CHAPTER
14

Studying the Self

In This Chapter

It may seem ironic that Zen involves so much contemplation of self, when the whole idea is to give up self-centeredness! Wouldn’t your time be better spent doing nice things for people, or engaging in activities that make you forget about yourself? The Zen view is that these kinds of activities are great and you should continue to do them, but that they probably aren’t going to give you lasting peace of mind. The best way to achieve that is to personally experience and verify the teaching of no-self that I introduced in Chapter 11.

In this chapter I walk you through how to use Zen tools to look more carefully at your fundamental misunderstanding: that you have an inherent, enduring self-nature. By paying careful attention to your thoughts, feelings, and behavior, you can notice certain signs that you’re operating under the influence of the delusion of persistent self-essence. Once you notice these signs, you can challenge this delusion (incorrect belief) and prove it wrong. In zazen you can explore your pervasive sense of self. You can do this so intimately that at some point the illusion is recognized as exactly that—something that appears to be, but is not.

To Study Buddhism Is to Study the Self

Zen master Dogen, one of the major Soto Zen ancestors, went so far as to say that studying Buddhism is studying the self. Zen Master Rinzai, through whom the Rinzai school of Zen arose, also thought that seeing the true nature of the self was the essence of spiritual liberation. This is because your conviction that you have an inherent, enduring self-nature is the linchpin that holds together the mental machinery that generates your problems: stress, fear, dissatisfaction, grasping, aversion, selfishness, anger—you name it. Pull out the linchpin and the machine falls apart.

ZEN WISDOM

“To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be verified by all things. To be verified by all things is to let the body and mind of the self and the body and mind of others drop off. There is a trace of realization that cannot be grasped. We endlessly express this ungraspable trace of realization.”

—Zen Master Dogen (1200–1253), from his essay “Genjokoan,” as translated by Shokaku Okumura in Realizing Genjokoan

A personal experience of the true nature of self is considered so important in Zen, there’s a word for it. Kensho means “seeing the true nature of self.” It’s often described as a dramatic event, where someone drops to their knees, weeps, or whoops for joy when they finally see the truth, and afterward they are forever changed. The idea of having this kind of sensational experience has attracted many people to Zen. This is particularly true in the West because the first Zen teachings published in Western languages focused on Rinzai Zen and the goal of kensho.

Striving for insight can be useful, but what people often misunderstand is that the important thing is seeing the truth for yourself, not having a dramatic experience. Sometimes insight comes suddenly, in a big rush, and the occasion feels remarkable. Sometimes understanding comes a little bit at a time, and there’s no exciting episode to point to as your “enlightenment experience.” What matters is that you correct your fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of self, because this will be transformative whether the insight comes suddenly or gradually.

DEFINITION

Kensho means “seeing the true nature of self.” The word generally refers to a dramatic awakening experience where someone suddenly realizes there is no inherent, enduring self-nature. However, the same thing can be understood more gradually, with lots of smaller insights. Another word for seeing the truth is satori, which means comprehension or understanding.

Signs of Belief in Self-Essence

Your belief that you have a persistent, independent self-essence has been with you since you were an infant, as discussed in Chapter 11. It’s so familiar and pervasive it’s hard to even realize you hold it. I call this your self delusion, because a delusion is a belief that doesn’t reflect reality. Fortunately, self delusion results in telltale signs, and the Zen tools of zazen, mindfulness, and the precepts can help you notice them. This is far from an exhaustive list, but it can give you a sense of what to look for.

A Sense of Imperative

Whenever you start to feel like you must do something, you must have something, or something must happen, your self delusion is at work. This sense of imperative implies a big “or else,” and at the bottom of all of your reasons for doing or wanting something is the idea “or else I will cease to exist.” You may not believe that refraining from acting out your imperative will literally result in the end of your life, but you’re worried that some vital aspect of your self will come to an end if you don’t.

As discussed in Chapter 13, anything you’re attached to—that is, anything you have incorporated into your self-concept, or made a possession of self—is something you need to protect from change or annihilation, because it is synonymous with your being.

It’s entirely possible to respond to life and take care of yourself without the imperative to protect your inherent, enduring self-essence. For example, you may start to think that you need to find a new job. The work environment at your current job is stressful and negative, and you no longer find the work fulfilling. You can calmly start to consider whether you will be able to find another job, or whether another job will be better than the one you have. Maybe the time isn’t right to make a change, but you decide that you’ll do so when you can.

