The Old Self?

I am now back at Jom Gom Mountain Monastery, where it is quite cool and refreshing. This is the best season to be here, with dry, sunny days and a fresh northerly wind. The leaves are falling and the soft sunlight gives the sense of a long temperate-climate autumn. Recently an out of season rainfall has temporarily refilled the streams. With morning temperatures of 14C-16C, many people are complaining about the cold while huddling around smoky fires.

For the last month I was in Bangkok for dental treatment. What started out as repairing a broken tooth turned into an extensive treatment programme which has included three fillings, two root canals and two bridges. Yet to come are one crown and a teeth guard. Khun Meaw and Khun Tun have been exceedingly generous to arrange the appointments, provide transport to and from appointments and, together with family and friends, meeting all expenses. My only part was to be a good patient and endure the noise of Bangkok. The benefit, however, of staying so long in Bangkok was that I was able to meet up with many Sangha members as they passed through. Thus I met Ajahn Achalo (Australian abbot of Anandagiri Monastery, Petchaboon Province) and Tan Pavaro (Canadian, ordained at Birken Monastery) on their way to India; Ajahn Preecha visiting from Santacittarama Monastery in Italy; Ajahn Amaro and Ajahn Jayanto on a short teaching trip to Thailand; Ajahn Viradhammo from Tisarana Monastery, Ottawa, visiting LP Sumedho and Wat Pah Pong; Ajahn Cagino from Dhammagiri Monastery (and Orphanage) in Mae Hong Son Province, as well as a number of other western monks.

View of the 'concrete jungle' of Bangkok from the roof of the Sangha residence.

On the journey back here I met someone who had just had an operation to remove a tumour on his neck. I asked him if he was fully recovered and he responded that physically he was recovered, but that he was not feeling quite his old self yet. This was the start of a discussion and reflections upon what our 'old self' really is. Fortunately, as a Buddhist he knew the Buddha's teaching that what we take to be 'self' is constantly changing, so he didn't take his loss of 'old self' seriously.

Twice over the last few months I have also had the experience of not feeling like my 'old self'. During the Rains Retreat I came down with an extremely heavy fever which was severely debilitating. I spent four days on my back and another 10 days recovering my normal strength. A side-effect of this was the strange sense of having part of the brain atrophied. At times I felt like a visitor from some other planet, gazing out of the skull at some unusual landscape which I could not quite process. Recently I took some medicine for allergy and experienced something similar. Although awake, it seemed that part of the thinking brain was asleep and could not be engaged. Although both of these experiences were quite 'peaceful' on the level of not having much mental activity, they were also not particularly clear or insightful. Especially unhelpful was trying to do some intellectual study.

It thus seems that our sense of self is just a habit. We become familiar with certain physical sensations, a certain type of mental/emotional environment and certain character traits, and then identify with them as being 'my self', even if they are not particularly pleasant or useful. Then when any of these factors change, we feel disoriented or confused. However, on closer inspection all these factors are actually changing constantly, sometimes quickly as in the case of illness, or sometimes slowly as with the ageing process. If we can acknowledge this, we can see how much energy we expend on trying to preserve a constant sense of self against the ever-changing tide of life, and how much this wisdom would allow us to flow with its ups and downs.

Of course, one of the key elements of the Buddha's teaching is the unsubstantiality of a self. Where other spiritual teachers assumed some permanent entity called Self or soul, the Buddha saw only dynamic changing processes which constitute 'I-making'. And this is not just some philosophical theory, but can be seen directly for ourselves. For example, carefully observe waking up in the morning. When consciousness starts to wake up, first there are basic sense impressions: bodily sensations, sights, sounds, etc. Then you may notice a thirst for existence: 'What is going on here?', then the grasping of identity: 'I am sensing, thinking, etc.' and the coming-into-existence of being me: 'I have to go here and do that'. It is only through clearly seeing this creative process occurring that we are able to relinquish the nourishing of it. It is much more peaceful not to create more self identity, which we then need to maintain and prevent ourselves from losing amidst the ever-changing flow of life.

The sun-parched plateau near the cave.