"I don't exist."

Last week in Sangha, one of our newer members, a man named Tom (We don't do last names, so that's all I know), who had spent a considerable amount of time in Japan and was very conversant in Zen Buddhism, said something that has stuck with me ever since. While the other members, during our customary self-introductory go-around, were sharing (as usual) their ongoing challenges with their practice, focusing on either self-congratulatory insights or personal frustrations and setbacks, Tom, when his turn came, made (something like) the following remark:

"Whenever I find myself either castigating myself, or taking offense at something others say about me, or wishing I were better than I am, I often stop to remind myself, 'I don't exist.' That is, this notion we all carry around with us of a separate self is ultimately illusory...I am just one temporary manifestation of the universe, but 'I' don't actually exist...the universe exists through me and everyone and everything else."

This was a bracing insight, which is good to remember whenever we get caught up in any of the innumerable self-centered, afflictive emotions (which can be summed up quite conveniently by the classical Seven Deadly Sins of patristic Christianity):

• Pride: "I am better than you!"
  


• Envy: "I want what you have!"
  


• Avarice: "I want more!"
  


• Gluttony: "I'm still hungry!" (no matter how much you've eaten)


• Wrath: "I hate you because you insulted or abused me!"


• Sloth: "I'm too tired and depressed..."


• Lust: "I crave your bod!"

The common denominator in all of these afflictions is the First Person Pronoun. But what if this "I" does not exist? Well--in fact, it doesn't. Our bodies are constantly replacing their cells at different rates, and they depend on the constant input of minerals, water, and solar energy, tranformed into the food we eat and the oxygen we breathe, as well as the output of CO2 from our lungs, perspiration, urine, and fecal wastes. If any of these crucial systems of input or output are disrupted, we die. Our brains, conversely, retain their neurons for life, though these are nourished by the same flux of energy and matter as our bodies, but this neural continuity accounts for our memories, which give us the impression of a continuous self. But it is only an impression, and will vanish, along with everything else, to its primordial source once we die, leaving our physical remains to be recycled into new organisms. This "I" is nothing more, then, than the universe looking at itself--I and I, or "eye and eye." Or as Meister Eckhart once said,


“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”

Wow! As the hippies might have said, "That's heavy!"

This basic insight--"I don't exist"--has many uses. Whether you are feeling full of yourself, embarrassed, offended, annoyed, or self-pitying, you can use it as a quick antidote--something to bring you from being caught up in your personal hang-ups or Klesha back quickly to compassionate awareness of yourself and others, all caught up in the "inescapable network of mutuality"--

• Breathing (with benevolence and gratitude for all life),
  


• Observing (with compassion, yourself and others),


• Letting Go (with selfless joy and openness to all things)


• and Abiding (in peace, with patience and a gentle smile)