Letting Go - 8 - Who do you think you are?

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Today we complete the series of talks on Letting Go of the Person You Used To Be” by Lama Surya Das.  The final question for us all is, “Who or what am I?” What exactly is it that I am letting go of and wanting to become, or who or what am I experiencing right now? 

I got a chance to visit Father Thomas Keating this last week—he’s a Catholic monk who also has been practicing Zen Buddhism for forty years.  At 90 years old, he is piercingly brilliant yet humble and open to each moment.  I think he was an enlightened being, though of course, he would never say that!  We talked about the Buddhist concept of anatta, or no self—a difficult idea to grasp.   It is said that there is no self to be, just a compilation of sensations and synapses, processes and past experiences.   Father Keating calls it our False Self, this identity that is merely a collection of conditioned responses and old story lines cobbled together from our past and constantly tainting the present.  Who do you think you are?  This question cuts right to the heart of our suffering.  In this moment, can you feel the bundle of judgments, preferences, emotions and sensations that you identify as you?

Someone sent me a quote this week that says,  "I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be."  There is hint of Buddhist philosophy in this quote.  The Buddhist process of compassionate awareness, as described by Lama Surya Das, is that we first experience our stuckness, those stories that we tell ourselves and others about who we are.  I encourage you to ask the question, “Do we need a specific identity?  I guess to get your driver’s license…but I’m challenging us all to consider the possibility of letting go of who we used to be AND letting go of who we think we are, and just be open and present in each moment. 

Father Keating, with his Christian perspective, describes it as becoming an empty vessel so that God can manifest through you.  Now, I have a lot of trouble with that word God, based on some of my childhood indoctrination that causes the word itself to evoke harsh images, but that is just a word and just my judgment about it.  In Buddhist terms, you are innately good, innately have Buddha nature, the ability to become fully awakened and enlightened--every single one of you have it!   So, how do we get there?

We can start where we are, in this exact moment. Begin with becoming fully aware of what thoughts, emotions and sensations are creating this sense of you.  From one of the original written Buddhist teachings, a lesson called the Satipatthana Sutra, mindfulness or compassionate awareness includes three components:  awareness of what is happening internally, awareness of what is happening externally and awareness of both at the same time.  Easy, right?  For me, this process is sometimes far away from how I’m experience certain moments in my life!  I can’t see what is the reality of the moment because I get caught up in sensations, judgments and story lines that cloud my ability to see clearly and to process skillfully what is happening both internally and externally. 

Let’s start with sensations.  Experience the sensations in your body in this exact moment.  You might be dealing with an ache or pain, or you might be feeling some sensation that feels pleasant.  If you are like most folks, you then place some judgment about that sensation.  “I hate this feeling! How can I get rid of it?”  or “I love this feeling! How can I hang on to it?”  Most times, we don't even realize that we were having any sensation because we were distracted by our thoughts and stories.   We can start to see how sensations lead to judgments lead to stories--the three are intermingled and entangled.  Perhaps a judgment leads to a story leads to a sensation…these three conditionings wreak havoc on our ability to be fully present. 

Some of these conditionings are good!  Sensations of pain alert us to the possibility that we need to get help for a medical condition.  For me, I sometimes get a small ache or pain, and unconsciously build up some judgment or story about it, like “this is serious!  I must be dying!”  We are all going to die sometime, but often my small ache or pain is nothing more than bad Mexican food or overexertion.  Compassionate awareness enables us to sort out the reality of the sensation from the judgment and story that arises about it. 

Some judgments are good!  We walk down a dark alley and see someone approach us with a gun or a knife.  If you are judging that this is an unsafe situation, that’s probably accurate and wise to take appropriate action to be safe.

The biggest difficulty arises when we put sensations and judgments together to create and recreate stories.  My simple experience with pain from eating bad Mexican food becomes a story about “I’m a loser for not eating healthy” or a victim because I was poisoned, or a myriad of other stories we might create.  An experience with someone wanting to harm us becomes a story that sometimes develops into “I deserve to be treated this way,”  or other stories about our perceived value as a person.

Mindful awareness creates a useful gap between stimulus and response so that we have time to see more clearly and respond more skillfully.  Sensations, judgments and stories can then be more clearly seen and processed for what they truly are.  Our old habits often cause us to shut down and not clearly see what is happening externally.  For most of us, the experience of fear, anger or pain narrows our focus to the reptilian brain responses of fight, flight or freeze.  If you are being chased by a bear, or someone is trying to harm you, this is an important reaction to have.  The adrenaline that pulses through your veins will help you survive.  However, when the reptilian response continues long after the threat has dissipated, we remain in a state of stress that literally eats us up from the inside.  This is how the epidemic of stress is created.

In this moment, we are sitting in this room, and we are safe.  Yet, each of us may be thinking about a past sensation, judgment or story that is creating fear, anger or pain in this moment.  You might even be thinking about some fear, anger or pain that might be experienced in the future, and creating a sensation, judgment or story about what will happen.   When we become mindfully and compassionately aware, we begin to see the False Self that is sometimes running our life.   Here’s the science behind it:  compassionate awareness enables us to move from the reptilian brain to the pre-frontal cortex, where language and reason is stored, and it redirects the energy from a reptilian response to a more appropriate skillful response. This is the power of compassionate awareness.

Once this awareness arises, we can then choose how we want to respond.  Imagine the possibility that you are a bundle of energy that is pure potential, full of a wide range of possibilities.   You can choose where to place your energy.  Do you want your energy depleted on fear, anger or pain?  OR, do you want to direct your energy towards peace, compassion and wisdom?  All of us have everything we need to direct our energy where ever we choose.  That is the power of this practice. 

Last, I want to identify the fact that we are interdependent on each other.  We can choose how to experience each other and how we experience ourselves in the context of relationship with another.  When the fear, anger or pain becomes too much to bear alone, I encourage you to reach out, to ask for help, to explore the support system around you.  That is the power of the mindful step of being aware externally and building skillful relationships with each other. 

We all can help each other in easy ways.  I am a very bad driver in the snow, and yesterday I got stuck in a snow bank trying to get back to the airport in Denver—I tried to move the car out myself—yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.  In spite of my aversion to asking for help, I decided that seeing clearly this situation, I had to flag down another driver, or I would miss my flight.  Would they accept or reject me!?  I was very uncomfortable, but did it anyway.  I waved my hands and palms together and gave the universal sign for Help!  A car stopped, and a young couple got out to assist me.  This strong young man and his sweet girlfriend helped push me out of the snow bank.  They were my angels!  And there are angels all around us, people willing to reach out and lend a hand or a heart or just an encouraging word or positive energy.  We can be that for each other.  Let’s be the change that we want to see. Let’s be the change that we want to experience!