Who Are We? The Buddha's Answer
Were we to have sought out divine guidance in ancient Greece we might have gone to visit the Oracle of Delphi. And if we had made that journey, upon reaching the temple we would have seen the Oracle's most famous maxim inscribed in stone over the entrance: Know Yourself (γνῶθι σεαυτόν, gnōthi seauton). It also seems likely that if, even now, Buddhists were to come across this aphorism that they would agree that it is some of the highest wisdom that we could put into practice.
But why? What exactly, especially from a Buddhist point of view, does this knowledge (a word that should perhaps be put into quotes) help us achieve?
To begin to answer this question, we should remind ourselves that the Buddha's teaching is designed to accomplish one thing, which is liberation from dukkha, a word which has been variously translated as “suffering”, “unsatisfatoriness”, or even “bummerness”. It's the “bumpy ride” of life: everything from the slightest of irritations up to the suffering resulting from the most intense tragedies. The Buddha summarized this as, “birth, old age, sickness, and death1.”
But how does “knowing ourselves” help us become liberated from this? In short, the Buddha teaches us that we mis-identify who we are: we mistake our “self” to be our bodies and minds. And then he points out that if we start to look for our “selves” in those places we won't find them there.
One reason that this can't be the case is that if something were actually “our” self, it should be completely under our control. But we know that, with regards to our bodies, if we get sick, we cannot just will ourselves not to be sick (sadly, even with treatment we sometimes cannot rid ourselves of sickness). If a limb were cut off, we cannot just will it to grow back. This is just as true regarding our minds: one of the first things we notice when meditating is how active the mind is, how hard it is to bring it under any amount of control. Not to mention the focus of our attention, our emotions, and during sleep even our dreams.
The second reason the Buddha gives is based upon the notion that a “self” should be something that endures, that does not undergo change. Just as we make a distinction between a seed and the plant that grows from it, between a caterpillar and the butterfly that it turns into, so too we can notice this in ourselves, how we were once babies, how often our emotions are anything but constant, how our hopes and dreams change. Physically and mentally we are constantly in flux.
In this respect the Buddha has a very powerful teaching which helps us understand who we are by pointing out what we are not, a teaching that we need to contemplate, and in fact a teaching that we need to recite, preferably out loud. One quick note before launching into this teaching is that the Buddha saw a person as a collection of five “heaps” of suff: a heap of body, a heap of feelings/emotions, a heap of perceptions, a heap of ideas, and a heap of consciousness (or where our attention is focused)2.
The Buddha's teaching goes like this: “The body is impermanent. That which is impermanent is unsatisfatory (dukkha). That which is usatisfactory is not the self. That which is not the self should be seen with complete wisdom as it really is: this is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self.3” We could even slightly change this last part as follows:
“This body is not mine, I am not this body, this body is not my self.”
This teaching is then repeated for the remaining four khandhas3, meaning that we are left realizing that in addition to not being our body, we are not our feelings, not our perceptions, not our ideas (mental formations), and not our consciousness. But having come to these realizations, we might naturally wonder, “how is this in any way helpful?” There are two main ways.
The first way is that we can become detached from what is not ours. We can realize that a bodily pain or tiredness are not issues that actually affect our “self”; and that a feeling of anxiety is, likewise, not a problem of our true “self”, but only a problem of the mind. The Buddha puts it like this
"Monks, whatever is not yours, abandon it. When you have abandoned it, that will lead to your welfare and happiness. And what is it, monks, that is not yours? The body is not yours: abandon it. When you have abandoned it, that will lead to your welfare and happiness. Feeling is not yours... Perception is not yours... Ideas are not yours... Consciousness is not yours: abandon it. When you have abandoned it, that will lead to your welfare and happiness.
"Suppose, monks, people were to carry off the grass, sticks, branches, and foliage in this Jeta's Grove, or to burn them, or to do with them as they wish. Would you think: 'People are carrying us off, or burning us, or doing with us as they wish'?"
"No, venerable sir. For what reason? Because, venerable sir, that is neither our self nor what belongs to our self."
"So too, monks, the body is not yours... consciousness is not yours: abandon it. When you have abandoned it, that will lead to your welfare and happiness.4"
The Buddha is fairly silent regarding just what awaits us upon this transcending of the mind and body, of real liberation. He often refers to it as the deathless state (amataṃ), and he mentions that the bliss experienced is inordinately more powerful than any earthly or even heavenly bliss5. So this is the second reason why this is helpful for us: not only liberation from suffering, but bliss!
By comparison, here are some verses from Shankaracharya's Atma Bodha, a text written in the 8th century CE and meant to elucidate non-dual Vedanta, the ultimate goal of which is also liberation from suffering:
After negating your body, mind and senses
Your body, mind and senses, born of ignorance,
"Because I am not my body, I have no birth,
"Because I am not my mind, I have no suffering,
Another standard Vedantic teaching is that what is left over after all of this negating is Truth, Consciousness, and Bliss (sat-cit-anānda). And it seems as if the Buddha would agree with this statement on some level. So why is he not so direct? I think it can only be because he doesn't want us to fall into a trap of merely thinking that this “state” is something that can actually be described in words, or that by describing it we somehow “understand” it. What we want to avoid is identifying, in a very subtle way, with the mind. Zen teachings are great remedies for this!
So as we go about “knowing ourselves” by understanding what we are not, we will often have occasion to think about this teaching, and we must often contemplate it, and even recite it; but ultimately we need to experience this liberation for our “selves”.
-------
1. jāti, jarā, byādhi, maraṇaṃ
2. The word for heap in Pali is khandha; the five heaps are rūpaṃ, vedanā, saññā, sankhārā, viññānam.
3. Aniccasuttaṃ, found in the Section on the Khandas in the Saṃyuttanikāyo.
4. Not Yours Sutta, also found in the Section on the Khandas in the Saṃyuttanikāyo.
5. Udāna 2.2
6. Verses 29 – 32 of Atma Bodha, as translated by Swami Tadatmananda.
Comments
Post a Comment