Lately I have been disconnected and disenfranchised with my Buddhist practice, not because I don’t agree with its fundamentals, but more because of my frustration in what seems to be a lack of growth and commitment. As a result, I decided that I would take a month to refresh myself on what Buddhism exactly is and perhaps figure out where I am leading myself astray.
I have started reading Stepping out of Self-Deception: the Buddha’s Liberating Teaching of No-Self by Rodney Smith. With just three chapters in, I have to admit that I have already found many errors in my own practice. My perception has been all wrong.
In the first chapter of this book, I received my first “Aha!” moment. Smith talks about how we are not possessors of our minds, but rather our minds form “us”. Our minds created how we see ourselves, along with everything else in our lives. As Smith so aptly states, “We exist only because the mind thinks us into creation.” Thus, we cannot see ourselves as separate from our minds. We are whole. When we see both as separate, which we often do, we create a competition and divide between “ourselves” and our minds, which ultimately leads us down a path of suffering.
This idea of separation translates into how we approach our spiritual and everyday lives as well. There is this idea, and I am guilty of this too, that we must compartmentalize our spiritual lives and our secular lives; however if “the call of spiritual practice is to examine and understand what we are” and if we are to truly obtain a Wise View, how can we separate our practice from the way we live our lives and still obtain our spiritual Enlightenment? The answer is simple-we can’t. We have to come to understand that the sacred lies in the Now.
Smith also discusses something that I am admittedly guilty of and I know that several others are too, which is infusing Buddhist items and symbols with sacred meaning. This perception only inhibits us because we only feel spiritual when we interact with these items and practices. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, Buddhism is not inhabited in any particular experience or item. It is inhabited in our general experience and perspective.
Finally, I think one of the most important things that I have read so far is Smith’s view on meditation, which is most certainly a practice that I have been struggling with. He describes meditation’s purpose as informing us about the true nature of relationships and interconnectedness. When aligned with these principles, we “lose our self-centered perspective, abandon our defenses, and release ourselves into the intimacy and ease at hand. There are no goals or direction, there is nothing for the self to feed upon, and everything is represented equally. The experience itself is sufficient. In meditation the struggle is that we feel less self-fulfilled but more spiritually fulfilled. To the sense-of-self, meditation may become frustrating because there is not and never will be vindication of our efforts. Frustration indicates we are caught in an unwise view.” This is extremely important. I often times create a “goal” out of meditation- what do I want out of it? What am I aiming for? Smith indicates that in itself, there is no goal other than to experience and at some point realize interconnectedness. To get frustrated or to aim for anything else is the sense-of-self (also called the ego self) calling out, which leads us away from the path we are trying to walk.
Each day I struggle with where I am in life and where I want to be, how to get there, etc. (As Smith would say, my sense-of-self is creating a problem and I am operating very much on a horizontal plane as opposed to a vertical one.) Ultimately, I’ve recently come to the resolution to simply live each day as the person that I want to be and to somehow rise above any situation and act in a way that I would be proud. While it sounds good, I realize that in this statement alone, there is an abounding sense-of-self. How do I change that? When I ask that question, I can feel fear well up inside of me as my ego screams, “Are you trying to get rid of me?! You can’t live without me!” It’s undoubtedly a scary thing as I have not known anything else but my interaction and life with my ego self, which is comprised of every decision I have made and every perception that I have. It’s hard to imagine that I would get rid of it. Or would I get rid of it? Perhaps I am making an assumption that shouldn’t be made.
Smith begins this book by talking about how Western Buddhism has forgotten about the Buddha’s ultimate teaching of no-self, instead concentrating on “sacred” items and practices such as meditation and retreats. I tend to agree. Often times when I am explaining to someone what Buddhism actually is, the words can’t seem to come to me. The words “lots of meditation” always seem to come to my mind, which tells me that I have fallen into the same trap that Smith describes. I can say that by reading his book, I find more depth to Buddhism and its meaning—something that I have been desperately looking for (or perhaps have just simply forgotten). The no-self lesson is the ultimate lesson of Buddhism—to escape the damaging perceptions of the ego self, which instigate suffering and pain—which will ultimately lead to the place of Enlightenment and the ability to truly experience awareness and the present.