This coolheaded way of dealing with your problem is entirely different from the ordeal you might go through if you felt an overwhelming sense of imperative around it. If your self-concept is threatened by having to endure a job you don’t like, or by not having a meaningful and rewarding occupation, your process of considering your options will be filled with stress, a refusal to consider certain possibilities, and impatience.

Anger and Resistance

Anger is a sign that you feel the need to protect something. Some anger is sincerely on behalf of others, but most of it has to do with feeling the need to protect yourself or something you’re attached to. When your anger is self-centered, you don’t just recognize something that needs to be dealt with, you think, “How dare they!” Whatever is provoking you is not just a problem, it’s a personal affront.

Anger can manifest mildly or dramatically as resistance, irritability, aggravation, antagonism, outrage, and hatred. No matter what it looks like, underneath it is usually a story about how someone has done you wrong, or acted out of accord with your view of the way the world should be. Zen master Bodhidharma’s commentary on the precept against anger says that in order to keep the precept, you need to give up “contriving reality for the self.”

Having a basic sense of right and wrong, or being able to tell suffering from happiness, is not contriving reality for the self. Attributing inherent, enduring existence to yourself, your views, your attachments, other people, and other people’s motivations is making up a story to fuel your sense of righteousness. You may need to take drastic action in the world to alleviate suffering, but you can do so without anger. You don’t need to conceive of you versus them, right versus wrong, or good versus evil. These concepts are just part of the story your self cooks up to make sure your self-essence is safe, justified, and on the right side of the struggle.

CONSIDER THIS

In one of the most ancient Buddhist texts, Shakyamuni Buddha gives this teaching on anger and hatred:

“‘He abused me, attacked me, defeated me, robbed me!’ For those carrying on like this, hatred does not end. ‘She abused me, attacked me, defeated me, robbed me!’ For those not carrying on like this, hatred ends. Hatred never ends through hatred. By non-hate alone does it end. This is an ancient truth.”

From The Dhammapada, translated by Gil Fronsdal

Greed and Stinginess

When you are acting selfishly, with greed or stinginess, your self delusion is operating. In Chapter 10 I talked about how it’s not a problem to have desires and preferences, but when you view them as imperatives that must be acted on with grasping or aversion, you create problems. The sense that your desire must be filled, or that you absolutely have to hold on to something, arises from your self delusion. The part of you concerned with your inherent, enduring existence is filled with anxiety because things are constantly changing, and it can’t find anything to rely on. Therefore it tries to grab and hold on to things in order to feel substantial and real.

Again, you can be responsible and reasonable about the stuff in your life without indulging greed or stinginess. For example, you may get a new car and enjoy it very much. This may not cause suffering, but let’s say you can’t get a new car. Are you deeply disappointed or distressed? Do you need a new car to feel good about yourself? If so, the new car has become an object of greed.

An example of being responsible versus stingy is deciding not to give money to a relative who has repeatedly been careless with their finances (assuming you have the money to give). This decision involves stinginess if you find yourself needing to justify it, and thinking at length about how you don’t have enough money. A sense of scarcity when things really aren’t that bad is a sure sign of preoccupation with self.

Physical Tension

Finally, all of the signs of self delusion listed above generally occur along with physical tension. People describe this as tightness in places like the gut, jaws, chest, forehead, or hands. This is your body manifesting your self-concern, getting ready to fight, flee, grasp, or push away, as necessary to further your self’s agenda. The involvement of your body is evidence of how deep your self delusion goes; it’s not just an idea you ponder, it’s a conviction you’d be willing to bet your life on! Depending on your personality, your physical sensations might be the first sign you notice that you’re worried about your unchanging self-essence.

Challenging Delusion

The belief that you have a persistent self-essence is a delusion, or a belief that isn’t true. The pervasive sense that you exist in such a way is an illusion, or an erroneous perception. The illusion is much more subtle, and will be discussed in the next section. Your false belief about the nature of self is based on your misperception of self, and this belief is slightly easier to deal with.

