Here you can read Silvija Budaviciute's reflections on the Awakening Joy workshop with James and Jane Baraz, which took place in Helsinki Zen Center on 18th July, 2015.
In our last meeting, we discussed what is self and do we have one? I expected it to be a challenging topic to facilitate, but the variety of interpretations of self made it even more challenging. In any case, this is my humble attempt to summarize what we have discussed. I started the discussion by asking everyone to present how do they understand self. The self-definitions ranged from mental construction, feeling, thoughts, the differentiation of ones encapsulated consciousness from the rest of things to self as your own genetic predisposition and being mixed with things we learn. I personally haven’t yet made my mind on the clear position of self, nor I have enough background to claim I know answers what self is. But for me self is, as at the moment, a mental abstraction to which we get attached as we learn and grow older. After the people presented their understanding of self, I presented the two popular views on what potentially Buddha could have meant about not-self. I will not be going into the details what are these explanations in this post as you can read an extensive explanation on this in my post in this blog. In brief, the idea is that in order for self to exits (in a sense of soul or ego) Buddha says that such self should have two qualities. First, it should be permanent, thus it should be an essence that endures through time. Second, self should be associated with control. The second popular interpretation of not-self doctrine in short could be interpreted as non-attachment to the five aggregates. To connect Buddhist ideas with scientific views on not-self, we watched the classical non-self split brain experiment in psychology. We understand the importance of other research in this area, but this time we wanted to focus only on early research. We hope to expand our discussion to more current theories of self next time. After introduction and the videos we started our discussion, which heated at some moments. As in any great discussion, not everyone accepted the presented points of Buddha or split-brain experiments. Of course, the classic criticism on split-brain experiments was raised. The brain in split-brain experiment is being manipulated and it is now proven that everything in brain is related and using surgically modified brain is not the best way to answer such questions. Of course, this is a valid point to say that in brain everything is interconnected and decisions are made due to complex processes in our brain. At the same time, the modular theory of the mind indicates that there are these independent centers of the mind that make decisions and we not necessarily aware of them. However, since we didn’t touch the modular theory of the mind in this discussion, we let this to be an open question for the next time. The discussion tracked to that self perhaps is only a social construction, is just a term. The fact is, we do understand self very differently, but somehow we do know what we are talking about. Somehow we know how to relate to self, it has some overlapping elements for all of us. One of such elements was that we need self to feel safe, we created it for our benefit: to appear consistent to others, to be liked, to get a job etc. At the same time, as Buddha said, this need for self makes us crave for things, for fame and makes us suffer because sooner or later we all ask ourselves a question: who am I? So maybe, we asked, the only thing that matters in understanding self is the point of view we adapt? We discussed that we can employ various philosophies to understand our role in the world and none of them will be wrong or completely right. So we can employ nihilist view and say everything is a social hallucination and say that nothing matters. It this case, we carry no responsibility in any of our actions, because we have no control over anything, not even our own behavior. However, this theory is incomplete. The same goes for a behaviorist approach. You can hold a position that all you are is your form with genetic code, which is more or less mutable, but kind of permanent through your life. Your genetic code undergoes some changes, but not many and then you are bombarded by stimuli and you create responses. That is how you are build, you learn to respond and that is what you are. Every behavior you have is a learned response. Again, not wrong, but just an incomplete theory. Then existentialist my come along. And may say: "you need to take a responsibility of who you are, because choices have consequences. Take control of your life! You are not just a repertoire of responses, you are more than that". This theory, however, forgets that indeed there are stimuli and response part that we not always know how to control. Overall, these three theories might look very distinct from each other, but even if they are looking at self from different angles each of them enriches other. If nothing matters and I am not something else and I am the same as you a dear reader, how shouldn’t I treat you nice? Because only then I don’t harm “myself”. I also not always understand what I am doing and why. Someone in the meeting brought a point that only in cities and in big communities the importance of self becomes prominent. In small, nomad and harsh condition communities self, your individual contribution is not so important, unless it contributes to a greater good. Would that mean that maybe we aren’t really separate from each other; maybe we are just a continuum of one “organism”? Even if we are meant to contribute to a greater good, we still have this immense need to be individual. We often ask ourselves: who am I? Then, when we no longer know the answer, we call that an identity crisis. Why do we have an identity crisis? Maybe because we want that permanence in us, but suddenly we see that we are changing, things we liked before we can't either have or they are taken from us for some reason. We feel challenged and uncomfortable. We feel there is too much randomness affecting us. We try to grasp back to the self we created by trying hard to find what we are. Only when we have adapted to the presented situation then we become comfortable again. However, in that process we have changed and we didn’t even notice. Some of the participants were quite sure that some parts of you are persistent through time and have remained unchanged since you were a child. Myself, I am not so sure about that. I just think some of those persistent qualities are my learned behaviors that I am attached to and I am unwilling to give up, because they give me security (something that the self can't let go or it ceases to exist). For some more permanent looking qualities, I think we live too short to notice those changes or simply there was no need for a change. Someone at the meeting said that "I am this