WHO ARE YOU?

Recently, I left my cell phone on the bus. Fortunately, the phone was handed in to the bus driver and was taken to the lost property office at the bus depot nearest to where I live. The next day I went to the depot to collect my phone. Now, on the home screen of the phone was a photo of myself, taken in July 1991. I am seen at the summit of Diamond Head, at Waikiki, on the Hawaiian island of Oʻahu. I am wearing a T-shirt to prove it. (LOL.) 

Anyway, the man at the lost property office brought out some phones. I pointed to the one that was mine and said, ‘That’s my one.’ He looked at the photo on the home screen and said, ‘Is this your son?’ Now, I wasn’t at all taken aback. I simply said, ‘No, that used to be me.’ I was then 36.

I remember seeing a TV show around 1983 in which the American singer Patti Page sang a song ‘The Person Who Used to Be Me’.* In this song Ms Page contrasted her then present self with black-and-white images of a much younger Page projected on a screen behind her. The images were from some of her 1950s TV shows.

Here are some of the lyrics from the song:

Who is that person on the screen?

I am sure it is someone that I’ve seen.

Though it's been so very long

And I could be very wrong

To believe that the face I see
Is the person who used to be me.

 

Time can play tricks on me, I know.

I have trouble now remembering the show.

Yet I’m sure I know that face

From some other time and place

That is lost in the used-to-be.

It’s the person who used to be me.

Now, do you really think you are the same person you were 5 years ago … 10 years ago ... 20 years ago? Well, in one sense you are, but in another sense you are an altogether different person both in body and in mind. Even your sense of self this very moment is different from your sense of self 10 minutes ago, or 10 seconds ago, let alone 10 or more years ago. Your sense of self is undergoing constant change as a result of every new experience. Buddha taught that the so-called ‘self’ is only an ‘aggregate’ or ‘heap’ of thoughts, feelings, perceptions, sensations and memories. The self, in the words of Manly Palmer Hall, is nothing more than ‘a summary of what is known and what is not known’. 

Each one of us is a person who recognises that there was, yesterday, and even before then, a person whose thoughts, feelings and sensations we can remember today, and THAT person each one of us regards as ourself of yesterday, and so on. As a result of this, we create a sense of self. We even come to identify with that self as us … as you and me. Nevertheless, our ‘self’ of yesterday consists of nothing more than certain mental occurrences which are later remembered as part of the person who recollects them.

Here is a short ‘sense of being meditation’ which I penned many years ago. It is designed to assist you in the task of dis-identifying with ‘the self’:

I am a person who has a body, but I am not that body.
I am a person who has a brain, but I am not that brain.
I am a person who thinks thoughts, but I am not those thoughts.
I am a person who feels feelings, but I am not those feelings.

I am a person who senses sensations, but I am not those sensations.
I am the reality of me ... the person who I am.

I am not my sense of self ... the false and illusory ‘I's’ and ‘me's’ which well up and later subside within me ... from one moment to the next.

Yes, you are a person ... a person among persons ... a vital part of life’s self-expression. You are a person who sees, thinks, feels, senses and acts. More accurately, you are a person in which there occur, from moment to moment, the various activities of seeing, thinking, feeling, sensing and acting.

P F Strawson, pictured, a British philosopher, wrote much on the subject of the person. He articulated a concept of ‘person’ in respect of which both physical characteristics and states of consciousness can be ascribed to it. Each one of us is a person among persons—a mind-body complex. 

The point is this. We are much, much more than those hundreds of waxing and waning ‘I’s’ and ‘me’s’ with which we tend to identify as 'us' in the mistaken belief that they constitute the ‘real me’, that is, the person each one of us is. Only the latter is ontologically real. None of those waxing and waning ‘I’s’ and ‘me’s’ are the real person each of us is. Never forget that!

Personal freedom, as well as personal transformation, come when we start to see, think, feel, act and live from our personhood as a person among persons. We need to get our mind off our temporary, ephemeral ‘selves’. We need to rise above them if we are to get real. Self can’t change self. Why? Because self is image inside a person. It is not the real person at all. The person each one of us is can indeed change—and change for the better—if we want, that is, really want, change more than anything else and are prepared to go to any length to get it.

