Old Orchard Beach, Maine
I lie on the floor. I follow the instructions, wanting to know myself apart from all I have been told I am, all I have come to think of myself as. I am instructed to allow any identity to arise, then to negate it. Like, "Teacher," and, "No, I am not a teacher." And, "Man," "No, I am not a man." As this continues, I feel a sense of lightness and clarity. This is like scales falling off. Something is left, but it is not a thing. Brian is no longer here, yet this feels freeing. This emptiness is not empty. So, I am. Yet, I cannot think or say what that is.
A Zen koan -
Huike, China. Bodhidharma, teacher of Huike, First Ancestor of Chan Buddhism, ca. 5th-6th Century.
Huike: My mind is restless. Pacify it.
Bodhidharma: Bring me your mind and I will appease it.
Huike: Although I looked for it exhaustively, I could not find it.
Bodhidharma: There it is, I have pacified your mind.
* * *
Albert Camus, in The Myth of Sisyphus -
For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers.
I can sketch one by one all the aspects it is able to assume, all those likewise that have been attributed to it, this upbringing, this origin, this order or these silences, this nobility or this vileness. But aspects cannot be added up.
This very heart which is mine will remain indefinable to me. Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance, the gap will never be filled. Forever I shall be a stranger to myself.
*In Charles Genoud. Beyond Tranquility: Buddhist Meditations in Essay and Verse.
* * *
Recently, I had my driver's license copied to complete a business transaction. My identity, I was told, had to be confirmed. The license has a picture and other information. Is that what I am? Who I am? Does it matter?
In meditation, we practice intimacy with our contentless self. What is this? Well, who do you say you are? Is it not based on memory? Yet, as Camus says, we cannot add the aspects up to make a self. They have no substance. "I'm a white man." Okay. "White." "Man." Explore that. Both are representational. I could have been raised to think, "I'm a purple goose." If so, I would think, "I'm a purple goose." I could have been raised to say of the goose, "That's a blue sky." And of the sky, "Isn't that a lovely pink goose!"
So, we, as we think we are, are groupings of representations. Yours and mine are not the same, but we share basic aspects. Through this, we imagine ourselves through likeness and contrast. This representational collection is brought into the present as fact. "I'm a white man." "She's a black woman." "He's gay." "That's a refrigerator." "Someone threw trash beside the road." However, in the moment of knowing, do you know who you are? If not, how can you know anyone?
You might say, "I'm a woman." Okay. Who told you? "Woman" is a word. You were taught to see yourself as a gender; otherwise, you would not say, "I'm a woman" or "I'm a man," for example.
* * *
In a recent writing, I explored the concept of surfaces. Identity is a surface. Look closely, and there is nothing there. You can see a body but not "woman." You cannot see "Christian" or "Buddhist." The problem is most persons do not look closely. We are trained to be beguiled by surfaces. We are taught not to see. Hence, we believe and feel ourselves to be an object among objects. Rarely, if ever, is a person even presented with another possibility.
You cannot find woman, or man, or anything. It is like a mirage on water. Or like a bubble that appears when circumstances are set for it to emerge, then it is gone.
Is it not true, you do not think of yourself as a woman or man or whatever all the time? Yet, if someone asked you, "Are you a man or woman?," then, the thought arises, and you say, "I'm a woman." Identity arises solely as a thought. You walk on, and the identity as this-or-that disappears. Where did it go? A mirage. A bubble. So, it did not go anywhere, for it was not there in the first place.
Or, we could say, when identity recedes, there is only pure knowing. You are there. You do not disappear. You know yourself when walking about, but you are not walking about as something: some thing. You are just you. That is a felt-presence, not a thing. This "you" is felt, but when identity is not present, it has no content added to it. There is no separation. See? You cannot even say, "I'm walking." Identity tends to separate. Identity dilutes intimacy. No longer is there experience, the thought is, "I'm experiencing ... ."
* * *
Therefore, the monk Huike cannot find anything that can be called his heart, or mind. This means no Huike who is Huike. Where did Huike go? No where. Huike is the surface. His inquiry hints at the aspiration to find something missing. He feels the insubstantiality of Huike being Huike. The teacher says, "Nothing is missing, for it was never there. So, now, see, you can relax." We do not have this aspiration until we feel enough of the crampiness of the insubstantiality of what and whom we thought we were and acknowledge it. Most people do not get to this gate.
Now, am I saying, "Reject identity," which is really a community of identities? No. You slowly awaken to realize you are not what you thought, that you were taught over and over, in many ways. At the same time that you see through it, you learn it has its place. You can appreciate the identities and their place in relation to a world of identities.
