Authors: Stephan Bodian
Of course, spontaneous self-inquiry may also be just the beginning of a prolonged investigation that ultimately includes other forms of self-exploration. One of my students, for example, describes how he first began to inquire during a snowball fight when he was a child. Every time the other boys would hit him with a snowball, they would shout, “I got you, I got you,” but he would shout back, “No, you didn’t get me. You only got my arm or my leg or my head.” At some point, he realized that no matter where they hit his body, they never managed to hit
him
. The mystery of this paradox caught his attention, and he found himself wondering,
“Who is this me that can’t be hurt?” Thus began a lifetime of self-inquiry that ultimately led him to the study of Advaita Vedanta.
Breathe and Reflect
Spend some time paying attention to your body. Look at your arm or your leg or feel your head or face, and consider that they belong to you but aren’t who you are. Even your heart or your brain is “yours” but not the essence of you. The natural next step is to ask, “Then who am I really?”
My own initiation into the practice of self-inquiry occurred one day as a teenager when I gazed into the mirror and felt the presence of a watcher who seemed to be separate from me. “Who’s watching?” I wondered with a frisson of fear. For months afterward, I couldn’t look at my reflection without a rush of adrenaline, but my curiosity was piqued, and several years later, I began practicing Zen.
Perhaps the best-known approach to self-inquiry is also the most direct—the practice of asking the question “Who am I?” Popularized by the twentieth-century Indian sage Ramana Maharshi and his successors, this question naturally turns awareness back on itself in an attempt to discover the one who is aware. As human beings, we use the term “I” repeatedly, as if we know what it means, but who, what, and where is this “I”? You say, “I see,” “I think,” “I do,” “I want,” but to what does this “I” refer? You give this “I” ultimate power and value in your life and go to great lengths to fulfill
its needs or defend it against attack. But do you really know what it is?
For the practice of self-inquiry to be effective, you need to recognize at some level that the word “I,” though superficially referring to the body and mind, actually points to something much deeper—or, perhaps more accurately, to nothing at all. Anything you can perceive, no matter how intimate—including the physical body and the cluster of images, memories, thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that constitute the mind—is merely an object of perception; it can’t possibly be the perceiver, the “I” in “I notice, I think, I feel.” But who is this perceiver, this experiencer, the ultimate subject of all objects? This is the real question at the heart of “Who am I?”
Instead of “Who (or what) am I?” you may prefer asking, “Who is thinking this thought? Who is feeling this feeling? Who is seeing through these eyes right now?” The point of these questions is not to engage the mind, because the mind inevitably gnaws on questions endlessly like a dog on a bone, with little nutritional benefit. Instead, drop the question into the stillness of your being like a pebble dropped into a still forest pool. Let it send ripples through your meditation, but don’t attempt to figure it out. When the pool is relatively tranquil again, drop another pebble and see what happens. (By
tranquil
, I don’t necessarily mean “absent of thoughts.”) Set aside any conceptual answers, such as “I am the Buddha,” “I am consciousness,” or “I am a spiritual being of light,” and come back to the question. Though true at a certain level, these answers won’t satisfy your hunger for spiritual sustenance
any more than a painting of chocolate can satisfy your longing for sweets. As you continue your self-inquiry, you may find that the question begins to catch fire, and you notice yourself asking it not only during meditation, but at unexpected times throughout the day. “If the mind is distracted, ask the question promptly, ‘To whom do these distracting thoughts arise?’” counsels Ramana Maharshi.
Let your inquiry be fervent and wholehearted, but not obsessive or effortful, and don’t let it become automatic or habitual, like taking your vitamins because you’ve been told they’re good for you. Similarly, the inquiry can only be fruitful if it’s grounded in the bodily experience of welcoming presence; otherwise, it may just exacerbate the sense of separation and disembodiment. “Without this welcoming openness, this global feeling and sensitivity, the question ‘Who am I?’ remains intellectual,” says Jean Klein. “If it is ever to become a living question, it must be transposed on every level of our being. The openness in the living question is the doorway to the living answer.” The more you genuinely want to know who you are and the deeper you keep looking, beyond the answers churned out by the mind, the more likely the question will one day reveal the answer, not as a particular thought or experience, but as the timeless, unchanging ground of all experience.