Finally, please also remember that there is no human problem that’s not common to other persons among persons.

* ‘The Person Who Used to Be Me’: [from] Here's TV Entertainment / lyric by Buz Kohan; music by Larry Grossman. Fiddleback Music Publ. Company, Inc. & New Start Music. 1983. All rights reserved.

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DON’T LET YOUR PAST HOLD YOU BACK!

Is your past, or something in your past, holding you back? Do you keep revisiting the past or some incident in the past to such an extent that it’s preventing you from living fully in the now? 

Listen to these wise words from the Indian spiritual philosopher J. Krishnamurti, pictured right and below:

We are the result of the past. Our thought is founded upon yesterday, and many thousand yesterdays. We are the result of time, and our responses, our present attitudes, are the cumulative effect of many thousand moments, incidents and experiences. So the past is, for the majority of us, the present, which is a fact, which cannot be denied. You, your thoughts, your actions, your responses, are the result of the past. 

So, how can we be free of the past? Of course, as I’ve said many times, we should never ask ‘how’, because then we are asking for a method or technique. Methods and techniques are forms of conditioning, which is the past. The past cannot free us from the past. But what exactly is the past? Here is Krishnamurti once again:

… What do we mean by the past? … We mean, surely, the accumulated experiences, the accumulated responses, memories, traditions, knowledge, the subconscious storehouse of innumerable thoughts, feelings, influences and responses, With that background, it is not possible to understand reality, because reality must be of no time: it is timeless. So, one cannot understand the timeless with a mind which is the outcome of time. The questioner wants to know if it is possible to free the mind, or for the mind, which is the result of time, to cease to be, immediately; or must one go through a long series of examinations and analyses, and so free the mind from its background. You see the difficulty in the question.

Self-analysis tends to fail because the ‘analysing self’ is just another manifestation of self—that is, one of the hundreds of little selves (the ‘I’s’ and ‘me’s’ in our mind). How can the self analyse the self, or one of the many other selves within us? No effort of the self can remove the self from the centre of its own introspection and mental machinations. Let’s say that a thought of anger arises in your mind. The part of your mind which analyses the anger is part of the anger. There is simply no way, by that means, to free yourself from the background. True psychological transformation can only arise when one is entirely free of the background (the ‘mental furniture’). Look and observe. Be aware—choicelessly. Don’t analyse or interpret. Just look, observe and see things as they are—both the things outside of us as well as the contents of our own mind. The insight you gain will change you forever—that is, if you want such change in your life.

The good news is that you can be totally free of the past at any moment. It’s entirely up to you. No one else can do this for you. Yes, there can indeed be that ‘total revolution’ or ‘psychological mutation’ of which Krishnamurti often spoke. We can instantaneously liberate ourselves from the past and from past conditioning including beliefs and misbeliefs of all kinds if we refuse to analyse or dissect the content of our consciousness (the ‘background’ or ‘mental furniture’) and simply see things as they really are, without judgment or evaluation.

In what follows, Krishnamurti describes, much better than I could ever hope to do, the essential features of a mind that is ‘mindful’ (or, to use his word, 'tranquil'):

Now, to put it very simply, when you want to understand something, what is the state of your mind? When you want to understand your child, when you want to understand somebody, something that someone is saying, what is the state of your mind? You are not analysing, criticizing, judging what the other is saying; you are listening, are you not? Your mind is in a state where the thought process is not active, but is very alert. Yes? And that alertness is not of time, is it? You are merely being alert, passively receptive, and yet fully aware; and it is only in this state that there is understanding. Surely, when the mind is agitated, questioning, worrying, dissecting, analysing, there is no understanding. And when there is the intensity to understand, the mind is obviously tranquil.

So, this is what you can choose to do—if you really want to be free, forever, and instantaneously, from the bondage of the past. Watch, almost with disinterest, whatever happens, as if it were happening to someone else. Let there be no comment, judgment or attempt to change anything. Note the presence of any unhealthy, painful thoughts, emotions or memories, but give them no power or attention. Don’t suppress or deny them. Don’t resist them, for whatever you resist, persists. Simply observe … choicelessly … and then let go. And let it be.

