Little Selves

 

Hello again. Getting back to this. Only 11.30 here and it's already been a long day, up at 6.30 with the grandchildren (girl 9, boy 11) with us, get them up and ready for school. Breakfast. Still have to tie their laces! Bless them. Taxi to school, the buses totally unreliable. Drop them off then a three mile hike back, popping in for shopping on the way. Now a bus into town - it turned up, hallelujah!!!!! Now burger and chips in McDonalds before my 4 hour stint in Oxfam, then pick up the kiddies, back to theirs, feed them, then wait for mum to get home around 10.30. Another taxi home. All good fun. Not sure why I'm telling all this. Just love the ambience of McDonalds. Therapeutic.

I can only see the "self" as a becoming, not as "being". As a "becoming" it can then be a partner to "truth", which itself is an unfolding, a constant advance into novelty. "Truth" as writ on stone (self as "being") has to become a truth writ on human hearts. So many seem content with the former, even think it is the latter.

It's said that if the Buddhist teaching of anatta (not-self) is not understood, then the whole Dharma will be misunderstood. After many years I still seek to understand. - to truly understand, when knowledge becomes praxis, spontaneous. I see it as error to think of "self" as "being", as under construction. I think we can inherit a way of being (conditioning, not particularly choosen) and then our life is simply a reflex action. As someone else has said, every time we happen on a statement or sentiment that fits in with our conditioned notions we adopt it, perhaps with enthusiasm, at the same time ignoring, as though they did not exist, the statements or sentiments which either we did not like or did not understand. And so our little persona is constructed, set in concrete.

To me such a self must needs be "dropped", become "dark", this so as to reflect truth. Once we reflect, we can perhaps become its partner. This presumes Faith in Reality, that it is worth "reflecting", becoming a partner of. My own faith is that Reality is infinite compassion, infinite wisdom, infinite potential.

I'm very much into the so called "eastern" ways, and speak of zen, Dogen, the Lotus Sutra etc etc. All deemed exotic. But I think back to my past when I had a yearning to travel - and the yearning was for deserts, palm trees, pagodas, camels and all the rest of it. When this yearning had been satisfied I found myself back in my home town, on the railway station which overlooks the town. A drizzly day, rain on the rooftops. I remember thinking that the adventures were over, I was truly back home. But then, looking at the skyline, a few random thoughts. Not an epiphany or some sort of cosmic consciousness (!) but transforming nevertheless. What is more exotic? A cow or a camel? An oak tree or a palm tree? A pagoda of a church spire? Sand or grass? I will not labour the point......perhaps I already have!

So what is "exotic" and what is mundane, run of the mill? As Proust says, we need new eyes, not new lands to discover. Or something like that.

I simply wish to surrender (as it were) and reflect, and become a partner of that which is for me - in faith - Reality.

Whatever "enlightenment" is (and the fundamental Buddhist Theravada texts do not use the word, speaking only of "unshakeable deliverance of mind") as Dogen says:-

Flowers will still fall even though we love them, weeds will still grow, even though we hate them.

Or as per the zen koan:- "A clearly enlightened person falls in the well. How is this so?"

Our little selves have strict limits, and yet, thinking about it, are limitless from another perspective.

Well, I waffle and ramble.

I must ask about your "screen name", has it to do with "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" by Haruki Murakami? I seem to remember, way back, actually reading this book, and all I remember is something about a particularly gruesome death (skinned alive or something - talk about grasping at anything that fits our conditioned notions  !) but I might have the wrong book. I know I made very little of it at the time.

Anyway, thanks for the conversation.