A fog rolls in from a distance. Rather than being composed of water droplets, this fog is entirely constructed of the various lessons you have absorbed since you were a child in the womb nursing and having your sensory organs nursed into birth. It’s not clear when exactly the first lesson is absorbed. This moment is when the child is pulled from a pure state of enlightened being and begins it’s descent into the realm of human desire.
In this fog, a child has learned how to react to stimuli, how to handle stress, and desperately mimics and looks to the other people in the room for information on what to do next. At another point in a childs devlopment, it begins to rebel against this information and attempt to create information of it’s own. The poor child doesn’t yet realize how much of a reaction they are to the other people around them. For good or for bad, we are here today, having not yet fully realized the implications of these impressions.
The phrase ‘stop acting like a two-year-old’ wouldn’t be so recognizable and potent if we hadn’t at many points in our life struggled with our nature and the lessons we have learned in this life.
There is an old Japanese koan, “before your parents were born, what was your original face?” Despite the deeper implications of meeting the creator of the universe and the center of all being, on the surface, this koan does ask an important question, “what is our nature aside from what our parents have taught us”?
As beings who often react, as opposed to acting, it’s very difficult to understand our nature. In thinking deeply about this question of Original Face, we discover rapidly that our nature and nurture, at first, appear to be inextricably linked. Awarenesses will arise of activities that we can place firmly in nature and nurture categories. It is in our nature to feel hunger. It is in our nurture which baseball team we have the greatest affinity. I could go on, but I’d rather you think quickly of things you could put in this or that column.
What about more difficult subjects? Is compassion our nature, or has it been nurtured? If something is of our nature, what type of nurturing does it take to undo that nature?
But I write to address a much simpler question. Which of our natures undo our nurturing?
Of course, one must take the time to discover such things. This discovery process cannot be done while the body is in motion. In order to discorver the nature of undoing, on must stop, briefly, the mind that reacts. Many people, when faced with the question of whether or not to begin to meditate, often feel threatened by the first few minutes of the activity, and thus nurture their denial to avoid facing their undoing nature .
As ‘civilized’ human beings, the civilized mind, the ego, will not allow nurtures that keep the ego afloat and infront of your mind to be set adrift and cut from the raft. The slowing of the mind will quicken and some people will begin to develop a curiousity as to what is happening to the mind.
The nectar of instruction is most sweet to the newly annointed seeker. In time, the instruction itself ferments, and the realization that there are things to realize other than material wealth quickly makes the intiate drunk or sick. At this point, a greater percentage of seekers meditate to get high on this alcoholic beverage of stale instruction, or renounce such activities like a college freshman after their first real kegger.
There is hope. The ego and it’s tricks are easily defeated, and I will share with how I defeated my ego. First of all, I had to begin to understand what my ego really was. But before this first thing, I was already a mad ego actor making rash decisions and cleverly using rules and expectations for my own gain. Be it the material of friendship or money, I had nurtured many clever tactics at my disposal, including tactics to learn what people expected an ego to look like, and how to use those things to my advantage.
I did my best to read everywhere everyone’s opinions of what an ego was. I learned of the models of the ego and the id; the parent and the child; the judge and the victim (ten points to the house that can correctly identify the originators of these three psychologies). Regardless of names, I began to discover two distinct entities living in my body! There was a person from which desire erupted (in my Arian case), and a person who counseled at best, and scolded and repressed at worse, these desires. It was sad for me to learn just how much other people have had control of my desires.
So I had to make these entities as nameless as possible, without losing my ability to understand them. I couldn’t help but think the one was my nurtured mind, the ego that keeps me ‘civilized’ and the other was my natural mind, not completely untamed, but not very educated, either.
The ‘civilized’ mind comes from before there was an East or a West. The civilized mind has been oppressing our nature for much longer than our agriculture. The ego, at it’s nadir, is a system of thoughts to control our nature, which would have us eat when hungry, sleep when tired, and make love when moved to do so. The civilized mind adeptly, from the first time as an infant we are scolded and disapproved of for crying and disturbing the ‘peace’ of civilzation, instructs the natural mind to behave, conform, and generally not be, but follow instruction.
This is quite a first of all, isn’t it? before I continue further, do not mistake my finger for the moon; seek these minds within yourself, I’m deeply interested in what others can come up with. Life is meaningless, except for the meaning we bring to it. And now to step two…
With a firm grip in my mind what exactly my ego was, a system of conforming my spirit to this time and place, having finally got my hands and intellect around it, I was free to explore, and extinguish this unhelpful part of my mind. What a surprise I was in for!