Acknowledgment is made, and gratitude is expressed, to the Krishnamurti Foundation of America,

Ojai, California, USA. Krishnamurti Excerpts: Benares 2nd Public Talk, 23 January 1949.

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YOU ARE THE PROBLEM!

‘To escape the self-trap, to be sane and decent and awake
and whole — that is all that matters.’ Vernon Howard.

You are the problem---on every occasion. Yes, you---and me for that matter. So, what is the problem, you may ask? Well, it can be any problem whatsoever, but the real problem is what the American spiritual teacher Vernon Howard [pictured left] referred to as the ‘self-trap.’ Please read this piece of wisdom from Mr Howard:

‘The attempt to escape a problem is the problem. There is logic in this. When a man tries to escape, when he moves away from the problem, he divides himself into one man with a problem, and another man who will escape the problem. In reality, there is no such division, so the escape must always fail, as the man sadly experiences. But, when seeing he is the problem itself, that he and his problem are one, he stops trying to escape because he sees there is no other course. In this state of intelligent acknowledgement of reality, he will not have the problem.’

I often explain it this way. In each of us there are many selves, and they are all false—false in the sense that they are not the real person each one of us is. When we ‘have’ (an unfortunate word in this context) a problem, there is the ‘self that wants to escape the problem,’ and there are many other selves in our mind as well, including the ‘self that doesn’t want to escape the problem,’ as well as the ‘self that thinks it will escape the problem,’ and the ‘self that thinks it knows how to escape the problem.’ None of these selves have any power in and of themselves, none of them can rise above their own level, and many of the selves militate, and even fight, against other selves in our mind. You need to understand that all of these selves are simply mental images in our brains. They wax and wane, they come and go, they vary in felt intensity from moment to moment, but they are all transitory, temporary and for that reason illusory. None of these selves are separate or independent from the real person each one of us is. In his book Esoteric Mind Power Vernon Howard writes about what he calls the ‘self-divided man’ who ‘consists of dozens of "selves" which fight each other in taking him over for a few minutes at a time.’ Howard writes:

'Living in a state of psychic riot, he is thrilled one minute and dejected the next. One part of him is a danger to another part. So what can be trusted? Nothing. The self-knowing man has cleared his mental streets of these rioters, leaving him with a whole and healthy mind, which can be trusted completely.'

Let’s say you have an anger problem. There is anger in you, so to speak, but the reality is you are angry because you have so identified yourself with the ‘self that is angry’ and the ‘self that wants to be [and stay] angry’ that you have become at-one with the anger. You and the problem are one in that special sense and, as the onetime Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple pointed out, ‘no effort of the self can remove the self from the centre of its own endeavour.’ Many others have said more-or-less the same thing. A couple of centuries earlier the French Roman Catholic archbishop, theologian, poet and writer François Fénelon wrote, 'The entire root of your problem is that you cannot get out of yourself,' and many more centuries earlier Jesus said, 'I can of mine own self do nothing' (Jn 5:30). Truth is truth. It never changes. It cannot change. If it could it wouldn't be truth. 

The reason 'self can't change self' (and therefore can't solve the fundamental problem of self) is simple---the ‘self that wants to escape an unwanted self’ is the same thing as the ‘self that thinks it will escape the unwanted self,’ the ‘self that thinks it knows how to escape the unwanted self,’ and the ‘self that doesn’t want to escape the unwanted self,’ and all the other damn selves as well. All of these selves are false and powerless---they're just mere images in our mind. The trouble is, we believe in them and act as if they were real. Now read what Krishnamurti [pictured below right], the Indian spiritual philosopher, has to say about this dilemma:

'I am angry, is that anger different from me? Me, the observer, who says "I am angry." Or that anger is part of me. It seems so simple. No? And when I realize that, that the observer is the observed, that the anger which I recognize is part of me, not something apart, then what am I to do with that anger? I am not separate from that anger. I am anger.'

