One Time, One Meeting

Toward the end of the February 22 Republican primary debate, John King asked the candidates to define themselves in a single word. “Consistent,” replied Representative Ron Paul. In the ensuing commentaries, Dr. Paul’s response met with wide approval, even by those not partial to his views. “I’ll give him that,” Jon Stewart wryly remarked.

Ron Paul’s response stood out from the others, not only because it came across as honest and accurate but also because it pointed toward his history rather than his temperament. Where the others laid claim to laudable traits of character—courage, resolution, cheerfulness—Ron Paul alluded to his public record. By so doing, he appealed to conventional wisdom, which holds that a candidate may best be judged by what he or she has said and done. “Ask me,” wrote the American poet William Stafford, “if what I have done is my life.” Under most circumstances, the answer would probably be yes. And should the next question be, “Who am I?” the standard of judgment might well be the same. The self exists in time, and a person may best be judged by examining his or her background, actions, and abiding traits of character. By such means we hire an employee or choose a doctor or pick a president.

Conventional wisdom can sometimes guide us, but it can also lead us astray. And if we stop and look deeply into the present moment, as Zen teachings enjoin us to do, we may find that conventional wisdom tells but half the story. Viewed from a conventional vantage point—what Zen calls that of “ordinary mind”—the conditioned self does indeed exist in time. It is born, lives, and dies. Concrete evidence may be found in our family albums, resumes, browsing histories, and countless other sources. But from the standpoint of what Zen calls “enlightened mind,” which perceives a formless ground of being beneath the changing world of forms, the notion of a separate, historical self is seen to be a construct, a creation of the ego, which expends enormous energy in protecting its creation. “The past no longer is,” the Bhaddekaratta Sutra reminds us. Ghosted though we are by our actions, statements, and previous relationships, our past has no tangible existence. Nor is a solid, permanent self anywhere to be found.

What can be found, according to Zen teachings, is an ever-changing aggregate of “form, feeling, thought, volition, and consciousness.” Known in Zen as skandhas, these five elements comprise what we conventionally call the self. And the skandhas exist in a dynamic relationship, not only with each other but also with their environment, on which they depend for their continuing existence. Without sunlight, water, and fertile soil, the crocuses in our yard could not live for very long. Without the water, oxygen, minerals, and other nutrients we take from the natural world, neither could we. To imagine either the crocuses or ourselves to be separate entities, independent of changing surroundings, is to perpetuate a delusion. And to imagine a person as a kind of stone in a stream, impervious to the flux of conditions, is to ignore the impermanent, interdependent nature of both the self and its environment.

That is why, in Zen teachings, the entity we call the self is viewed in two disparate ways, as if through a stereoscope. Through one lens, as it were, the self is seen as the historical, time-bound form perceived by “ordinary mind.” Like a wave on the ocean, it arises, endures, and expires. Through the other lens, however, the self is seen as the ocean itself: a timeless nexus of dynamic relationships, whose primary frame of reference is space rather than time. Viewed from the latter standpoint, what we normally call a person is understood, in the words of the psychologist Reginald Pawle, to be “an activity in relationship.” And, as Pawle goes on to say, what we normally call a self is seen as a fluid being, whose consistency depends on its continuing awareness of its relationships:

Zen thought . . . asserts that continuity of self, psychological stability, occurs not over time, from the past to the future, but from continuing in relationship to one’s situation, in the present, from continuing through space rather than time. Zen thought posits that a time-based self is a fragile self because time is always changing. From this perspective it can be said that space is what the self is, time is what the self is not.*

Seen in this perspective, the self remains continuous and stable only to the extent that it remains in touch with its environment, which is to say, with the changing conditions under which it continues to manifest. “I am what surrounds me,” wrote the poet Wallace Stevens. By and large, Zen thought would agree, adding the proviso that to live in harmony with what surrounds us, we must remain present at all times. We must be fully awake.

This imperative has profound implications for the conduct of everyday life. It demands, first, that we remain ever-vigilant, ever aware of our conditioning, which would attach us both to our personal histories and to the illusion that things are solid and permanent when they are not. Beyond that, it demands that we remain acutely alert to changing conditions and our place within an unstable, unreliable environment, natural and social. Consistency matters, to be sure, as does that elusive factor known as character. But no less important is our capacity—or that of anyone who would be president—to respond, flexibly and compassionately, to whatever conditions may arise.

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* Reginald H. Pawle, “The Psychology of Zen Buddhism: Possibilities for Western Psychotherapy,” Japanese Journal of Psychotherapy,
vol. 30, no. 1 (February, 2004), 17-23.

Photo by Sean O’Flaherty