Self and Zen, Part Four

With palms together,

Good Afternoon All,



Me, Me, Me…You know Its All About Me!

Self and Zen, Part Four



As we grow, contact with other beings informs us of their traces. Social organizations, schools, families, friendship, and the like, touch us and leave traces we, in turn, organize. Some of these traces we bury, cover over, or put on that proverbial back burner, etc. Our Memory Me “self,” as an aggregate, organizes itself as an executive system, judicial system, and playground and develops a mission over time to aggrandize. This mission often comes into conflict with those other memory traces such as compassion, generosity, and patience.



Our practice is to face ourselves, which becomes a giant deconstructing activity. In doing so, these aggregates of memory begin to expose themselves for what they are. Ideas make themselves known as ideas, concepts as concepts, and what was hidden opens sometimes like a flower, sometimes like a flash of lightening with thunder, and sometimes like a deep pit.



At such a point, our understanding of ourselves presents challenges. For one, as we notice the things we are, we recoil. There often is a dissonance.



“I am not greedy.” “I am not prejudiced.” “I am not a fake.” “Oh, I hate what I have become.” “If I am nothing but a collection of self aware memories of past moments, then what is this I AM now?” “What, no now either?”



It is at this point, I sense, we either pull away from our practice or take that backward step more deeply and embrace it as the core reality of our lives. Fear is a powerful thing, however and self-awareness can be very stubborn and stingy. Our need to hold on to our self-absorbed flights of fancy is a precise practice point.



Just as we breathe in and breathe out, opening and closing and opening, so too we can let go of the “our” that is the grip on Memory Me. Fffffft!



And so, what is buddha nature and is it just as real as Memory Me?



Tomorrow.