Ultimately, if you want to experience Realization and have it transform your life, you need to commit yourself to Learning the Self. This means becoming intimately familiar with your self – your mind and your body. A lifetime path of practice becomes deeply personal, asking you to face your Karma, take responsibility for it, and use it to find your gateway into awakening. This isn’t just about transforming yourself into a Buddha through your Zen practice, it’s about awakening to how your very body – your unique, imperfect, human manifestation – is Buddha.
This is now the eighth chapter in my book, The Ten Fields of Zen: A Primer for Practitioners.
Quicklinks to Article Content:
Learning the Self
What “Self” Are We Learning?
1. Your “Phenomenal” Self
2. Your Subjective Experience as Self
3. The Illusory Self: Your Belief in Your Inherent Self-Nature
4. True Self, or Your True Nature
Learning the Self
One of Zen master Dogen’s most famous teachings is from his essay “Genjokoan,” or “Actualization of Reality:”
To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be verified by all things. To be verified by all things is to let the body and mind of the self and the body and mind of others drop off.[i]
Why doesn’t Dogen’s description of Zen practice begin with “forgetting the self?” Chances are good that’s something you’d like to do in your practice, sooner than later. To some extent, your practice in the other Fields of Zen allow you to do just that. Zazen and Mindfulness allow you to enjoy moments where you feel less separate from others, free from painful self-consciousness and worry. Through Precept practice and Opening the Heart you can learn to transcend your self-concern, at least at times. Dharma Study and Realization may lead you to some insight into the Emptiness of self. Unless you’re in great pain and want to figure out what’s causing it, shouldn’t you be working on forgetting the self?
The thing is, the self is the key to everything in practice. Why? It’s the only tool you have for practice. It’s the only interface you have to explore the Dharma. It’s simultaneously your obstacle and your gateway to liberation. It is a trap, a mystery, and Buddha – awakened being – itself.
We tend to discount the self as – at the very least – an imperfect vessel for our Zen practice. It’s as if we’re taking a journey across an ocean by ship. We are too wrapped up in anticipating our arrival to pay much attention to the ship. If anything, we may bemoan the ship’s slow speed or the discomfort we experience on it. Then – hopefully sooner than later – we realize that we’re never meant to arrive anywhere. The whole point is the journey: The ship – learning to sail it, care for it, and take ownership of it – and the ocean – learning to navigate it and enjoy it.
The self is not only your means for practicing, it’s indistinguishable from what you are seeking. Hakuin Zenji wrote:
All beings by nature are Buddha,
As ice by nature is water.
Apart from water there is no ice;
Apart from beings, no Buddha.
And:
Truly, is anything missing now?
Nirvana is right here, before our eyes,
This very place is the Lotus Land,
This very body, the Buddha.[ii]
The study of self Dogen is referring to in the Genjokoan is not intellectual study. It’s not sitting around thinking about yourself or your life. It’s not about analyzing your neuroses and trying to figure out where they came from. It’s not about philosophizing, or reading, or even meditating in order to achieve some kind of transcendent insight about yourself. Instead, self study involves turning toward your direct experience as a living being – moment by moment, day after day, year after year. You become intimate with your Life through Zazen and Mindfulness. You learn about yourself by trying to follow the Precepts and Open Your Heart. Every aspect of your life can teach you something about yourself.
The Dogen passage cited earlier, from “Genjokoan,” was translated by Shohaku Okumura. In his book on Realizing Genjokoan, Okumura gives a further explanation of the Japanese word he translates as “study.” He says the Japanese word is narau, which is related to the word neraru. Neraru means “to get accustomed to,” or “to become intimate or familiar with.”[iii] Okumura further elucidates the term by explaining how the Chinese character for narau is composed of the symbol for the wings of a bird, combined with the symbol for “self.” He suggests that narau implies the kind of study or learning a baby bird needs to do in order to fly – watching its parents, taking the risk of trying flight itself, and then practicing over and over in order to do it successfully.
Inspired by Okumura’s description of the Chinese character narau, I am choosing to call this Field of Zen “Learning the Self.” “Study” – although I’ll still sometimes use the term – can imply an entirely intellectual process in which the observer is detached from the subject. Sometimes such a sense of objectivity is helpful when examining the self, but ultimately you’re seeking insight about self that is directly applicable to your life, and then you’re seeking to manifest that insight in your behavior of body, speech, and mind. As the baby bird learns to fly, you seek to fulfill your Bodhicitta and take full advantage of this human life.
Another thing to keep in mind about Learning the Self: If it goes deep, it ends up being intensely personal. You won’t get far if you try to skip over the personal in order to contemplate abstract generalities like the question, “What is the view of self?” You’re being asked to look within and explore your view of your self, because that’s the only reality you have direct access to! If you explore, for example, “the fear of annihilation,” you aren’t contemplating philosophy but exploring your own very real, visceral fear of death or non-existence. It helps to have the support of teachers, Sangha, and perhaps even a therapist as you embark into uncharted territory with self learning.
What “Self” Are We Learning?
