Be Nobody (29 page)

This “more” that makes us who we are is simply a label, a name, an idea. I am, in sum, a conceptualization made possible by the conglomeration of multiple physical and mental parts that are forever changing.

I myself (!) have been many different
me
's (both internally and externally) over the course of lo these sixty years—child
me
, rebellious youth
me
, family man
me
, academic
me
, surfer bum/biker
me
, monk
me
, spiritual teacher
me
, and retired man-of-leisure
me
. In some of my interactions, I'm “Dr. Smith, PhD,” and in others, “Brian K. Smith.” In yet other circumstances I'm “Lama Marut,” but to friends and family, I'm just plain “Brian.” Each
me
is a different persona, each a different conceptualization of the self and role, which I (whoever
that
is!) assume depending on the context and type of relationship I have with others.

And because who I am is merely a conceptualization on the basis of constantly evolving mental and physical parts, I can learn to re-conceptualize myself so as to become a happier me, no matter what role “I” am playing.

We've spoken in this book of many methods that function to help us improve our sense of self. Since who we think we are at any given moment is dependent on who we think we once were—on our memories or past karma—if we practice forgiveness, gratitude, and acceptance vis-à-vis our past, we will think of ourselves differently now. As we battle our selfish, destructive, and irrational mental afflictions in our own inner Rage in the Cage, we begin to think of ourselves as someone who is at least trying to be a good person, someone who is working to tame the worst of our habits.

When we drop the egotistical
me
,
me
,
me
chant and substitute the
What can I do for you?
mantra, we advance the process of self-improvement ever further, knowing that the best thing we can do for ourselves is to think about how we can help others. Lovingly and empathetically putting ourselves in other people's places, we gain freedom from the artificial limitations we place on our self-identity. And when we lose ourselves in action and concentrate on joyfully doing what needs to be done rather than calculating what we personally
will get from doing it, we practice
mindfully unselfconscious
living all day long, in each and every situation.

If we wish to think of ourselves as a better somebody, we must act, speak, and think in more selfless and less selfish ways—in our relationships with others and in our everyday activities. We gain a better sense of self when we're not thinking about ourselves—and this is the seemingly paradoxical key to true “self-improvement.”

So who da hell are you? And if you don't like the answer, make the necessary changes! “Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts,” asserts the Dhammapada. “But once mastered, no one can help you as much, not even your father or your mother.”
³

There's no one who makes you “you” other than you, and you now have the necessary tools for the creative process of self-reinvention.

•  •  •

The question for us at this point is not “
If
I'm not me, who da hell am I?” I may not be the “me” I ordinarily think I am. But I am also
no other than the “me” that I think I am
. That's all the self there is when it comes to the particular, individual “me”—the “somebody self” is a self-conception.

The really pertinent question at this concluding stage of our inquiry is “
When
I'm not me, who da hell am I?” We're nobody apart from thinking that we're somebody. And when we stop thinking we're somebody, we're really left with nobody.

We've said it before, and it's worth repeating: It's nobody that makes any and all somebodies possible. If we were
really
somebody—if there were a hardwired, permanent, essential “somebody
self”—we'd be forever saddled with a static, unchanging, unimprovable, and very bored “me.”

So let's put it positively:
because
we really are, have always been, and will always be nobody,
we can be
the ever-changing somebody we are now, have been in the past, and will be in the future.

It's getting in touch with the nobody that we really are that helps us improve the somebody we think we are. Thomas Mann once said, “No one remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself”
⁴
—and this is especially true if we know which self is changed when which self is recognized.

It is in the close encounters of the third kind with our “nobody self”—when we drop the self-consciousness, the self-grasping, and the self-centeredness—that we plug into our true being and the real power that transforms us. It is by losing the little self that we discover the Higher Power that is our Higher Self. And it is those moments when we commune with our true nature that function to make us a better and happier somebody.

So in this concluding chapter, we'll be exploring the final frontiers of the question of self-identity:

Who are we when we're not somebody?

We'll first look a bit more closely at who this “nobody self” we've been talking about really is. We'll then investigate the relationship between our personal identity and our universally shared true nature. Finally, we'll conclude with some tips on how the “somebody self” can further integrate with its real nobody-ness as it learns to live, not as someone desperately striving to be somebody special, but rather contentedly, as just an Ordinary Joe.

What we've called the “nobody self” has various names in different traditions: it is our “true self” or “Buddha nature,” the immortal soul, the Ground of Being, the
atman
, or the Tao. And the different traditions describe it in comparable ways, albeit with somewhat different vocabulary—that is, when they are willing to describe it at all.

The “true self,” says one Hindu text, is “pure, awake, dear, complete, unmanifest, and faultless.”
⁵
It “has never been born and never dies,” says another ancient Indian scripture. “It has not come from anywhere, nor has it become anyone. It is unborn, unchanging, eternal, and primordial. It is not killed when the body is killed.”
⁶

All of these descriptors point to the fact that
the “nobody self” is the exact opposite of the “somebody self.”
When our true nature is depicted, it is as a kind of reverse image of the limited, flawed, mortal, and basically disgruntled self we are so attached to.

