#197
Is there a self or not
is this me or not
this is what I contemplate
sitting in a trance above a cliff
between my feet green grass grows
and on my head red dust settles
I have even seen pilgrims
leave offerings by my bier
-- Han Shan (Cold Mountain)
The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain
edited and translated by Red Pine
This is a strange one from Han Shan. The poem has him meditating up in the mountains, a common enough occurrence, regardless of culture, religious tradition or continent. But then, there's those last two lines--I have even seen pilgrims/ leave offerings by my bier. Does this suggest that he is dead but still wondering about a question asked long ago by the Buddhists, and is now taken up by some contemporary psychologists.
Those last two lines bring poems by another poet, Emily Dickinson, to mind. She also posits an awareness after death. However, I don't remember that asked any questions; it seemed as though her reaction was a calm and detached acceptance.
Is there a self or not
I know what my answer would be, and as usual I'm from another era, one that's thousands of years before those early Buddhists and some contemporary psychologists.
R.T.--dust, from what I've read, signifies the effect of the world on us.
ReplyDeleteMy jury is still out on the existence (or otherwise) of that thing we call the 'Self'.
ReplyDeleteCyberKitten--Well, it is a debatable point that today the highly vocal experts come down on the side of the self being an illusion. My feeling is that my own experience tells me something else.
DeleteOh, it certainly *feels* like the 'I' exists, no doubt about that! Similarly to Free Will. I certainly *feel* free but there is always this nagging doubt. I wonder if we'll ever know and, once knowing, if it will make any difference.
DeleteCyberKitten--there's probably no proof that will resolve the issue once and for all times. I doubt if it will make any difference, since those who profess the non-self philosophy act the same way, as far as I can tell, as those who believe in the existence of a self.
DeleteR.T.--interesting. I had never heard of this. It seems as though different cultures see some sort of relationship between humans and the earth, sometimes positive, sometimes negative, and sometimes ambiguous.
ReplyDeleteone of the key concepts of Tao and Zen is mu: the meaning of which monks search for over years of meditation... it has to do with the components of the universe being more or less the same for all presences, conscious, or unconscious... the lit cites "Indra's Net" as a meditational focus... when meditation occurs, non-thinking is... and all bodies and their surrounds are equivalent to each other...
ReplyDeletei've tried, as Fred knows, to address this question before in different ways; it's hard to do, but easy once you understand it... reading extensively in zen helps a lot...
Yes, Mudpuddle and I have discussed this issue of the self vs. the non-self philosophies numerous times.
Deleteactually, conflating social and personal viewpoints may be the crux of the difficulty... meditation and the associated systems, Zen, Tao, etc. all refer to the reality as seen by the individual, aside from the presence of the society he lives in... the basic question involves examining reality from the perspective of the meditator, excluding considerations of social or personal relationships...
Deletesuggestion: look up Jack Kornfield on youtube and give him a listen...
DeleteMudpuddle--I'd rather read something. Any book by him you would recommend?
Deletetx for your interest... there's a list under his name in wikipedia and they're all good; "after ecstasy, the laundry" is one of his more accessible ones... i hope you can read a bit of one sometime, so you can have a sense of what i've been talking about.. even in zen monasteries, trying to verbally communicate the dharma is not very well done... it's difficult when first beginning to maintain interest in the subject; it's been my experience that the more one reads about mindfulness, the more familiar the ideas become... anyway, i hope you try one of his books... but if it seems just too much, there's certainly no reason for you to pursue a knowledge that may be uncomfortable to you...
DeleteMudpuddle--it isn't mindfulness that's the problem. I've looked into that and tried to follow a regime, but always got distracted (ironic?). It's the mindlessness aspect of Buddhism and the denial of the world that I disagree with. I like the title of the one you recommended.
DeleteMudpuddle--After the Ecstasy is in the local library, so I will check it out shortly.
DeleteMudpuddle,
ReplyDelete"examining reality from the perspective of the meditator, excluding considerations of social or personal relationships..."
Is this possible?
Mudpuddle--do you think a person would really be able to exclude all of his/her cultural heritage? Wouldn't the language a person speaks be an influence?
Deletei guess this is one of those things you have to try in order to credit it... i've been able from your posts to develop a lot of respect for your brainpower; so it's hard for me to imagine a way of telling you this without you over reacting... but the physical body with mental accompaniment exists primarily as an animal and only finds out about the environment he lives in through his sensory apparatus(es)... the cultural connections are all learned behaviors and have nothing to do with the presence of the animal as an individual speck in the surrounding universe...
Deletezen or tao has to do with the meaning of what life is all about; it's not a religion, at least zen isn't, it's a way of looking at reality over and above whatever characteristic information the brain has acquired about the world outside of it's own existence... hence one can be a zen buddhist and still engage and participate in one's accustomed cultural sphere without changing any beliefs, prejudices, convictions, or behaviors... it's true that attaining a degree of understanding of mindfulness will inevitably change the way one thinks about the world, but only in the direction of kindliness and commiseration...
the more i try to explain all this, the more i think i'm not doing a very good job of it... Jack Kornfield is a very well known exponent; he can make it a lot clearer than i can... try it.. i think you'll like it...