Dr Norman Vincent Peale wrote, 'There needs to be a shift in emphasis from self to non-self,' but how is that to be achieved given that self can't change self? Clearly, a major paradigm shift is needed---but how? (First, don't ask 'how.') The good news is that you, the person that you are, has power to change---when you see yourself as you really are, when you make a decision that you really want to live differently, and when you are prepared to ‘drop,’ so to speak, your strong identification with your false self or selves. Krishnamurti would often say, ‘Stop trying to escape from the fact of yourself.’ You can’t do it, but when you drop the false, that is, see the false as false, and stop hanging onto and identifying with the false, the real is revealed. In the case of anger, for example, you need to observe the anger without recognition---without even using the word anger, which is a form of recognition.

Self-observation is the answer. You need to see yourself as you really are, without identifying in any way with any of your multitude of selves, thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, or actions. Do not judge or condemn yourself. Be impartial and objective, and simply observe without reaction and identification. Only in this way will you, the person that you are, be able to deliver the person that you are from the bondage or burden of the problem of the false self. You, the person who has chosen to be at-one with the ‘self that is [and wants to stay] angry,’ and various other mischievous selves as well, must come to see clearly that all such selves are false… no matter how much attention, identification, and recognition you have given them in the past.

Vernon Howard would often say, ‘You don’t have to create your deliverance, your freedom. You can have it, right now. It’s there for you, right now. Who has bound you? Claim your deliverance and freedom, right now!’ All that is needed, on your part, is what Mr Howard refers to as a ‘state of intelligent acknowledgement of reality.’

I will finish with this. 'No self. No problem,' said the Zen master when asked to explain the deeper meaning of Buddhism. 

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STOP MAKING EXCUSES FOR YOURSELF

It was the very illustrious Japanese Rinzai Zen master Bankei Yōtaku (1622-93) [pictured left and below right], who was posthumously honoured with the Imperial title Kokushi (‘National Master’), who said, ‘The farther you enter into the truth, the deeper it is.’

Bankei cut to the chase, rejecting the formalism that infested the Zen of his time. His catchphrase cry was, ‘Get Unborn!’ That means, get rid of all the crap that holds you back from being one with the birthless, spaceless, timeless, boundless and imageless ‘face’ of the Unborn Buddha Mind (Fu-shō), which is said to be our true, authentic and original nature [see calligraphy below].

Some spiritual systems refer to the Unborn as the ‘Self.’ I will not try to define or describe the ‘Unborn’ or the ‘Self.’ What I will say is this---think of all those hundreds and thousands of ‘little selves’ (that is, the multitudes of ‘I’s’ and ‘me’s’ that wax and wane from moment to moment in us). Well, the Unborn (or Self) is ‘something’---actually, in a very deep sense, ‘no-thing’---other than those false selves which we mistakenly take for the true person each one of us is.

Now, a student came to Master Bankei and complained, ‘Master, I have an ungovernable temper. How can I cure it?’

‘You have something very strange,’ replied Bankei. ‘Let me see what you have.’

‘Just now I cannot show it to you,’ replied the student.

‘When can you show it to me?’ asked Bankei.

‘It arises unexpectedly,’ replied the student.

‘Then,’ concluded Bankei, ‘it must not be your own true nature. If it were, you could show it to me at any time. When you were born you did not have it, and your parents did not give it to you. Think that over.’

We do make a helluva lot of excuses for ourselves, don’t we? We behave badly, and say, ‘Sorry, that’s just me. I can’t help it. I’ve always been that way.’ Well, that may or may not have been the way we’ve always been, but it is not the way we have to be, and in truth---I say, in truth---it is never (yes, never) the way we really are. Got that? In truth, we are not that way at all. Each of us is a person among persons, and like all persons we have choices. Yes, sometimes our range of choices is very restricted, or constricted, but we always---I repeat, always---have at least one power of choice left to us, namely, the ability to say, ‘I don’t want to be this way any longer, I want to be different, I want to be better.’ The words don’t matter. The desire for positive change does.

