Talk On Identity And Emptiness

Offered in the Gaia House Online Dharma Hall, this short talk outlines the Buddha's teachings on the nature of existence, the nature of the self and emptiness, describing how the practice of moment to moment mindful awareness wakes us up from the self clinging at the root of our ignorance and suffering, liberating us to live playful and happy lives in service of the world.

Transcript

I thought I would say something about the Buddha's teaching on the nature of existence and the nature of the self and the nature of emptiness.

So the Buddha taught that there were these three characteristics of existence which many of you may be aware of.

Anitya,

Anatta and Dukkha.

Anitya usually translated as impermanence,

Anatta as an absence of fixed self and Dukkha suffering,

Stress or dissatisfaction.

And I don't think the teaching of impermanence was quite so unique in the Buddha's day but what was unique was his assertion that we as humans or any beings have no permanent identity,

No fixed soul or self that is unchanging.

Pretty much as far as I know all the other traditions of the time in India taught about an eternal soul or if they were trying to describe what it is to be human they talked about this sense of a self that was somehow real and immutable.

It's very much there in the Mahabharata,

In the Hindu teachings which we have today.

It's very much there in the Christian teachings of the soul but the Buddha taught this dependent nature of reality.

You may have heard of the twelve links of dependent origination which go into some detail describing how one thing leads to another which leads to another which leads to another which gives rise to our existence and our suffering as humans and how everything is conditioned and because everything changes,

Because of this situation of impermanence we are always changing.

There's nothing fixed about us.

We might feel stuck but even that feeling of stuckness is always changing in some way and if we practice meditating on the present moment we can see for ourselves in real time how nothing has a fixed existence,

How everything is in a state of change and if it seems to be stuck,

If there seems to be something that's fixed please investigate that,

Please pay close attention.

Certainly I've never found anything that is immutable,

That's not dependent,

That doesn't change and it's through that moment-by-moment inquiry into this moment that we can become free of the idea of fixedness.

We can become free of being stuck in ideas of who we are or who anyone else is.

I'm sure some of you have heard the story of the Zen master Taizan who was walking with a young monk and they came across a young woman who was looking at a flooded road and wanted to get across and she had all these fine silks and she was looking quite distressed that she couldn't get across this road without ruining her fine clothes and Taizan said,

May I help you?

And whisked her up,

Carried her across,

Put her down at the other side and they carried on their journey to the monastery.

When they got there the young monk that Taizan was traveling with said,

I can't bear it any longer,

Master we're not supposed to even touch women yet you lifted her up and held her against your body and carried her across the river.

To which Taizan replied,

Yes and I put her down again.

Have you been carrying her this whole way?

Taizan was free from a sense of a self that was a monk that couldn't touch a woman.

He was able to help a young person who wanted their help because they weren't attached to being a monk.

They didn't get stuck in who they were.

I wonder how many of us get stuck in who we are and find ourselves going through the same old patterns because we don't see how we can be different.

We don't see how it's just causes and conditions that are keeping our cyclical existence in process.

So at the root of these 12 links of dependent origination that I mentioned is ignorance.

Ignorance of impermanence,

Ignorance of a lack of fixed self,

Ignorance of suffering and the causes of suffering.

The links of dependent origination that lead to suffering have ignorance at their core.

We don't see,

We ignore,

We don't see how we come to be.

It seems that human evolution or animal evolution in general has created these beings that have an idea of who they are and attach to that.

Maybe that's probably quite helpful for passing on genes.

But it also creates suffering and what the Buddha pointed out which was so wonderful was that there is in the human mind and body the capacity to imagine being a person,

To imagine a fixed sense of self and at the same time being free of it.

We can be free of a sense of self whilst there is a sense of self.

The Buddha described it as like seeing how the trick works.

He used the metaphor of a magician and seeing how the magician is doing the trick.

You still see the trick but you see it's a trick.

You're not like the child who's awed by the magic,

Transfixed by this illusion.

You see behind the curtain,

Oh right that's how it works.

If we study how the self is created,

This moment by moment arising,

This constant impermanence,

We can be free of being trapped in a fixed self view.

And like Tizan we can be creative and respond to the world in a way that's really helpful.

And we can be happy.

We don't have to be like the monk that was stuck and crossed because somebody broke a rule.

We can move with what's happening,

Adapt.

We're not stuck in this fixed sense of self.

Some of the senses of self that I've been really curious about lately have been the senses of self I inhabit so habitually and unconsciously that I don't even know they're there.

So I'm part of a group at Guy House called a white awareness group where we investigate what it is to be a white person.

Most white people most of the time don't think of themselves as white people.

Interestingly if you talk to people of colour or people who aren't white,

Many of them will say it's hard to ignore the fact that they're not white.

My eldest daughter,

She's a person of colour,

She says when she walks into a shop sometimes she just can't help but notice the colour of her skin and is she being watched by the security guard as she walks around the shop.

The colour of her skin is so much a part of her identity she notices it every day.

I never noticed the colour of my skin unless I'm really conscious about it.

That's so curious.

I take an ethnicity form,

I take white British every time and it's like it's nothing,

There's nothing there,

It's like ignored.

But it is part of my identity because I tick that box otherwise I'd tick some other box.

I obviously clearly identify on some level as a white person but it's so much the water I swim in I don't even notice it and that's a real privilege to not have to think about my ethnicity.

But I'm curious about that sense of self.

I'm curious about how it operates in society.

I'm curious about how it causes suffering for me or for others by being stuck in a sense of who I am.

And I'm curious about being a male.

I'm quite conscious that in all the leadership roles I hold being a male has undoubtedly supported me in that because society privileges males.

And I don't think about myself as a male.

I don't go around thinking I'm a man or I'm gonna do well at this interview or have a better chance of getting this on this course because I'm a man.

I don't think like that.

But that's how it is.

Society does privilege men.

It assumes them that they'll take leadership roles.

And I want to be curious.

I want to understand how does that identity that I might hold completely unconsciously cause suffering for me or for others.

I'm a father.

That definitely causes suffering.

My sense of being a father causes me to relate to my children in a way that sometimes hurts them.

I sometimes speak in a way which I think a father ought to be speaking and then in hindsight I think that was just me being a dad and it didn't seem very creative or helpful.

And then I apologise if I'm mindful enough to notice.

This is my practice with my identity and I would love to hear about your practice with your identity and how you relate to yourself and to the teachings of impermanence and freedom from having a fixed self if that's the teaching you entertain.

So thank you so much for your time and your attention to my little presentation.

Just setting the table this morning for us all to explore together how our practice of presence and curiosity and compassion supports us or supports others to be free from dukkha,

To be free from the suffering and stress and dissatisfaction that the Buddha says is born of ignorance.