I had the Buddhist view of the self re-explained to me the other day, it made a bit more sense this way.

The example I was given previously was by Alan Watts and was of a man in a railways station who buys a ticket, sits in the queue and then finally gets on a train and leaves.

The point Alan makes is that at each moment the man has extra experiences, his metabolism has moved on, he’s had extra thoughts about things, etc. So at no point is he a static entity, the man who buys the ticket is not the man who entered the station. The man who waits is not the man who bought the ticket, and so on. A consistent self is not present, as at each stage the man has changed in any number of small ways, and thus cannot present a consistent entity.

So I’m reading “An End to Suffering” by Pankaj Mishra, it’s an interesting read so far. It’s autobiographical and is covering a bit more of the history of the British and European discovery of Buddhism than I’ve seen elsewhere. The Buddhist view of the self is presented here by way of a short story, which uses the example of a chariot.

A chariot, like anything, is made from components. But no one component can be said to be the whole of the chariot.

The question is asked “Are the wheels the chariot?”, and answered “No”. Then, “Are the reins the Chariot?”, again the answer is “No”, and so on. It becomes clear that the chariot is really the relationship between it’s parts, it can only be said to exist when the parts are together.

The same is true of a person that we are truly the relationship between our physical and mental parts. My appendix for example, is not me, just one part of me. If I have my appendix (or tonsils) out, then I am certainly not the being I was before as I am minus some parts, but those parts cannot be said to be me.

Again the point is that my “self” is really the relationship between the constantly changing components of my body and mind, not anything concrete. But there is another dimension that the author has not touched on yet, which I think underpins Buddhist ethics. It’s something I’ve mentioned on here before, the South African principle of “Ubuntu” or “I am who I am because of who we all are”.

A very important part of the relationships that make me who I am is my relationship to my environment, the society I live in and to other people within those. This makes the precepts and the eightfold path even more urgent, as they not only change my body and mind relationship, but they directly change my relationship with these external things, thus not only changing who am I am, but ultimately who we all are.

I was wandering on my lunch hour and found a post on Drops of Water that made me stop and think ‘how true!”

She writes of a person who has attained the Tao, you can put her in any company, no matter how low. She’ll be touched by it, but unstained. An image she gives is of a lotus growing in mud.

This is an image that resonates with me, my belief is that spirituality must be workman like. Yes, there is spirituality in a lotus or a meditation cushion, but that spirit is just as present in the dirty and profane places. I also feel that this imagery makes the important point, by association, that we should not use the fact that we are spiritual or religious as a reason to cut ourselves off from the world.

I feel that spirituality must start in the mud to be of use, that’s one of the reasons I identify more with Zen, the enlightenment they espouse is something that must survive the rigors of day to day living, not sat aloof in a monastery.

Allow me to refer to the Taiji symbol, I’ve said before that I consider the profane and darker side of the things to be as conducive to spiritual development as the sweet light side of things. I think this, because we all have a dark side and I consider it to be very dangerous to deny this side in our spiritual practice. If we do, how can our spiritual development ever be truly complete?

I was doing push hands in my Tai Chi class tonight, I’m starting to understand what they mean when they say you can get in your own way. Slavish adherence to the form and the idea of a set of rules tends to get you pushed over.

It reminds me of a couple of quotes, first it Bruce Lee “The man who is really serious, with the urge to find out what truth is, has no style at all. He lives only in what is.”, the other is an old Zen quote “If you meet the Buddha on the path, kill him”. It’s gotten me thinking, can slavish adherence to the Buddhist scriptures in fact get in the way or progress?

We all know the old line about the flexible reed bending in the wind but the tree breaking, I think this is something we need to be reminded of from time to time in our practice. We need to move beyond orthodoxy in order to really fulfill ourselves as spiritual seekers, I know there are many paths that claim to have all the answers, I don’t think that that claim can be made and the claimant expect to keep any real credibility.

I personally think that the best attitude is the one my Tai Chi teacher takes, that he too, for all his very considerable prowess, is still a student.