You are me

So, first off, we have this ignorant mind called self-grasping, where we grasp at a real self — the self that is the center of the universe, the self that is inherently me, the self that is really me. And even though logically we may know that everyone is a me and that from their point of view I am an other, still our mind of ignorance sees a real me and believes what it sees.

But there is no real me. We are seeing and believing something that is NOT THERE.

Carrying on from this article.

Bit strange

Having that strong sense of me is a little bit strange, don’t you think, considering that no one else on the planet sees it? Other than you. Not one single other person shares your assumption that you are the real me. I hate to break it to you, I really do. Not even the person who loves you the most on this planet, whoever that is, whether that is your mom or someone else, even they do not see Me when they look at you. That Me you assume is so real and solid is a private idea or imputation that you have all to yourself.*

We are all doing this. “Me, me, me me …”, we go around all day thinking, “Me, my, mine, me, myself, I.” Do we not? No one else is seeing that. No one else can see that. Have you ever thought about how strange that might be?

Well, anyway, Buddha thought it was very strange and explained how it was the source of all our other mistaken notions, our other exaggerated and myopic ideas, our other — what we call in Buddhism — “delusions”.

How so?

In dependence on that ignorance, which projects or hallucinates a real me and then grasps at it, we develop self-cherishing because we naturally assume that Me is more important than Other. So we naturally put ourselves first — I want this, I need this, I don’t need this. It’s all revolving around a sense of protecting this real me, or serving this real me. And because of those two ego minds, all our other delusions arise.

A delusion has got a definition — an unpeaceful, uncontrolled state of mind that arises from inappropriate attention. And our delusions are states of mind like anger. If I don’t get my own way, what happens? If someone seems to be getting in the way of my happiness, or just in my way on the sidewalk, what am I going to do? I am going to develop irritation, anger, annoyance.

This happened to me yesterday, as a matter of fact. A group of drunken men in downtown Denver hogged the entire sidewalk, forcing me and a friend to step out onto the road. But I decided to walk back onto the sidewalk and directly into their path, making them get out of the way, because they were basically being racist and I confess I felt like challenging them. But my friend later told me that if he was to respond to the numerous micro aggressions he experiences every day with irritation, he’d never be peaceful and he wouldn’t be able to sustain his work to change things for the better. And that’s the truth. He has had to learn to think bigger and better both about them and about himself.

Where does most of our anxiety come from?

If I am thinking about me all the time I am also going to get stressed out and worried and anxious. I am always going to be cultivating the inappropriate attention, “What about me, what about me, what about me?!”– building up anxious thoughts projecting forward into the future, “What if this happens to me, what if that happens to me?!”, chewing over all the things that could go wrong for poor old me, and meanwhile not giving a monkeys for the far greater sufferings of gazillions of other people. Not, in other words, having any reasonable perspective at all.

Four dead boars

One snapshot of us versus them, greed, callousness, and suffering stood out on my recent trip to San Francisco, particularly disappointing for a city that used to care a lot more. A friend, Michele, and I went into Four Barrels and were surprised to see four dead boar heads on the wall of this this yuppy coffee shop on Valencia, perhaps most surprised by the fact that no one else seemed to be noticing, let alone bothered.

We left to drink tea at Samovar instead, down the street, but then I was compelled to come back to ask “Why?” “It was a late night purchase on Ebay”, said the stressed out baristo by way of explanation, begging the question, “But why did someone buy them?” He was impatient with me, he didn’t know, and suggested it was good to embrace “others’ cultural norms”. But this was a coffee shop in gentle San Francisco, the once bastion of thoughtful values and compassion, not a hunting range.

“Why would you ever want to stick people’s heads on a wall?” (I didn’t ask him, but could have.) “How would you like it if someone did that to you?”

The four boars seem to me to represent the desensitization that seems to be more prevalent now in this city and elsewhere: “Perhaps they’ll have four homeless people’s heads up there next time I visit,” I said to Michele.

An oasis in the city

I would like to qualify at this point that San Francisco still contains a lot of very compassionate people, even if they report to feeling somewhat more exercized these days. The Kadampa Buddhist temple I was visiting, for example, continues to be a bright guiding light, full of Bodhisattvas. I love that place. Please visit if you ever get a chance. It is Geshe Kelsang Gyatso’s first center in the United States, and has been a refuge for over 25 years.

Okay, I was going to keep going, but it’ll have to wait as your coffee break is probably over … more next time. Over to you for comments!

*With the possible exception of those who have exchanged self with others, such as Bodhisattvas and Buddhas, because they do see Me when they look at you, just not a real me.

Related articles

Changing our world and ourselves through compassion

Equalizing self and others

What about me?!