| | Hello. How's life? Good I hope. Swimmingly good, I hope.
Before I leap into describing my recent odd reflective experience, I feel I should make clear where I stand medatatively--that is: essentially nowhere. I am new to the Dhamma, having only recently discovered it these past six months, and I have never had a personal teacher, nor have I ever been on any retreats. I have read only a handful of dhamma books including Daniel Ingrim's Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book, What the Buddha Taught, by Dr Walpola Rahula, the Dhammapada, and perhaps three or four others of varying degrees of helpfulness. I have meditated only minimally, perhaps fifty or sixty hours in sum. I have listened to Dhamma talks by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana of the Bhavana Society as well as talks by Bhante Rahula that were also posted on the Bhavana website.
In short: I have essentially NO experience with the Dhamma and am as neophyte a fledgling as they come.
That said...
Last Wednesday, (December 28th, 2011), I was practicing a sort of walking meditation while vacuuming a lobby at my workplace. The subject of the meditation was "Locating the Self" as it had been for perhaps two or three days. I was casually attempting to locate the Self, refining my search by means of my understanding of physiology. Self seemed to be confined to consciousness. So I probed what I meant by consciousness. To me, consciousness seemed to be comprised of only three parts: Sensory information, memory, and decisions. The brain takes in sensory information (both internal and external) and checks it against memories to make a decision and take an action in response. Well, a Self was certainly not simply sensory information, nor was a Self memory, since a Self could be maintained even if these things were removed. The Self then had to be the DECIDER who made the decisions based off of the sensory input and memories. Thus, I had narrowed the location of a Self to the thalamus, which takes in information and relays it to the appropriate cortices.
I developed a visual image of the Self as a sort of industrious little man seated behind an incredible control panel. Before him were monitors covering the walls. These monitors read off immense amounts of data: visual data, auditory data, olfactory data, proprioceptive data, emotional data, etc.... This man was the thalamus, the decision-maker, the Self that observed and acted in response to its environment.
But as I watched this man, this Self, at work, I began to recall those bits and pieces of genetics (heredity) and physics (causality) that had long ago convinced me that free will does not exist. All choices and decisions that I make are made as a result of my peculiar geneolgy and the sum total of the things that have happened to me. As I considered these things, the man in my imagined Self transformed into a series of pulleys. Suddenly, the individual had vanished. There was no more deciding Self---rather there was only a machine that took in input, checked it against memories, and output action accordingly. The seat of Self had suddenly transformed from a conscious man into an enormous (and immensely complex) nesting of if/then statements defined by genetics and experience.
In this moment, I was struck utterly dumb, and a feeling of stupor fell over me. I paused my vacuuming and stood silent and stupefied--but for how long, I cannot say. The next half hour passed strangely. I felt an emptiness that was not at all unpleasant that persists even now into the present (though a touch more subdued than it was at its onset). The first-person pronouns seemed meaningless suddenly. To say that I was standing in a room was no different from saying that a couch was standing in a room. In fact, all distinctions between myself and inanimate objects (or animals) seemed to be blurred. A couch was simply a compendium of matter that reacted to the stresses of its environment according to its nature. I was no different from a couch.
I phoned a friend who had considerably more experience in these matters than I had, and he advised me to do three things: One: let it go. Wonderful advice. Clutching would do me no good. Two: He recommended I find a teacher. And Three: He directed me here, saying that someone might have an idea what has happened to me.
For the next several days, I attempted to let the feeling go. I did not want to jump to conclusions. I felt (and still feel) that I had extinguished my Self, but I was struck by the nagging feeling that I had not spent enough hours on the cushion to have truly extinguished my Self. Or rather, I should say, I was struck with the mild observation that a feeling existed---and the feeling that existed was that I SHOULD think that I haven't put in enough time on the cushion, because my understanding had been that Self-Annihilation takes years of industrious practice.
At present, the feeling of Self-Annihilation persists. It has been now nearly six days since the "incident" and and I see no indication of my returning to the former world of Self. My current "symptoms" that I here present in hope of diagnosis are these:
---All feelings and emotions are present, but subdued. I feel the physical sensation of something, say irritation, but it does not move me or influence me. I see my own irritation as I might see someone else's. I note that it exists and move on.
---Preferences seem to have gone almost entirely away. No state is felt to be preferred to another. No activity is found to be any more fulfilling than any other. Everything is perfectly acceptable.
---I am profoundly at peace with the notion of my own death. Were I to die this very moment, I'd be fine with it.
---My neutral mood is emptiness. It is not pleasant. It is not unpleasant. It is simply nothing. It is a nothing that I am in no hurry to be rid of, however.
---I no longer take offense to personal insult. Example: I have blue hair. It is blue because I am an actor and have recently performed a character who had blue hair. Up until Wednesday, I had taken great offense to comments about my hair, even turning to spit insulting remarks at those who mocked (or, I admit, even mentioned) my hair in public. However on Friday, a man from Indiana whom I met at a bus stop spoke at length of my hair looking like one of his roosters, and I smiled earnestly and told him that was "fantastic". We spoke pleasantly for the remainder of our encounter. Thinking back on this still makes me chuckle.
---Residual "self-type thoughts" exist, but they are immediately recognized as such and discarded without influencing my behavior. In the past, I would occasionally recognize these sorts of thoughts, but only on deliberate examination. Now, noticing them feels automatic. They are seen much as an adult sees the actions of a child. They are not bad. They are not villainous or wicked (even when naughty). They are simply a bit immature---but immature without the the negative connotation. Perhaps "undeveloped" is a more fitting word.
---My behavior has been radically altered in that I am now much more willing to engage in activities that, before Wednesday, seem to be not worth my time. I cleaned out my wardrobe, reducing it by half--a task that no threat on Earth could have convinced me to engage in before Wednesday. I am also helping others out with their own "meaningless" tasks. Washing their dishes. Taking out their garbage. Buying them things that they want. I recently bought a computer game for a friend with money that I had set aside to buy my own computer game. I no longer care at all about the game. And the money seems utterly meaningless.
---My speech has become more direct. I find myself saying things that catch people by surprise. I make observations like "You care a great deal what others think of you," and "You do not THINK your idea is right--you FEEL that it is. Think about your notion. Reason it out. You will come to <some other person's> conclusion." Before Wednesday, these sort of sentences seemed rude. Now they simply seem true.
This post has become overlong, so I shall now begin wrapping it up.
If any, upon reading this have any insights to share, I would appreciate their sharing those insights.
Very best wishes, and happy days to you all! |