toward the position that ultimately there are only physical parts to our being. While such a reductive view of the self does not accord with the assumptions of any of the world’s spiritual traditions—indeed, it is the opposite of a belief in anything spiritual—it has no bearing on our argument here: Are we one thing (even if it’s just a purely physical thing, just the body) or many?
VII. The “witness self” spoken of here can be distinguished from one of the two “birds” we encountered in the passage from the Upanishads quoted toward the end of chapter 1. The “bird” who looks on impassively as the other “bird” (the individual self) eats and engages with the world, is the true Self—the ocean as opposed to the individual wave; our nameless true nature, not you say your name-to-yourself.
VIII. Baggini has coined this term “ego trick” to describe the play between the self we think exists and the conceptualization of the self that does exist: “The Ego Trick is not to persuade us that we exist when we do not, but to make us believe we are more substantial and enduring than we really are. There may be an illusion as to what we really are, but not that we really are.” Julian Baggini, The Ego Trick, 41, 152.