Who Am I? I don't know what this is ...

A lof of Zen practice is about looking beyond the conventional idea of our experiences. Our practice, the art of meditative enquiry, can feel complicated, like a paradox. Often it bring us more questions than answers.

But if you look closely, I think you’ll find pretty much all the questions we sit with boil down to the question: “what is this?” Another way of saying that is “I don’t know what this is”

One of the well known koans we work with in our practice is “Who Am I?” A koan is a Zen riddle without a specific or correct answer. It is used in contemplation to bring us to a point of awareness – to a point of understanding something which is beyond words.

Who Am I? What is Self?

When we talk or think about ‘me’, ‘I’ or ‘self’ we usually start with the conventional concept or notion of self in our mind’s view. And this rather fixed notion of who we think we are, what we want or need is really the cause of all our pain and confusion.

Before we go further, I invite you to pause and do this exercise:

Close your eyes for a minute or two, relax your mind and body, and allow yourself the time to picture your Self. When you think of ‘me’ or ‘self’, what is the image you hold in your mind’s eye? When you search for your identity, do you find primarily a business person, your profession? Or do you see a father, mother, wife, brother, sister? Married, single, parent,

Perhaps the image you have of yourself is more related your body? I am good looking, an athlete, a yoga teacher? Or perhaps it is part of your personality: exciting / loyal / consistent / creative?

When we say ‘I’m too fat’, we imagine our body to be me. When we say ‘my body’ we mean the owner of the body is me. When we say ‘I’m annoyed and tired’, then we see our emotion or feelings. Perhaps we are tempted to think that we are that part of us which is aware of all of these things together? So perhaps me is my mind?

If we are no longer the wife, the accountant athlete or we get older or lose our good looks; if we are no longer exciting – or others don’t think we are – or our personality evolves, what then?

When we look for it in the conventional way, we can’t find a permanent, stable, solid ‘me’ me in the way we are used to thinking it exists.

The funny thing is that we hardly every look at our assumption that there is something solid we call me. We just assume that something is there. Let’s call it small mind. Small mind controls what we do. It tells us we feel impatient, annoyed or bored and we act on that.

But if we sit in meditation and can look attentively at the movement of our mind, we can see how our mind can drag us around and trick us. We get attached to our thoughts as if they are reality and we act out our attachments. The idea that we don’t have to believe everything our mind tells us can sound a little crazy to some. We may even resist it. When we feel this kind of resistance, our meditation practice teaches us to open up and question: “can I accept this? Can I let go of my fixed ideas and make space for this?” Making space means allowing the possibility. Letting go of what we feel the outcome should be. This state of mind relieves all our suffering and confusion.

As Krishnamurti said: 'Do you want to know what my secret is? You see, I don't mind what happens."

Above all, this practice is about feeling comfortable with the feeling of uncertainty, not knowing. And having the confidence (saddha) that things will become clear and make sense.

Its about cutting through fixed views and ideas. Being flexible enough to set aside our most longstanding, tried and tested, precious, important ideas and concepts if necessary. We always go back to working with beginner’s mind. “In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few.” As a beginner, we don't have preconceived ideas or fixed expectations from past experience.

Life is short. There is no time for ‘cement in the head’.

;)

Metta

_/\_