It's Not About Me!

                                              It's Not About Me!

 

 

                  

 

 

 

                    

"Man can never be a woman's equal in the spirit of selfless service with which nature has endowed her."   Gandhi

 

In Buddhism, there are the ideas of the no-self, the formless, emptiness, and the void. There are also ideas of the Self, the witness, pure awareness, and form, “Form is not different from formlessness, formlessness is not different from form.” In the West, we have built monuments to the ego, they come in many forms; media, facebook, cell phones, and psychotherapy. When Decartes says “I think therefore I am,” there is a fusion of identity and self. We have come to believe, feel, and act as if we have a separate identity from the rest of reality. There is reality, others, objects, circumstances, etc. and there is me over here having this experience of all that.

In Buddhism, this attachment to a separate self is seen as delusion and  is the root of suffering, it is what's in the way of true happiness, freedom, peace, and love. The three kinds of relationship are; 1) What's in it for me?, 2) You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, and 3) How can I create a context to give my gifts? The first 2 approaches lead to suffering, the 3^rd leads to fulfillment.

Just as there are countless examples of selfish, egotistical, and greedy behavior, there are countless examples of selflessness. Every night when we drop of to sleep, we are doing just that; dropping our sense of self and letting go into some unknown realm, it feels delicious if we let go and let it happen, but in our crazy world today, more and more people are having difficulty stopping the activity of their ego driven mind and attaining restorative sleep.

Meditation is the oldest and most effective technique/technology for dealing with the egoic mind. In meditation, one has a focus of attention and enters into various states of deep relaxation and heightened awareness. This awareness is not thinking, it is just awareness, no subject and object, the rational mind cannot understand this because rationality is based on subject/object duality.

Other forms of selflessness are the countless acts of kindness that occur daily, when people, or animals act without any sense of themselves, and just do something nice for someone or something. They aren't considering in the least what's in it for me. I believe, in spite of people like Richard Dawkins author of “The Selfish Gene,” that indeed, we do act selflessly at times. When someone says something kind, comforts someone, gives without any motive other than giving, I believe this is closer to our real nature than other times.

Ironically, our own sense of self-love is paramount to loving others. When we truly nurture ourselves, rest, and restore our energy we are able to give that much more, with greater effectiveness. When we play, are entertained, enjoy, indulge with awareness, and live fully in the moment, we are transcending our isolated sense of self. We see this in nature how symbiotic, cooperative, and ecologic nature is, everything has a place and lives cooperatively, even with predators and prey, they cooperate within their niche until their time comes and game is over in that form. Nature teaches us so much if we just listen and watch the process that we are part of.

 

Everything is developmental, like an acorn becoming an oak, enlightenment has it's markers or stages of development;

1. The first stage:
A Glimpse of the Whole

2. The second stage:
Silence, Relaxation, Togetherness, Inner Being

3. The third stage:
Ocean, Wholeness, No-self, Pure being

Birth and death are two aspects of a continuity, they are not singular events. What is the continuity? It is the continuity of life, of forms dissolving into formlessness, of consciousness, and of a unity in diversity, not a singular me!