What exactly are you studying when you study the “self”? Zen is based on the Buddha’s original teachings about not-self, or anatta, so you’re starting your study with the premise that no matter how hard or long you look, you’re not going to find anything enduring, inherent, or graspable you can call “self!” Isn’t it strange to focus your study on something you can’t locate or define? Also, according to the Buddha’s original teachings,[iv] you cause yourself no end of dissatisfaction and suffering when you identify anything as “self” – so wouldn’t focusing on self in your Buddhist practice only exacerbate your dissatisfaction and suffering? Wouldn’t it make you even more obsessed with self?
These are all valid questions that, ironically, need to be part of your study of self! It might make more sense to put Dogen’s statement this way: To study Buddhism is to study all things self-related. Once you start examining this matter, you’ll realize that many aspects of the human experience can fit in the category of “self-related,” and when it comes to Zen study, all of them are relevant. Here are four aspects important to keep in mind in your practice.
1. Your “Phenomenal” Self
There’s no denying you exist as an individual. You have a body that’s physically separate from other bodies, with its own sensations and needs. You have a mind that – for the most part – seems separate from other minds. People can’t read your thoughts, and you can’t read theirs. You ended up with a personality and tendencies that may be a source of joy and pride for you, or not. Over time, you accrue relationships, responsibilities, and possessions that don’t belong to anyone else, at least not in the same way. You occupy a unique position in the world, and have an experience unlike anyone else’s. This is your “phenomenal self”[v] – that is, your personal and distinct manifestation in the world.
Contrary to popular belief, the Buddha never said “there is no self.” That would have been a philosophical proposition that couldn’t be proven (in that you can’t prove a negative). What the Buddha did say was that identifying anything as self – or as belonging to self, the process of “I-making” and “my-making” – was a cause for Dukkha. Dukkha is dis-ease or dissatisfactoriness, sometimes translated as suffering, and you experience it when whatever you identify as “I, me, or mine” inevitably, eventually, proves to be impermanent and beyond your control. This situation brings up existential fears of death, annihilation, loss, etc.
There is nothing inherently wrong with, or unreal about, the phenomenal self. What matters is how you relate to it and take care of it. Ideally, you learn to function effectively as your phenomenal self without trying to grasp any particular aspect of it, expecting to be able to completely control it or make it last forever.
A Buddhist teaching meant to help you relate to your phenomenal self is called the “Five Skandhas,” or Five Aggregates. The Five Skandhas are form (your body), sensations (sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touch, and the sensing of thoughts spontaneously produced by the mind), perceptions (your identification and processing of what you sense), volitional mental formations (all mental activity beyond basic perception), and consciousness (awareness of your existence through time and space). A human being is said to be composed of these Five Aggregates, but there is no fixed thing within them that can be identified as the self (such as a soul). Neither can a human being be found apart from the Five Aggregates. Amazingly, you can become perfectly comfortable with this situation (see Your Belief in Your Inherent Self-Nature below).
2. Your Subjective Experience as Self
Another aspect of the Self is your moment-by-moment awareness. Most of us think of ourselves as having a unique window on the world, with the thoughts inside our heads trying to make sense of what we see around us. Over time, we come to realize that our subjective experience of things doesn’t always align with the experience of others, or with reality itself. Unless we’re terribly arrogant, we recognize the constraints of our limited perspective when it comes to navigating the world, although it doesn’t stop us from thinking and analyzing, commenting and planning.
Buddhism invites you not just to value your subjective experience, but to turn your attention to it like it’s the key to everything. However, when it comes to practice, the subject matter of your awareness should primarily be what’s happening in your own mind and body. You might call this kind of self study “phenomenological.” Phenomenology is “the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view”[vi] – that is, it takes your subjective experience as a valid method of inquiry for genuine insight into the nature of your own consciousness.
Rather than dismissing your direct experience as a “merely subjective” view on external reality, Buddhism points out that your subjective experience is your only real means of insight into your nature as a human being. Learning the Self can’t reveal to you whether there’s life on other planets, but it gives you transformative insight into how your own mind and body work – and therefore how you can gain more freedom of choice when it comes to navigating your own life. How better to learn what it means to be a human being than to study your own experience as a human being? How better to learn what it means to be you – an individual with your own particular body, mind, genetic makeup, and history – than by studying you?
In Zen, learning to pay close attention to what’s happening in your mind and body is called “turning the light inward.” This is what Shakyamuni Buddha is said to have done when he finally achieved the awakening he’d been seeking: In deep concentration, he looked within at his own, direct experience. He saw the causal connections between things, and therefore found the way to freedom. This wasn’t because he developed great spiritual superpowers and was able to gain insight into something beyond the limitations of his subjective experience, it’s because what really matters to your peace and freedom lies within.
3. The Illusory Self: Your Belief in Your Inherent Self-Nature
An extremely important aspect of self from the Buddhist perspective is your conviction that somewhere within you resides an inherently-existing, independent, enduring self-nature. Even if you accept that the Five Aggregates aren’t you, and none of the stuff of your life is exactly you, you still have a strong sense that there is someone home inside your head. Your self-essence has to be somewhere, right?
