Be Nobody (20 page)

At first, it might seem a bit like driving a car with the accelerator floored while simultaneously stomping on the brake. Two apparently opposite operations occur simultaneously: we forget ourselves and turn our attention to others, all the time knowing that thinking about others and their needs is the best and only way to our own personal fulfillment.

•  •  •

“The most satisfying thing in life,” writes Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “is to have been able to give a large part of one's self to others.”
¹
We all know that some of our deepest and most rewarding experiences in life come when we can forget ourselves in service to another. We derive much of our joy in life from caring about and for other beings: our children, parents, lovers, friends, and even our pets.

As we witnessed in the last chapter, we usually can't trust either our untrained instincts or the mental afflictions they inspire. Or, it could also be said, we
can
trust them—
to be 180 degrees wrong
. Just check for yourself: What responses do your instincts immediately
advocate when someone hurts, offends, insults, or betrays you? These habitual reactions are in need of retraining, and this is the first task of self-improvement.

Fortunately we have certain instincts that we
can
trust, and those are the ones we should nurture and strengthen. Our deep-seated need to connect with others, to love and empathize with fellow human beings, is surely one urge we should cherish and nourish. The affection and concern a parent has for a child; the gratitude, respect, and responsibility a child feels for his or her parents; the heart-felt and intimate sense of union between lovers; the bonds of loyalty and camaraderie we share with close friends—these are inborn positive emotions that our relationships with others inspire and call forth.

The inner angel strongly desires the self-forgetfulness—or perhaps we should say, self-expansion—that can accompany these kinds of links with other people. But the inner demon—concerned only with the lower, egoistic, caterpillar self—misconstrues and, often enough, subverts this aspect of our lives.

As we know all too well, the relationships we maintain with our significant others not only deliver the joys of interconnection and freedom from alienation; they can also inflict on us our greatest disappointments, aggravation, and animosity. That which is potentially one of the sources of our highest happiness can be (and, sad to say, often is) the cause of considerable frustration.

The spiritual project—and the path to true contentment—require that we tutor our self-destructive inclinations such that they can align with our deepest desire and purpose in life: to achieve the “Great Itchless State” so that we can help others achieve it too.

We ally ourselves with the inner angel—that part of us that longs for the freedom that comes from relinquishing the purely egoistic orientation—and we disavow the self-preoccupied “me-first” demon that keeps us tethered to our lower, individual self.

Grasping to our individuality, to the little self we're so attached to, we invite unpleasant feelings of separation and isolation. Good relationships hinge on our ability to set aside the individual self's insatiable need to be venerated. The tiresome chant—
What about me?
—is replaced with a different incantation—
What can I do for you?

None of us is an autonomous, disconnected little island. We are inevitably and perpetually engaged in interactions with the other people in our world—physical or mental, and for better or worse. These relationships not only affect our sense of self, they constitute it. Just as we don't
have
karma but
are
our karma, we also don't
have
relationships but are
defined
by them.

The personal self does not exist independently, only dependently. It is dependent on the body and mind that acts as the basis for the idea of the self (as we have seen in chapter 3), and on the karma or memories that fashion our self-conception (as we noted in chapter 4).

But we also exist in relation to our relationships. Every role we inhabit is made possible only
in relation to somebody else
. What Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh calls “interbeing” (as opposed to the “illusion of our separateness”)
²
describes not just our interpersonal relationships but our reality as a whole.

•  •  •

We have already encountered a
negative
description of how the world really exists: Things and people are
not
perceived by any of us objectively. Just as we ourselves do not have a hardwired “self” in the way we think we do (recall the “Where's Waldo?” search), it is also not
possible to identify some kind of unchanging and definitive essence for anyone or anything. Remember our examples from chapter 3? There are no
essentially
aggravating people in the world, and there is no
essentially
tasty flavor of ice cream.

But this negative assertion must be carefully distinguished from the nihilistic idea that what's external to us doesn't exist at all, that it is some kind of fantasy conjured up by “me” (whoever
that
is!). The external world and other people in it
do
exist—and here's the positive articulation—
dependently
. There
are
aggravating persons, but this depends upon others being aggravated by them. Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream
is
delicious, but only to someone (like me!) who judges it so.

And it's like that with everything. Everything, without exception, depends on something else, and that something else depends in turn on something else! And so this positively stated depiction of reality is more accurately put like this: everything and everyone exists
interdependently
, not independently.

You know that old puzzle? If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? The answer is
of course not
! And here's why:

There is nothing perceivable in the world until and unless it is perceived
. There can be, for example, no
audible sound
like that of a tree falling in the forest until and unless it is
heard
by someone. And while we may have all kinds of objections to such an apparently audacious statement, what would it really mean to assert that a sound occurs when no one hears it? Wouldn't such a position have to posit an
inaudible
(that is, not heard by anyone) audible sound?