I realized the tighter I squeezed, the more the ego would slip from my hands. I realized I had to relax. I realized it was my ego trying to kill my ego! In the relaxation, it came to me that my natural mind and ego were at one time in our history allies, and had a much more honest relationship with each other. It was this lack of honesty, this systematic repression, that I wanted to deeply, desperately to explore.
It came to me that while I cannot remember the exact transition, there was a time in my life when I began to have influence over the rules of the civilized game, yet still instructed by those who have treaded over my original face. I was now adeptly skilled at writing rules for myself within the ‘civilized’ game, and these rules are the part of ourselves we call ‘individuality’. (Superego, anyone?)
And so, I began to form a voice of the Parent, the Judge, and the Ego for myself. Now, it wasn’t just “The Man” who was putting me down, I had become a player in my own demise! It’s difficult to say this happens this way, and that happens that way, but one can take comfort in how our experiences relate to others. How have you put your desires down? Or perhaps, a better question for some, when did one’s Rationality become God?
Before I could become a raging personality-aholic, or worse, a material gangbanger, I had a few important lessons that deflated my ego. One, was when I was caught talking in a very-self important way. The shock of the matter, which occured at a sleepover with my showchoir and music teacher, was powerful enough to penetrate beyond what I thought was my individuality, and strike directly at my lapse in my compassionate nature. Another time was less powerful, but gave me no other option other than to dive into my thoughts and Who I Am. What are powerful events in your life where your ego was scolded deeply enough to reach your inner nature?
Not having defeated my ego, but only having it in remission, I was a member of the walking wounded. Not having the desire to maintain my righteousness in a manner that would deny my compassionate nature, and not having teachings to guide me, I spent various periods in my life as a broken man. It wasn’t until I extinguished the flame in front of me during a meditation had I realized just how broken these powerful events had left me. With no control on my natures and a spinning compass of nurtures, I was left to figure out myself to myself.
No one could satisfy my curiousity as to what these desires in me meant; just as no one could satisfy me with their nurtures. Everyone, even my greatest teachers, all appeared to lack insight into the nature of their nurture, and while it wasn’t until recently I could explain it, the lessons rang empty and hollow nonetheless.
In meditation, I started lighting many flames. After a year of practice, I would light one candle. Then, on a snowy night in Maine, I blew out the last flame I would mediate to. The flame became to me a symbol of attachment, a symbol of triumph of light over darkness. But the only thing I was triumphing over, truly, was my desire to experience the dark. When I met the dark in it’s fullness, then did I understand who I Am.
I realized the balance of the natural and the nurtured was very much out of whack. The nurtured was over-exaggerated, the natural was atrophied and feral.
Sitting in the dark, sitting in the stillness, with wind and snow beating the windows sideways, I came to know the Universe. I came to know the universe in it’s oneness, it’s twoness, and so on, until I came back to myself and this corner. I realized just how few words could really describe what Attainment was, and how foolish I am right now to even speak of it. When I realized even the buddha had desire, and his own version of nurturing, I became peaceful with myself. It wasn’t until I realized the buddha was neither of these things, and both of these things at the same time, and both and not both and not these things at the same time, did Enlightenment grace me with it’s presence.
And this is the gift I hope give you, the efficacy of struggle. You have within your enternal nature, within your original face, to rewild your mind, to become enlightened. But one must struggle to be honest with what is going on up there. One must name it, and throw those names away, then name it again, then throw the names that arise until that which names blows out it’s last candle. It’s getting super-late, and so I leave you with a tale of the Second Patriarch of C’han (Zen), Hui-K’o:
One summer day Dogen Zenji encountered the old monk drying mushrooms in the scorching heat with his back bent in old age. He looked in pain. Dogen ran up to him and said," Venerable monk, it is a pity that you should do this. Allow me to call a younger monk to do the work." But the old monk's Bodaishin(thought of awakening) was still strong. He resolutely glared at Dogen saying:"Others are not me. I heard that you came to China for the purpose of the Great Way. You should thoroughly investigate the Self. The moment you looked at me you were already looking the other way delusioning yourself. Losing sight of oneself by worrying about others is foolish. You don't understand the significance of seeing. Without engaging the Self, just look. That is what shugyo(the austere teachings) is. You can't see that I am simply doing this(as opposed to being a proud old man struggling against his nature), so don't say foolish things. Another person's practice is their own business."</blockquote>