Some elusive kernel of me-ness seems to have persisted throughout your life, present within you when you were a child, a teenager, a young adult, a middle-aged adult, and an elder.
- This “I” was, is, and will be the protagonist of your life journey
- This “I” was, is, and will be the do-er
- This “I” was, is, and will be the experiencer of pleasure, pain, happiness or misery
- This “I” was, is, and will be the thinker, feeler, speaker, decision-maker, performer
- This “I” understands, or doesn’t understand
- This “I” achieves, or fails to achieve
- This “I” is happy, or unhappy
- This “I” is loved, or unloved
- This “I” is alive, or it is dead
Apparently, human beings evolved an inner narrator, probably to make sense of their behavior to others and to themselves. Modern psychological research has demonstrated numerous instances where people make decisions influenced by something they were completely unaware of, but then they subsequently offer what sound like perfectly reasonable alternative explanations for their actions – and they seem to be entirely convinced they are telling the truth.[vii] In other research, people’s actions were initiated before their consciousness of them, but they believe “they” decided to act first.[viii] Undoubtedly, your behavior and experience involves a good amount of conscious choice, but there is clearly a whole lot more going on in your mind and body than some internal “Executive I” can track and manage.
Through practice, you look for, question, and ultimately see through your sense of having an inherently-existing, independent, enduring self-nature. You do this because such a view causes lots of problems and is ultimately unnecessary. In fact, you’re much better off without it, and you don’t need it in order to take care of your life. However, as long as you do remain convinced of your inherent self-nature, that view drives the “I-making” and “my-making” that leads to Dukkha. You also have to worry about how things are going to turn out for the protagonist of your life, and about what happens to that “I” when you inevitably die.
4. True Self, or Your True Nature
Finally, in Zen we talk about your True Self, or Buddha-Nature. If ending Dukkha isn’t enough to motivate you to let go of your belief in an inherently-existing self-nature, anticipating the rewards of knowing your True Nature will hopefully inspire your Bodhicitta!
It’s tricky talking about our True Nature because it’s not something we can find or define. It’s not a thing we possess, nor something changed by our birth, death, behavior, or Realization (or lack thereof). It’s not a kernel of goodness within each of us waiting to be cultivated into Buddhahood. Anything you can imagine It is doesn’t apply. One way it’s described in Zen is “your True Nature is no nature,” meaning that it has no fixed attributes or characteristics.
Nonetheless, our True Nature is very real. The process of Realization is infinite because Reality-with-a-Capital-R is infinite, but in Zen, “seeing one’s True Nature”[ix] is considered the pivotal insight of your life. Before understanding your True Nature, your view of yourself and the world is limited, dominated by your sense of yourself as the protagonist in a story centered on you – and this is true whether you like the story of your life or not. You assume that your perceptions of things are more or less true, and navigate using a mental map of the world.
When you see your True Nature, you realize in what sense every idea you’ve ever had about yourself or the world is like the thoughts you have in a dream. The context of the universe is much bigger and more inclusive than you ever imagined. All along you have been right where you belonged. Even your struggles are dignified by meaning – not a meaning that depends on some limited narrative, but one that arises from the completeness of your Own-Being.
Your True Nature isn’t different from mine in any way, because it isn’t dependent on the form of our manifestation. Given this, you may wonder why we bother to talk about this True Nature as being “yours,” or say it’s your “True Self.” We do this because our experience of our True Nature is the intersection between the universal and the individual. Although your True Self is boundaryless and therefore all things are your Self, you also remain you. You are a radiant part of the whole – Interdependent but also independent, like a leaf on a tree.
In the next episode in this series, I will talk about the two aspects of Learning the Self: Karma Work and Realization. Karma Work involves taking care of your phenomenal self – becoming intimately familiar with your own body and mind and learning to live in accord with the Dharma. Realization involves seeking out, questioning, and seeing through your belief in an inherent self-nature, thereby awakening to your True Nature. These two aspects – Karma Work and Realization – are intimately related and support each other.
Endnotes
[i] Okumura, Shohaku. Realizing Genjokoan: The Key to Dogen’s Shobogenzo. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2010.
[ii] Lahn, Bussho. Singing and Dancing Are the Voice of the Law: A Commentary on Hakuin’s “Song of Zazen” (p. 23). Monkfish Book Publishing. Kindle Edition.
[iii] Okumura, Shohaku. Realizing Genjokoan: The Key to Dogen’s Shobogenzo. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2010.
[iv] See the teaching of Anatta and Dukkha in the chapter on Dharma Study.
[v] Phenomenal meaning “a phenomenal, or perceptible, manifestation,” not amazing.
[vi] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/
[vii] Wright, Robert. Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2017.
[viii] Ibid
[ix] The term used for this in some Zen lineages is “kensho,” but I avoid its use because of our seemingly inevitable tendency to fixate on it and associate it with a dramatic experience we should strive for.
