["Annatta I": Aryen Hart]
The effort to secure our happiness, to maintain ourselves in relation to something else, is the process of ego. But this effort is futile because there are continual gaps in our seemingly solid world, continual cycles of death and rebirth, constant change. The sense of continuity and solidity of self is an illusion. There is really no such thing as ego, soul, or atman. It is a succession of confusions that create ego. The process which is ego actually consists of a flicker of confusion, a flicker of aggression, a flicker of grasping--all of which exist only in the moment. Since we cannot hold on to the present moment, we cannot hold on to me and mine and make them solid things.
The experience of oneself relating to other things is actually a momentary discrimination, a fleeting thought. If we generate these fleeting thoughts fast enough, we can create the illusion of continuity and solidity. It is like watching a movie, the individual film frames are played so quickly that they generate the illusion of continual movement. So we build up an idea, a preconception, that self and other are solid and continuous. And once we have this idea, we manipulate our thoughts to confirm it, and are afraid of any contrary evidence. It is this fear of exposure, this denial of impermanence that imprisons us. It is only by acknowledging impermanence that there is the chance to die and the space to be reborn and the possibility of appreciating life as a creative process.
Chogyam Trungpa: The Myth of Freedom
I find myself able to "get" that ego does not exist as a solid object, that "I" do not exist, that I am in a continual state of flux. And I get that it is my ego clinging to this false sense of solidity that creates suffering.
But I cannot move beyond the part of my consciousness that sees the grasping of ego and sees through the ego's claim to permanence. Trungpa argues that true egolessness is the absence of the concept of egolessness. In order to truly transcend the ego, we must also transcend the Witness that sees through the ego's false claims.
I've got a long way to go, but working with the sense that I die and am reborn with each passing moment opens up new possibilities for living life as a process of creation.
5 comments:
All the masters agree that the experience is already fully in our field of awareness, which suggests to me that whatever the hell I think it is, it's probably not. In other words, you, me, we're constantly drifting in and out of the experience of "ego" "witness" "beyond witness" and not even noticing! It's not way over there, or a long time from now, it's...
Kai in NYC
I'm afraid I'm too much of a novice in intellectual knowledge and direct experience of these matters not to be confused by all of this talk of egoic (gross and subtle?) consciouness, Witness (causal?) consciouness, and Witness-transcending (nondual) consciousness.
One thing I don't understand is how the Witness can be what Ken Wilber characterizes as a formless field of awareness and see "through the ego's false claims." It seems to me that Formless awareness wouldn't be able to "see through" or understand anything, because it is supposed to be "consciousness without an object" whereas understanding or seeing through something is consciousness with an object. And so I wonder how a Witness that allegedly sees through ego is not ego in the sense of being a conscious something or "I" that sees or understands something outside or beyond or somehow separate from itself.
Nagarjuna, you can think a thought, you can observe that you are thinking a thought, you can even observe that you are observing that you are thinking a thought: you'll notice however, if you sit quietly and investigate the matter, that no matter how busy and circular and skeptical your thinking is, there is always and finally a "prior" part of your awareness that can observe the feelings, thoughts and skepticism: and observe without participating. That observant non-participant, sitting at the back of the class watching the kids (your thoughts and emotions: the ego) raise hell, is the witness.
Kai in NYC
Thanks, Kai. I guess I'm having trouble perceiving or understanding how a part of our awareness that observes anything is a "non-participant." If, for instance, the Witness "observes" the mind thinking thoughts, isn't the Witness also thinking those thoughts? For that matter, are the mind and Witness really different things? Are the Witness and thoughts really different things? If so, how does one reconcile this with the the old Zen poem that says, in effect, that there are thoughts but no thinker thereof, deeds but no doer thereof?
Hi, I am Aryen Hart, the artist of the painting shown above. Thank you for linking my art with your spiritual paths. You can see more of my work at http://www.aryenhart.com
namaste, Aryen
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