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Zazen and the True Self
Universal Self
Our zazen is always self doing self. Does this mean zazen has no relationship to other people and things? Isn’t this just ignoring society and other people, being caught up in self-fascination or withdrawal from the world? If zazen isn’t closing oneself up in a shell, and is related to other people and society, just how is it related? I think it is only natural to be skeptical about this. This becomes a critical issue, especially for people who want to do zazen and are searching for a true way to live.
However, there is an even more basic question than the problem of self and others. A practitioner of zazen must ask, once again, just what “self” is. Only after taking a fresh look at self, and at the self/other relationship, will we be able to encounter the fundamental teaching of Mahayana Buddhism and the true attitude of zazen, which is the practice of that profound teaching. The background for our zazen must be the whole teaching of Buddhism, and the background of Buddhism must be our very own lives.
The problem of self and other is a good place to start. For “self,” just what does “other” mean? Usually people think of “self” as some thing in opposition to “other,” as I as opposed to you. This I is deter mined by external relationships with things defined as other. That is, I means that self which is not other. Conversely, other is always seen and defined by me and is something that is not myself.
Now, if I and other were diametrically opposed while at the same time dependent on each other, and we were to try to cut off this rela tionship with other and be I which is only I, this would certainly be a kind of withdrawal and escape from the world, or perhaps a kind of narcissism. It would be nothing but closing our eyes to our relation ship with others and becoming self-satisfied.
Our zazen is not like this. Clearly, it is our thought, our think ing, that considers this contrasting relationship of “self” and “other” but when we are doing zazen we let go of this very thought. And, in doing so, we abandon this form of “self” and “other” as a contrasting relationship.
If we let go of this relationship in which “self” and “other” are diametrically opposed while at the same time mutually dependent, how can we talk about self any longer? Actually, during zazen we completely let go of this self-consciousness of an individual self defined by what is outside of us, yet it is right there that we wake up to all-inclusive self that is the reality of life. Even though we aren’t conscious of this self and attach no name to it, it is self as raw living experience, self that is simultaneously personal and universal. To think that universal self is apart from personal self is just a limited comparison in the brain, just a variant of self versus other. Universal or all-inclusive self is free of comparisons and includes the personal self.
In other words, if I say “self which is only self,” that expression does not refer to a self that excludes others while still being tied to them. It is not some sort of I distinct from other. “Self” is not some fixed concept regarding who you are, it is the all-inclusive self you personally wake up to. This self is the whole reality of life. Furthermore, the only thing we can wake up to as reality is the life of this whole self, and this is always self which is only self. This does not mean self-and-other completely disappears, but it differs radically from the usual self/other relationship. How does it differ and just what is a self/other relationship for people doing zazen?
Excerpt from Kosho Uchiyama's Opening the Hand of Thought.
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