Your main self delusion gives rise to other erroneous beliefs that can be examined and challenged. These beliefs have to do with identifying something as part of your essential nature. Because of this identification, the thing must have the same qualities you believe your self-nature has: it must be enduring, and independent of not-self things. When you see that something doesn’t fit these criteria, you can no longer identify it as self-essence.

In Zen practice you continue this process, examining all of your attachments, one after another. After years of concluding, “Oops, not self-essence,” and “Oh, not that either,” your mind opens to the possibility that there isn’t anything that can be pointed to and called self-nature.

It Doesn’t Go Away

If you can watch something arise and pass away, it isn’t part of your inherent, enduring self-nature. You still might consider it part of your self in a larger sense, or a possession of self, but it can’t be part of your essence. Your essence (you think) is always present and doesn’t fundamentally change. (This belief is not a point of view you have arrived at through careful reasoning, remember. It is based on a misperception, so this doesn’t have to make sense.)

If you had to put words to it, you would probably describe your unchanging, ever-present self-nature as awareness, consciousness, or the ability to perceive. Whatever it is, it can’t not be present for even a moment, or it isn’t the inherent, enduring self-nature you count on.

Maybe you think that it’s okay with you if your self-essence goes away and comes back, but that’s not really true as long as you hold on to self delusion. After all, you wouldn’t agree if someone revived you from an unconscious state and then said, “You didn’t exist a few minutes ago.” You would just figure your self-essence had receded to the innermost sanctum of your being and then emerged again.

POTENTIAL PITFALL

If you are the least bit intellectual or philosophical, contemplating self-nature can really get you thinking. Unfortunately, thinking about it is a big obstacle to personally understanding and experiencing it. Any thinking you do will inevitably assume the point of view of an inherent, enduring self, even if you try to avoid it. Even the thought, “I do not exist,” assumes an “I.” No-self describes a human experience, not a philosophical statement about reality.

Thinking about this too much can tie your brain in knots, because there’s no real self to grasp. You will most likely think, “Well, if that’s not my self-essence, then how about ….” You keep on looking for something that isn’t there. Still, when you watch things go away—physical attributes, health, opinions, awareness, consciousness, hope, will—you start to recognize them as not-self. Even if they come back, you know they aren’t part of the essence of who you are. This leads to less attachment, but also brings you closer to understanding the true nature of self.

Independent of Not-Self Things

You also believe this enduring essence you count on is inherent, meaning that it exists within you because of your very nature. It is not something bestowed by someone else, and it can’t be taken away. It does not arise because of surrounding conditions, and therefore won’t disappear due to conditions. Everywhere you go, your entire life, you are inherently you.

For example, imagine that last Wednesday you had a terrible encounter with a co-worker. It really upset and confused you, and for the span of at least an hour you felt very out of sorts, like you weren’t “yourself.” By this, you mean that you weren’t feeling, thinking, and acting in ways you are used to or in ways that you want to. You don’t look back on last Wednesday and think, “Hmmm. There was an hour there that I wasn’t me.” You don’t go that far; your inherent, enduring self-nature was still there last Wednesday, existing as a little speck-sized bit of essence marking the hour as part of your life. No matter what happens, it’s there, and it’s identifiable as you. You think.

After becoming very mindful of your mental and emotional states over time, however, you begin to realize how every part of you is affected by conditions, sooner or later. You recognize that nothing in you stays the same in all conditions. Caffeine makes you alert, and humidity makes you dull. Being surrounded by positive people makes you feel positive, and being surrounded by misery depresses you. At certain times in your life you have felt a great clarity of purpose, but at other times you have felt listless. The positive attitude you cultivated when you were healthy falls apart when you become ill. None of these states were inherent to you, so clearly none of them are your self-essence.

Dispelling Illusion

No matter how many things you recognize are not part of your self-essence, you can still persist in believing you have one. After all, it just feels like you do. Even if you manage to let the mind settle in zazen, and refrain from identifying any of your thoughts and feelings as self, there’s you sitting zazen!

Many Zen teachings and methods are aimed at getting you to drop this self illusion. One of my favorites is to imagine that you are long dead, but somehow, strangely, still aware. If you like, you can imagine your bleached-out skull sitting in a deserted, sunny meadow (go ahead and make it sunny, this isn’t supposed to be depressing).