So, I am not confined within the information on that license. Yet, those are the clothes I wear: face, gender, race, ... . I sit where I am writing, wearing shoes, socks, and other clothes, but I see through it all. I am not any or all of what is garbing this body. I wear it. Likewise, I am not this body, yet I am not separate from it. I appreciate this body. I take care of it. I relate with the world through this body. I can include all this within myself, rather than thinking I am this or trying to fit inside it.
This is a point of frustration for humans: the struggle to fit oneself inside a self-identity; it just does not work. We are born and conditioned to do this. You do not fit inside anything. We may even think the soul fits inside this body. So, a soul is inside a bag of skin? Who taught us that? Who taught you that you have a soul rather than being it?
Fortunate are those who see they do not fit anywhere. To the extent that you think you fit inside anything, even inside your body, you limit yourself. Yes, we say, "My body," but we do not say, "I am this body." Yet, we identify with religion, politics, gender, marital status, parental status, race, class, ... . Consequently, all forms of prejudice are rooted in persons not knowing who they are. You could place a Muslim beside a Christian, and you remove "Muslim" and "Christian," what is left? What lasts. What was present before "Muslim" and "Christian." But, these two may think they are enemies or try to convert the other to be what they say they are. Well, wars begin from all this thinking we are what we cannot be. If persons knew who they are, could they ever want to kill anyone?
* * *
When seeing what Huike saw, you are no longer content playing the game set up for you - and everyone - before you even took the present form of this incarnation. You were born into the make-believe game. You are not meant to live inside it. Relative experience lives inside you. The body lives inside you. Identity arises and dissolves inside you. Knowing this, you will not lose yourself. You cannot lose yourself.
So, we practice this in meditation. We remain quiet. We let experience arise. What does it feel like for feeling to emerge without the addition, "I'm feeling." Thinking to occur without, "I'm thinking." No, just let it be. Then, there is the emergence of an intimacy: feeling being feeling, thought being thought, body being body, ... .
Now, who is thinking? Feeling? Experiencing? Reflecting Camus, you do not know. You do not need to know. Yet, due to the intimacy, there is a knowing. This knowing can be delightful, for it is free of the constriction of identity as an object to be known, so free of ownership, and the gate is wide open to the Light, to Love.
And, if a sense of identity arises, that is okay. It will, and that is okay. You can host that, letting it go through and out the back door. That passing sense of identity is not a problem as long as you are hosting it, which means you are not claiming to be it. It, too, is a manifestation of the Light. It, too, is a manifestation of you. Yet, now, it does not cling to you. It serves you.
What happens as surfaces are experienced as surfaces is not the demolition of surfaces. What happens is the background becomes the foreground, and surfaces serve the self rather than controlling the self. The consequence is enhanced intimacy, for the clinging to identity is no longer a veil.
For example, I can enjoy intimacy with a person, a woman, relatively, yet that can recede. As it does, intimacy is more open. I am receptive to that person as more than being a gender. Gender is the background. Essence is the foreground. That shift is a shift in consciousness, not merely a matter of thinking differently.
Here, one moves from intimacy as an emotional state to intimacy as knowing; that is, the intimacy is knowing, or the knowing is intimacy. You are an unsolvable riddle to me, and I am to you, as I am to myself.
Camus speaks of our being strangers to ourselves; yet, that not-knowing is a deeper, more subtle knowing. Knowing, otherwise, is thought to be a collection of facts. Here, presence meets presence, and both are prior to any content of who or what they have considered themselves to be or not to be. So, usually, we know what "I am..." by knowing "I am not...". Here, one knows. The knowing is knowing. Pure subjectivity. There is not a sliver of space between "I" and "know."
* * *
Identity is seen as a medium for your way of being in this world, among other things. Essence manifests in forms. And you begin to see through the mirage of others' self-identities or appearances, thereby enhancing the depth of connection you have with them, even if they are not aware of it. And most will not be. Still, you, seeing through their illusion of identity, can communicate a love which they pick up. You have, therefore, reflected to them their essence, or true self, which is divine love, and much more. And, you know, their essence is essence. There is no individual essence, only essence appearing as different individuals. So, see, the more intimate you are with another, the more intimate you are with that which makes love possible. And the other may be a non-human. The same principle applies.
* * *
We, like Huike, can stop looking to add to ourselves. We are complete now. We cannot be other than what we are. Life becomes a learning experience of how to honor that in how we live this manifestation in this body, in this time, and in this place. There are many, many ways to live essence.
Additionally, this perspective influences how we perceive death, which is often viewed in the context of not knowing who we are. But that is not a topic for today. Still, please think about this. Consider how our view of birth, life, and death may be linked with who or what we think we are. How is it all - life, birth, death - tied together in our minds as a single package? Can essence die? If not, was it born? Were you born? Do you have a life? Will you die? Well, enough. Good luck!
(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2025