You and I were not born angry, sarcastic, judgmental, jealous, anxious, or whatever. We have become that way---as a result of lots and lots of decisions and choices we’ve made in response to activating events and experiences. No, it doesn’t matter---and it’s certainly no excuse---if you or I have come from a long line (say, several generations) of likeminded, similarly behaved---or misbehaved---people. We still can choose to be different. We can change---if we want change badly enough.

Yes, there is a power that makes all things---yes, all things---new. It lives and moves in those who know the Unborn Self as one.

So, no more excuses for any of us. It’s time to---Get Unborn! Now.

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THE TRUE MEANING OF ENLIGHTENMENT

This post is dedicated in loving memory to

my father Henry Victor Ellis-Jones (1919-1985),
a true gentleman who always gave of himself selflessly to others

The famous Japanese Zen master and teacher Dōgen Zenji (pictured above), who founded the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan, had this to say about enlightenment:

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water. Enlightenment does not divide you, just as the moon does not break the water. You cannot hinder enlightenment, just as a drop of water does not hinder the moon in the sky. The depth of the drop is the height of the moon. Each reflection, however long or short its duration, manifests the vastness of the dewdrop, and realizes the limitlessness of the moonlight in the sky.

As Dōgen saw it, enlightenment was practice---true spiritual practice, and specifically, zazen, or sitting meditation. Enlightenment, as the present writer sees it, is not something which, having been gained or achieved, is yours forever. Enlightenment does not mean you never get angry again, or lapse in other ways. Enlightenment means living mindfully,  knowing what is spiritually ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ respectively, and knowing ‘the way home.’ As respects the latter, Dōgen  wrote:

But do not ask me where I am going,
As I travel in this limitless world,
Where every step I take is my home.

What is spiritually ‘right’ is that which is at-one with whatever is. Whenever you are choicelessly aware and accepting of life unfolding from one moment to the next---that is, when you are immovable---you are in an enlightened (mindful) state of consciousness. Whenever you resist and oppose what is, whenever you judge others or events, you are anything but enlightened. It’s as simple as that. Dōgen said, 'If you can't find the truth [enlightenment] right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?' Also, being enlightened means doing away with self-delusion---indeed, doing away with all illusions, beliefs and dogmas. All of those things prevent you from living fully in the now. I like these words of Seng-T'san:  'Do not seek the truth, stop having an opinion.' An enlightened person is truly free---free from self-bondage, free from self-will run riot, free from beliefs, dogma and superstition, and free from the past and all conditioning. If you---like millions of so-called religious people---are seeking some supposed 'reality,' whether in this life or in some supposed life to come, ‘promised’ or preached by others, you are definitely not in an enlightened state of consciousness. Enlightenment, in two words, means this---'Wake up!' And it helps to stay awake, too. From moment to moment.

Photo taken by the author at Yakuo-in Buddhist Temple

(officially known as Takaosan Yakuoin Yukiji Temple),

Mount Takao, Japan, October 11, 2012.

The temple, one of the Daihonzan temples of the Chizan School of the Shingon sect,

is said to have been built in 744 by Gyoki Bosatsu under decree from Emperor Shomu.

Enlightenment is, as Dōgen points out, ‘like the moon reflected on the water.’ It is an immovable state of mind, in which one does not react to changing circumstances. Enlightenment ‘does not divide’; rather, it unites that which is in you, as you. Enlightenment is not even something you ‘achieve’ or ‘gain,’ whatever those words mean. Enlightenment happens freely, and more-or-less instantaneously and of its own accord, when you remove the obstacles to its manifestation. First and foremost among those obstacles is self-will---indeed, the very notion of ‘self’ itself.

My late father, Henry Victor [‘Harry’] Ellis-Jones (pictured left), who was an accountant and a company secretary, was a most decent man---a man of great honesty, integrity and principle. All who knew him in business and personal life would attest to that fact. Dad was not a formally religious man. He respected those who were religious---as well as those who weren't---but you couldn't really say that he was a respecter of religious belief per se. Well, not those religious beliefs that he regarded as superstitious or irrational. In his final years his two closest friends (one of them a lawyer) were devout Roman Catholics, but he would often say to me that he couldn't understand how these two otherwise intelligent men could believe a number of Catholic dogmas that he thought were downright silly.