You have been dead for 100 years, so all the people who would personally remember you are also gone. Anything you worked for or possessed in life has disappeared or belongs to someone else. Many of the things you cared deeply about look very different, because things have changed so much. Your inventions or passions or causes may be obsolete. Given all of this, who are you? You can still imagine inherently existing, but in what way? Then you think of being dead 300 years, or 500. This is a good exercise for focusing in on your belief in self-essence.

If you keep studying your self illusion, in the course of meditation you can notice something radical: when you are thinking, you have a conviction of self-essence. When you aren’t thinking, or at least not doing so consciously, the sense of self isn’t there. Of course, it’s extremely difficult to make this observation, because the second you make it you are thinking. After a while, however, you are able to notice the moment of self-concept arising. Noticing it arise, you know there was a period of time when it wasn’t there.

This absolutely convincing sense of inherent, enduring existence—on which you have based everything—comes and goes! You’ve already stripped away all the things the self identifies with, and now you’ve called into question the only piece of evidence you have left: you feel like you inherently exist. If you don’t have that feeling for a period of time, either your feeling-sense is fallible, or … maybe … you don’t exist the way you think you do.

Dispelling the illusion of having unchanging self-essence is a subtle and involved practice that I can’t cover here in a way that even begins to be comprehensive. The process has been described by Zen masters throughout the ages in countless different ways, as they tried to find the words that would get through to their students. Hopefully this will have at least piqued your interest and given you a sense of what Zen practitioners are doing as they sit so intently for hours, weeks, and years.

The Experience of Less-Self

As I mentioned earlier, you can’t recognize when you are living without the filter of your self-concept. The moment you think, “Ah, here I am, experiencing no-self,” the self-concept is obviously back. Still, you can learn to live with less-self, and this is definitely something you can appreciate and work on.

Ironically, Zen practice can make experiencing less-self more difficult, at first. All of the Zen tools, including zazen, mindfulness, and the precepts, involve you looking more carefully at your life and sense of self. Rather than feeling like you have less-self, you end up feeling like self is front and center all the time!

I remember taking walks as I was learning how to be mindful. I paid attention to my physical movements and sensations, and tried to let go of extra thinking. Naturally, I evaluated the success of my effort, and I noticed how unruly my mind was and how rarely I was fully mindful. Instead of walking with less-self, it seemed like I was walking with a big extra dose of self-consciousness. Unfortunately, there’s no way around this phase of the practice. As the Dogen quote at the beginning of this chapter suggests, you have to study the self in order to forget the self.

Once you can manage to go about your life with less-self, this annoying self-consciousness is replaced by a more direct awareness of life. Your self-concept is entirely unnecessary to your full and effective functioning at this moment, so you learn to do without it. You are just washing the dishes, just eating, just walking. It’s a little like the way you used to do things, except for the absence of something. That something is your self-concern, which used to manifest in the background of your experience as low-level anxiety, vague dissatisfaction, anticipation, or regret, or as more intense things like anguish or a sense of meaninglessness.

The signs of self delusion—a sense of imperative, anger, resistance, greed, stinginess, physical tension—decrease as you live with less and less of a sense of self-essence. They still arise, but you can let go of them much more easily. You know all of these phenomena depend on your self-concept, which is a creation of your mind. You know how to return to life as it is, just breathing into the next moment, and things like anger or greed start to dissipate. Even if they don’t disappear completely, as their form begins to shift and break up like a cloud in the sky, you can’t regard them as entirely real.

Encountering people and things with less-self is especially rewarding, because you can appreciate and see them for what they are. You don’t assess how they fit into your agenda, and subsequently either manipulate them to serve your interests or dismiss them as irrelevant. In fact, you stop dismissing anything. There still may be many things you end up not noticing, because less-self doesn’t necessarily give you unusual powers of attention, but you don’t look elsewhere out of boredom because the thing in front of you is just another grocery line, just another customer, or just another evening at home with your partner. Dismissing something as being unworthy of your care, attention, and appreciation involves looking at it in terms of your small self’s agenda.

Living without an agenda means everything is fascinating. Even the annoying and painful stuff. It’s all part of the unfolding drama of your particular human life, which is, as far as you can know, your one and only human life. Awareness of this results in a curiosity that sustains you throughout all of the work you have to do to live.

The Least You Need to Know