The Tug of Me: Exploring the Nature of Self and Other
byElizabeth Mattis Namgyel
The Prince, who was to become the Buddha, was driven to explore the nature of suffering. He searched for answers in the world of things and found nothing of lasting value. He entered altered states of consciousness through meditation practices aimed at transcending physical reality. But none of these practices addressed the nature of suffering and the path to true inner freedom. The Prince exhausted all views, assumptions, and possibilities.
Free of even the notions of enlightenment, the Prince rested in the mind of an open question. He trusted that something extraordinary was about to happen. And while sitting under the Bodhi Tree, the whole world opened up for him. This is how the Prince attained enlightenment and became the Buddha—the Awakened One. We might say that the Buddha’s awakening sprang from the wide-open mind of his very own question.
The Buddha realized that his search for an answer to the end of suffering assumed a self that sought after happiness, yet was haunted by extinction. He understood how we try to maintain the familiar presence of self, whatever that means to us in each moment. Sometimes, we affirm “me” and sometimes we protect “me.” We bring desirable things toward “me” and push unwanted things away from “me” so that the parameters of “me” keep expanding and contracting. All this pulling and pushing fans the flames of strong emotions, and we try even harder to drive home the point: “I exist.” Meanwhile, we live with the terror of an unavoidable death. We evaluate, organize, and struggle with everything we encounter in our attempts to substantiate the existence of a self. This is the relationship we have with our world.
Try to visualize your world without the tug of “me” with all its preferences: all its efforts to find stable ground in the world of things and protect itself from unwanted experiences. What would happen if, rather than organizing the world to suit the self, we stopped manipulating everything and instead just stayed present for our life?
Staying present challenges our habitual reactive tendencies. You may recognize this scenario: You’re sitting at the dinner table, or in a room full of people, when suddenly everything falls quiet. The space feels pregnant, full of possibility ,and then that one person—it may even be you—gets overwhelmed, uncomfortable, and just has to talk. This is how we deal with pregnant moments—we try to escape them through the continual re-creation of the self. We are not accustomed to bearing witness to our own experience—our life—without putting a lid on it, manipulating it, reaching a conclusion about it, or ascribing meaning to it in some way. But in doing this, do we ever have a full experience?
The Buddha wanted a full experience. He wanted to see what would happen if he stopped trying to escape the present through attempting to secure the self. Imagine him now sitting beneath the Bodhi Tree...
No Self in the Body
The Buddha goes straight to the heart of the matter, which, of course, is the self. The Buddha looks for the self. Where does it reside? Does it have parameters? We usually define the self as being whatever everything else is not. But where do we actually draw that line? Where do we stop and where does our universe begin? Here we find the Buddha just warming up . . .
The Buddha looks at his physical body. The self seems to reside within the boundaries of the physical form. Yet he observes the inhalation and exhalation of his own breath—an exchange of his inner and outer worlds. His awareness turns to the food that sustains him; again two worlds come together. He feels the outer elements of space, air, fire, water, and earth weave through the fabric of his physical being. He witnesses the continuation of his ancestral line and all the constituents that brought his physical form into existence. He concludes that the body does not exist in isolation; it arises in dependence upon other.
The Buddha feels the weight of his body supported by the earth beneath him. We tend to think that if something is solid and substantial, it must exist as separate from other things. We might think, “I can touch my body. It feels like a thing. How can you say no boundaries exist between my body and everything else? It has a shape and feels real and solid to the touch.” But the Buddha understands that the density, tangibility, or shape of an object doesn’t give it more of an independent “thingness” than a soft or malleable object has, and neither do the sensations we feel through contact with objects make them more real. For instance, we may prick ourselves with a pin, but does the sharp sensation we feel verify the body’s thingness? In fact, we can only feel the sharpness of the pin in dependence upon the pin itself. That we can feel the object doesn’t prove its independent existence. In fact, it proves the opposite—that no thing exists separate from other elements. All things are equal in their dependence upon other, regardless of their qualities.
The Buddha observes that the body has no definitive form. If we were to take apart a human body and spread all its parts out on the floor, we could ask: where does this singular entity called “body” reside? How can we separate the body from its parts?
Everything is a composite of parts, the Buddha observes. And we define these parts by their parameters—their separateness from other parts. As long as a part has edges, as all things do, it has smaller parts. And, with our reasoning mind, we find within the edges of even the smallest of parts more parts and smaller parts, until we can’t find the boundary of parts at all. And who could point to an edgeless part? In this way the Buddha discovers that even parts have no true parameters. He arrives at the realization of no-thingness.
The Buddha concludes that although the body appears and functions as the physical aspect of self, it has no limits—no boundaries. It is not something that exists in and of itself as separate from other. The Buddha understands that the body is infinite . . . yet he experiences the warmth, breath, and movement of his physical form.
No Self in the Mind
The Buddha is no longer warm; he is hot, hot, hot. He can’t find the edges of his physical being. He concludes that if the self cannot be found within or outside the body then the self must reside in the mind. The Buddha looks for the edges of mind.
Where does the mind leave off and our universe begin? The Buddha’s inquiry here is simple and direct, but we have to think about it. Do we ever question the nature of knowing? Do we ever consciously think about whether things exist or not? We assume a self. We feel the presence—the tug—of the self at all times. But we don’t usually question where or what the self might be. The Buddha’s process of investigation can be challenging. This is not because his teachings are abstract but rather because they urge us to deeply explore our own experience. This direct exploration of experience marks the contribution of the Buddha’s wisdom. It takes some mental muscle, but it serves an important purpose: it takes us to the heart of the matter.
So, the Buddha looks deeply into the nature of knowing and realizes that in the same way the body arises in dependence upon other elements, so too does our ability to know anything. Mind functions as the mirror upon which all forms, thoughts, emotions, and sensations reflect. When we look at our reflection in the mirror we cannot separate the mirror from our reflection in it. Mirrors, by definition, always reflect images—the image and the mirror depend upon each other. We cannot say that our reflection and the mirror are one and the same, nor can we say they are separate. Neither the same nor separate . . . we see the reflection of our face, clear and recognizable.
The Buddha feels the coolness of the moon on his skin. He understands that without the presence of the moon, he would not know its coolness or experience its luminous rays brightening the forested landscape. Mind, by definition, knows objects: our awareness and the moon depend upon each other. In knowing, our inner and outer worlds come together. The moon and our awareness are not the same, yet we cannot separate the moon from our awareness of it. Neither the same nor separate . . . we experience this luminous globe lighting up the world around us.
In our experience, all causes and conditions, our inner and outer worlds, the elements, all come together. But where is this thing called mind or self? Where is this central organizing principle?
The egg has burst . . .The Buddha awakens to a way of being with no center or edge. He finds no independent self or other, no inner or outer worlds, no center or periphery, no coming together or separation, no individuated mind or matter. Although the body and mind appear and we experience them, they are limitless, without boundary. If this is so, where could the self reside? Where do we begin and where does the world end? If self were to exist, the Buddha concludes, it would be as big as our universe, which is infinite.
