Group Learning and Letting Go

The chanting ceremony started out with a bit of turbulence. I had a lot of wandering thoughts in the beginning, but I ended up resorting to asking ‘what is wu?’ many times. Yes, it diverted me from the words of the chanting itself, but on the other hand, it seemed effective to me. I started to realize that the entire sounds and environment aren’t separate. They are part of an inter-being that does not have a separate distinct ‘me’. And at that point, I started to experience what it is like for there to be no real person in the experience.

During the Surangama Study Group session today, we were continuing to explore the chapter on Yajnadata and the dream. I found one of many interesting insights from the group members. Let me set the background. Buddha explains to Purna that he does not need to keep working himself to the bone to become enlightened. Rather than looking at the phenomena inside the dream for an answer to why beings are deluded, a person only needs to let go of distinctions created by karma, as well as killing and stealing, to realize the true mind. This is tough to unpack, because my thought was: isn’t ‘do not kill’ just another way of reacting to other beings? What does this have to do with realizing the true mind? But then the group members started to share how ‘ending’ these negative karmas is not about engaging the dream at all. The opposite: vexations arise only when I begin to see people in the experience. That is, when I make out a face and say, ‘that is you’, I have already created vexations for myself. Not only that, but it is the beginning of breaking the precepts. Why, you might wonder? It is because the violence always begins when I create a ‘me’ and  a ‘you’. And this “me” and “you” become the ways in which the dream itself is perpetuated. So, there is a mystery there. The actual maintenance of precepts means that I never generate ‘separate’ beings in mind.

A lot of this way of looking at things is strange to me initially. Part of the reason is that I am used to the notion that behaving ethically implies respect for ‘separate persons’.  The problem begins when I start to conceptualize my interests as opposed to others’ interests. This is a tricky point. I agree that there are times when people need to assert their own interests and create boundaries in relation to ‘others’. It is not a question of being enmeshed with others. I think that the Sutra is describing a state of realizing that there just aren’t these ‘self’ and ‘others’ in the experience, because experience is a totality. Does this mean that “I” need to submit to “you”? Not really, because “I “and “you” are just conventions that are used in daily life. If I take ‘I’ or ‘you’ too literally, I end up hyper-relating to them as concepts. “I” and “You” become separate objects to be loved or hated, rather than as conventions used to demarcate certain kinds of experiences. This can create a lot of conflict, as “I” struggle to find a place in a world of ‘other’ beings.

I don’t think this means that I can ever get away from the conventions of self and other. On the contrary, the conventions are preserved in order to use language and communicate. But, beyond that, I need to ask myself whether there is any real use for a deeply entrenched notion of self, as distinct from other beings. Besides the social roles I play and cultural identities, is there any enduring, fixed and embodied sense of self that stays the same? From what I learned this past weekend from the Venerable, the notion of self is always a kind of thought. I get these thoughts from images which continually arise in interactions. But, if I take those images to be my ‘real self’, who watches the images? And does the watcher behold that image forever?

Now, in my practice of huatou, I am trying very hard to see past the convention of differentiating a self from others.  I observe that most of my thoughts about myself are fleeting and not tangible. They are based on momentary feelings of inner threat that don’t necessarily come to fruition. When I can go back to the situation and surroundings as I truly experience it (without the mental filters of “this is mine”, “this is yours”), I find less of a need to feel a separate self. In fact, the feeling of separation  is based on thoughts of separation. Is that thought truly embodied?