person, because I am here, but maybe in another environment I would be someone completely different”. I couldn't argue otherwise. We finalized our discussion by again describing what self is. The self-definitions didn’t really change from what people thought about self in the begging of discussion and at the end of discussion, but a couple of new points aroused. For some of us it remained difficult to trust that there might be nothing that is in control, for some us exist a possibility that self doesn’t have to be permanent, for some self is a genetic code adapting to environment and for some it is just a term. We also concluded that on one had you have this useful construction from an ethical perspective. I have a body, I have desires of some kind and attachments, life, history and it is handy to have names for myself and other people. On the other hand, we start abusing this handy tool. We created this massive idea and we got immensely attached to it, to the extent that for instance I would like you less if you appeared as an inconsistent person. In Buddhism, we know everything in impermanent, but we do grasp to our own and everyone else's ego. You like people to behave in a predictable manner. If somebody is changing character continually you don’t feel relaxed, you don’t feel comfortable, because you have nothing to relay on. For me personally, I think that it is likely that I just have this wishful thinking that it would be good that there is some entity working in me who knows all the correct answers to all the situation of the life. The more likely case, however, is that we learn, we fail, and we try again. There is nothing inside us that knows all the answers in advance; you just have to figure all of it on a go. I think we only feel there are some parts in us that never change, because they give you comfort and security. Your character looks permanent for you just because you recognize it, it is predictable, you can control it (at least you think so) and why would you want to let go of such a comfort. You are afraid that you won’t know how to life without the comfort of yourself, of something that it is so familiar to you. I think we are quite good at deceiving yourselves and we might be ignoring the truth. So my dear reader, maybe, I sure don't know, but maybe for what is worth, it is good to sometimes let go of your comfort and experience something that you could be... And maybe, by challenging our mind with that discomfort and our bravery to try, we will also get closer to understand what Buddha was trying to tell us about not-self and if we have one. Thank you everyone for a lovely discussion and challenging my mind. The biggest thanks of course for Natalia and her partner for letting us to meditate and discuss in their wonderful home. Silvija Budaviciute Today our fourth meeting was held. It was a warm one, we were five people sitting on the floor of room 40 in library 10. This time some of us dared to get a little naked, put a bit of our hearts at stake, which was quite a surprise. It came naturally to take it to our own personal arena and it was a beautiful -rather intense- gathering.
I suggested and facilitated the topic that titles this post. When I thought about the topic earlier this week, I was reading a book on social psychology. Concretely, on how we build our own self from what we guess others think of us. As a social psychologist, I understand many of the weaknesses of social norms; as a person, I am quite bothered by many of our social behaviors -especially the ones that lead to discrimination. I sometimes surprise myself complying or mismanaging these things, and that bothers me even more. Maybe the topic suggested came from that emotion. After a big entanglement where even pedophilia was discussed, I was suggested to describe "my" dilemma (before the meeting, I didn't know I was actually bringing up "my" dilemma). And when saying it in words, I grasped it myself: on one side of the coin, I want to be a flexible, adapted person, who lives here and now, fully every moment of live -and perhaps, accepts social norms. On the other, I would like to be free, to find space for the full expression of myself, fighting social boundaries, trying to listen to what it is that really fulfills me and breaks me free. For instance, on one hand I am ambitious and I want to have a successful professional career. On the other, I'd rather be humble, take it as it comes, travel, discover deeper aspects of life. Ambition can only come from social influence. Why do I want that? Do I really want that? It feels like I do, but I can't help doubting my own feeling. The discussion began like this: We live under the pressures of society: much of our behavior's repertoire is flooded with responses to social expectations/pressures, from the time that we wake up every morning to what we eat, what we wear, what we say or how we plan our future. It could be argued that most of our behavior is a social response, so that we have little margin of choice as free individuals because we are busy convincing others to like us, and becoming "successful" -or at least "well-adapted"- persons. Are these an impediment for freeing the mind? If they are, till what extent they impair mindfulness? -Is there any freedom at all?- Is meditation a tool towards it? Or is this worry just a characteristic of a western individualistic society, individualism as such? I should add: or is it just my personal worry? To be honest, I have been taking notes since I wrote that text, trying to work out what exactly was my point. I still haven't worked it out. After the introduction someone made the point of listening to your heart. Love it, beautiful! But... what is my heart? I am fan of the idea of being honest to oneself, but honesty and the self are two concepts that escape my full understanding. Plus, feeding a self (an ego) doesn't sound very compatible with a Buddhist perspective, does it? Then we enhanced positive sides of social norm. It was nice to be reminded that social rules have actually a function, like making kids be less assholes and giving us a platform to satiate our natural quest for social interaction. I do enjoy and make common use of such things too. Someone suggested to say "social agreements" rather than "social norms". Still, norms shall be questioned. That wasn't long before we came out of the closet as victims of social constructions: power relationships, discrimination, authorities... Sometimes, even if we acknowledge and understand the processes that make us victims of this sort of powers, we still can't help deep sorrow. Is detachment a solution, as perhaps Buddhists would suggest? Can we fight against social injustice kind and compassionately? These and many questions remain open... for future meetings! Thank you very much to today's participants. Natalia Pereira |
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July 2015
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