And in many of the world's religions, there is also the recognition that the “nobody self” can't really be depicted or characterized at all. It is the unspeakable, the inconceivable. The “nobody self” is, by definition,
nameless
:

The tao that can be told

is not the eternal Tao

The name that can be named

is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.

Naming is the origin

of all particular things.
⁷

Whereas the particular, individualized, lower self is really nothing other than a “name”—an idea or concept—the “nobody self” is the self that has no name . . . and is eternally unnamable.

In the ancient Indian traditions, this ultimate state is sometimes said to be
nirguna
, “without qualities or characteristics,” and from this point of view the only way to refer to it is negatively. It is
neti, neti
, “not this, not that.” “Ultimate reality is indescribable and cannot be signified,” as one text puts it. “The blissful experience of one's own innermost self is accessible only when conceptual thought ceases.”
⁸

Or as another text declares, “It is unseen, unattainable, ungraspable, and without distinguishing marks. It is unthinkable, indefinable, and its essence is the perception of only itself. It is the pacification of all projections—peaceful, auspicious, non-dual. This is the true self; this is to be known.”
⁹

What is labeled our “Buddha nature” in the Buddhist tradition is similarly depicted as “beyond conceptualization” and description:

Because of its inexhaustible qualities, in nature it's like nothing else. Limitless, it acts as the only real refuge for living beings. It is always non-dual, beyond conceptualization. It has an indestructible quality since its true nature is uncreated. It is not born because it is permanent. It does not die because it is immovable. It is not harassed because it is in a state of peace. It does not decay because it is eternal.
¹⁰

Turning to the Western traditions, in Islam there are said to be ninety-nine names for Allah (“The Merciful,” “The Creator,” “The Bestower,” and so on), but the hundredth name is the “name that cannot be uttered.” Jewish theologian Lawrence Kushner also declares that “there is yet a higher Name for the One of Being,” and this name is “Nothing”:

Beyond One there is only Nothing, for only Nothing can comprehend both good and evil, being and becoming, unity and duality, sea and dry land. Already hinted at in Kabbalistic tradition by the ultimate Name,
Ayn Sof
: literally, without end or utter Nothingness. It is here that our consciousness and the Name of God while still discrete, are no longer separate.
¹¹

And in the Christian tradition, this negatively enunciated depiction of what cannot be accurately or fully depicted is called the
via negativa
, “apophasis” (from a Greek word meaning “to say ‘no' ”), or “negative theology” (describing God or ultimate reality only by saying what it
is not
). Such an approach to the truly real can be found in many other ancient traditions as well—including certain strands of modern Western philosophy.
¹²

“When you come to the ultimate,” writes Rajneesh, “when you come to your deepest core, you suddenly know that you are neither this nor that, you are no one. You are not an ego. You are just a vast emptiness.”
¹³

So there's not much to be said about that of which we cannot speak. We, as particular somebodies, can really only point to the universal nobody we all really are, like so many fingers pointing to an indescribable moon. The great mystics have often said—when they're talking about what can't be talked about at all—that silence is probably the best strategy when it comes to our attempts to describe the “nobody self.”

But we can definitely say this:
Being nobody is not being nothing
. It is an absence (no-body) and not a presence (some-body), but it is the emptiness that makes the plenitude possible. It is the hole in the middle that makes a donut what it is; it is the empty glass that can hold whatever is poured into it; it is the undifferentiated ocean from which all particular waves arise, last for a while, and then return to their source.

This absence is the space in which all manifestation and life forms take place. It is nobody from which any and all somebodies arise and into which we are all reabsorbed. Nameless but not a nonentity, the ultimately real is the silence from which all sounds, words, names, and concepts emerge and back into which they dissolve.

And there's another thing we should say about the inexpressible: in its presence, we stand in reverential wonderment. It is the ultimate Great Itchless State of pure bliss. If we space out on those times when we commune with the infinite spaciousness of our true being—the self that cannot be named, conceptualized, or described—we miss out on the possibility of being
awestruck
 . . . and therefore
dumbstruck
.

It's like the difference between appreciating the awe-inspiring beauty of a gorgeous sunset and coldly calculating the angle of the light rays as they filter through the atmosphere. The latter is driven by curiosity and utilizes words and concepts; the former captures the wonder of open-mouthed astonishment and wordless stupefaction.

As Rajneesh says, if you haven't experienced that which is beyond words, you haven't really lived at all:

Even in ordinary life you feel the futility of words. And if you don't feel the futility of words, that shows that you have not been alive at all; that shows that you have lived very superficially. . . . When for the first time something starts happening which is beyond words, then life has happened to you, life has knocked on your door.
¹⁴

•  •  •

Throughout this book, we've talked about the opposition between the “somebody” and “nobody” selves as a tension between our sense of individuality and our longing for absorption into the universal.
We've reviewed some of the various battlegrounds on which this inner war is waged, and we've spoken of the debate between the “devil” and the “angel” within. While we cling to our unique snowflake self, at some level we also long to merge into the cosmic avalanche—or to melt away altogether, vaporized into what is truly real.

But these two fundamental aspects of our being—the nameable “somebody self” and the unnamable “nobody self”—need not be at war with each other, and we needn't feel torn between them. The inner house need not be divided, but can live in harmony.

And to achieve this détente between our two selves, it's helpful to recognize that one does not exist without the other.