Dad was, I think, an agnostic, but he tended to regard himself as a fellow traveller with Christianity at least as respects its moral and ethical content and the man Jesus. The fact that Dad wasn't into formal, organized religion was probably one of the main reasons for his basic decency and uprightness. I truly mean that. Nevertheless, he understood the problem of sin or selfishness. He would often quote his wartime padre who, in a response to a question from another Australian soldier in the same platoon---the question being, ‘What is sin?’---said this: ‘Sin is rooted in selfishness. Sin has “I” in the middle of it.’

My father was an enlightened man. Despite many problems and difficulties, and some very big losses in his personal life (including his mother's suicide, when Dad was still a young man, and the equally untimely loss of my mother, Dad's wife, to cancer), he remained immovable in the sense described above. As already mentioned, he also understood the problem of sin or selfishness---without having to learn it at church---and he lived his life self-lessly. Indeed, not only was he totally unselfish, he had no sense of a separate or independent ‘self’ at all. He would have made a good Buddhist (ha!), but it was more than sufficient that he was a fine human being. I never had a chance to discuss the subject-matter of this post with him, and he probably would have viewed this whole discussion a total waste of time, yet my father knew and understood the true meaning of enlightenment. He was a man who knew what it meant to 'wake up' and stay awake.

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SLAVES OF THE ‘I’---EVEN UNTO DEATH

I have written much---perhaps too much---on the unreality on the ‘self,’ but I couldn’t resist sharing this saying, attributed to Shakyamuni Buddha, which I read only recently:

Ye are slaves of the I, that toil in the service of self from morn to night, that live in constant fear of birth, old age, sickness, death, receive the good tidings that your cruel master exists not.

‘Slaves of the I, that toil in the service of self.’ When I think of the legal profession---of which I have been an erstwhile member for almost 35 years---I see so many practitioners who ‘toil in the service of self’ while self-righteously affirming they are doing it for the sake and benefit of their clients. They write aggressive letters to the lawyers for the other party which basically say no more than, ‘My dick's bigger than yours.’

These lawyers suffer so greatly from being in slavery to themselves and their own sense of self-importance. No wonder lawyers are statistically more unhappy than any other people. So many lawyers I have encountered in my working life as a lawyer and legal academic are oblivious to the fact that their clients are generally aware of the childish 'dick' game of one-upmanship constantly being played out before their very eyes---and at such great expense to the clients themselves and the general public, I might add. It’s total ego stuff, through and through, and the same thing can be said for most other businesses, trades and professions---not to mention what goes on in the home and in all day-to-day personal relationships. We are all very good at being disingenuous.

It has been said that when we leave this world we can take with us only what is ours ‘by right of consciousness.’ I am not at all sure that we can take even that ‘with’ us when we go---but I do know that what is ours by right of consciousness will remain for quite a long time as a memory and in the memories of those who remain and who remember, for better or for worse, what we were really like in our lifetime.

Most people have given up conventional religion, and I can readily understand why that is the case. All too sadly, however, the new religion of most people---at least in Western societies---is consumerism, and there is a helluva lot of ‘dick stuff’ associated with that religion! It’s all dick stuff 'from morn to night' with ‘constant fear’ that the so-called good times will come to an abrupt end at any moment, what with the credit cards all maxed out and so forth. And I am not being self-righteous here, for I stand 'guilty as charged' as well.

I read somewhere once that Leonardo da Vinci scribbled in the corner of one of his drawings that he had agonized over for some considerable time, ‘Leonardo, Why toilest thou thus?’ He saw the ultimate futility of all our endeavours. I know. I get the same feeling as I churn out these blogs each week---and I am certainly no Leonardo da Vinci! Far from it.

We all need to slow down and ponder this truth---the ‘cruel master’ for whom we toil in vain does not exist.

‘Why toilest thou thus?’

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