We're not talking here about a sound's
potential
to be heard.
Potentially
, all kinds of things are possible. What we're discussing here is how things really are. Something is audible only when it is heard by a hearer, and not until. Right?

Similarly, there is no visible object until and unless it is seen by someone—for if there were, there could be an invisible visible object! There's no odor until and unless it's smelt, there's nothing tangible that isn't felt, there's no tasty thing (like ice cream!) without a taster. And there's no thought that exists independently of a thinker who thinks the thought.

An unthought thought, an invisible visible object, an inaudible sound, an unsmelled smell, an intangible tangible thing, an untasted taste—these are impossible things, totally inconceivable!

Too theoretical? Here's the cash-out.

This truth of interdependence buttresses the startling conclusion of the last chapter:
Change you, change the world
. Because the external, perceivable world exists (for any of us) only in relation to being perceived (by any of us), the way it exists (for any of us) depends upon us, on the perceiver. If you want to perceive the external world—things, events, and other people—in a better way, adjust the perceiver, the lens through which the world comes into existence.
Change you
, and you will
change the world
.

But here the other shoe drops: in accordance with the interdependence of things, it's not just that perceptible objects depend upon a perceiver in order to be perceptible; because things exist
interdependently
, it is also the case that
perceivers become perceivers only when they perceive something
.

For a seer to be a seer, he or she must see a visible object, right? Can't be a “seer” if you aren't seeing something! And you can't be a “listener” until and unless you hear some sound. In what sense are you a “seer” or “hearer” (actually, not potentially) until and unless you see or hear something? And the same is true with the smeller, feeler, taster, and thinker; they exist dependently on what they sense—a smell, a tangible thing, or a thought—just as what they sense depends on being sensed in order to exist as such.

And here's the relevant consequence of that dropped shoe. It's the inverse of our previous formula:
Change the world, change you
. If our sense of self—the perceiver—depends upon what is perceived, then if we learn to perceive things, events, and people differently we will change as well.

We see things and people not as they are but as we are. But because of interdependence, it is also the case that
we are what we see
(and hear, smell, feel, taste, and think). The perceiver is defined by what is perceived, and vice versa, and that's another reason why “it's all relative”—everything and everybody exists within the matrix of interdependence.

If, for example, we see “problems” as “opportunities,” we will feel less embattled and thwarted, and will instead view ourselves as more engaged and empowered. If we focus on the good qualities of our aggravating person, we will be less aggravated. And if we engage with others with love and compassion, we will experience those relationships, and ourselves, in a much more positive way.

Because everything exists interdependently and not independently, our sense of self is inextricably entwined in and constituted by our relationships with others. We depend upon other people to be who we are.

There's an African concept called
ubuntu
, which is summarized in the proverb “I am because you are” and explained by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in this way:

My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in theirs. We belong in a bundle of life. We say, “A person is a person through other people.” It is not “I think, therefore I am.” It says rather: “I am human because I belong. I participate, I share.”
³

None of us is somebody without other somebodies. All the roles we play—every one of the carnival cutouts we stick our faces in—are made possible by our relationships with others. We are fathers or mothers dependent upon having children; we're children only because we have parents. We're “a friend” because there is someone we're friends with, and we're “a lover” because there's someone (other than ourselves!) to love.

Our professional identities are likewise always relational. A “doctor” can only be so because of patients, a “teacher” because of students, and a “car mechanic” because there are car owners whose vehicles need servicing. And as we observed in chapter 2, we also define our individual selves in relation to the communities we identify with—our nationality, race, religion, or whatever.

Group identities, no less than individual ones, exist only in relation to others; they are forged in opposition to those who belong to different communities. As we've seen, we conceptualize ourselves as “American” because we're
not
“Canadian”; if we're “Buddhist,” it's dependent on us
not
being “Christian.” And so it is that we are also defined even by relationships with those we don't consciously identify with. We are annoyed because there are people who annoy us; angry and upset because others seem provocative; resentful or envious because of another's actions or status.

We are tied to those we dislike just as we are to those we more willingly associate with. Relationships fueled by negative emotion keep us chained to a self-conception marred by disaffection and unhappiness. As writer Ursula K. Le Guin observes, “To oppose something is to maintain it.”
⁴
We can only think of ourselves as victims because we think of others as oppressors.

We can't be
somebody
all by ourselves, and the kind of “somebody self” we think we are exists dependently on the quality of our relationships. If we establish and maintain pleasant, loving, supportive
relationships, we feel one way about ourselves. But if we are continually hassling with others, our self-image will suffer and our lives will continue to be troubled by these interpersonal difficulties.

•  •  •

The mental afflictions we spoke of in the last chapter almost always arise in relation to someone else. While we sometimes get angry, greedy, or prideful in relation to inanimate objects or events, it's when there are other people involved that we really get our backs behind the negative emotion.

We've talked about some of the tools available to us to combat those disturbing feelings as they rear their ugly heads:

 Recognition: “This mental affliction is not my ‘little friend.' ”