As an alternative to asking “Who am I?” you might follow Ramana Maharshi’s advice to focus your attention on the subjective feeling of “I” or “I am” behind your experiences until the experiences themselves, the objects of thought and awareness, fade into the background and only
the “I” remains. If you can sustain this awareness of “I,” the individual I-thought will dissolve into a direct experience of the Self. “‘I am’ is the goal and the final reality,” Ramana said. “To hold it with effort is inquiry. When spontaneous and natural, it’s realization.”
Like any practice, self-inquiry runs the risk of becoming progressive if you view it as a gradual path to some distant goal. Remember that you’re not trying to develop, manipulate, or cultivate any particular mind-states in order to arrive somewhere or become something you are not already. Instead, ask the question and allow a response to emerge right now, then let it go. The question may keep recurring, but resist the temptation to make a “practice” out of it.
Though more enigmatic and elusive than the straightforward question “Who am I?” the Zen stories and riddles known as koans lead to the same realization by tying the mind in knots and forcing it to let go so the truth can emerge from beneath the undergrowth of thoughts. Foundational koans like
mu
and “original face” are designed to awaken you to your innate Buddha nature, while more advanced koans invite you to express your Buddha nature in a variety of situations. Generally, formal koan practice only makes sense under the direct guidance of a teacher who has already solved the koans.
One of the best-known foundational koans, “What was your original face before your parents were born?” stops the mind in its tracks and immediately shifts the inquiry from
the familiar realm of the known to the dimension of the unknown—and possibly unknowable. After all, the person you take yourself to be didn’t exist before the birth of your parents, so what face could the koan possibly have in mind? In fact, on present evidence, you can’t even say that you were ever born—the birth of the body-mind is just a story, a memory in the mind of your parents (or not even that), and the birth of who you really are is merely a convenient fiction that has no reference point. Clearly, your original face is identical to the “I” in “Who am I?” and you can engage this koan in exactly the same way.
In the progressive approach of the Rinzai school of Zen, the koan
mu
is posed as the formidable barrier through which every student must pass in order to achieve kensho. (The full koan goes like this: A monk asked Zen Master Chao-chou, “Does the dog have Buddha nature?” Chao-chou replied, “
Mu
[no].”) I can still remember sitting retreats in which every participant was required to bellow, “
Mu
,” while the head monk prowled the meditation hall with a long stick, smacking students on the shoulders and shouting, “Die on your cushion” to encourage them to wake up.
The problem with this approach is that awakening rarely happens as the result of such concentrated effort—in fact, it doesn’t seem to happen as the “result” of anything at all—and relaxation generally seems more conducive to realization than tension and struggle. Besides, different koans or questions resonate for different folks, and no cookie-cutter approach works for everyone. Recently, I counseled a woman who had been practicing Rinzai Zen for many years
and felt deeply ashamed and inadequate because she hadn’t succeeded in passing
mu
. As we talked, it became clear that the koan made no sense to her and didn’t elicit any genuine interest or curiosity, but she kept practicing it because her teacher required it. When I encouraged her to find a question that really appealed to her, rather than banging her head fruitlessly against the same old wall, she was so grateful and relieved that she started to cry.
My first Zen teacher, Kobun Chino, always encouraged his students to formulate the living question that was uniquely their own, and the great Japanese Zen master Eihei Dogen emphasized embracing the koans that everyday life presents. Indeed, life is constantly affording opportunities to discover not only who you are, but also how you can express who you are in every activity. The questions that grab you and ignite your passion for truth inevitably prove to be the most potent in evoking self-realization. For example, losing a mother or father early in life may awaken in you the penetrating question “Who dies?” Or experiencing intense physical pain may prompt you to investigate the question “Where is the peace beyond pleasure and pain?” Everyday koans like these have the power to lead directly to the recognition of true self, which is beyond pain and death.
The approach to self-inquiry known as “unfindability” is exemplified in the famous exchange between the founder of Chinese Zen, Bodhidharma, and the Confucian scholar Hui-k’o. While sitting quietly gazing at the wall of the cave
where he spent nine years in meditation, Bodhidharma was approached by Hui-k’o, who earnestly sought his instruction. “I have not yet found peace of mind,” Hui-k’o said. “Please pacify my mind for me.”
“Bring me your mind, and I will pacify it for you,” Bodhidharma replied.
Hui-k’o spent weeks in fervent self-inquiry, attempting to find his mind so he could take it to his teacher, but to no avail. At last, he went to Bodhidharma and said, “I have looked for my mind everywhere, but I’ve been unable to find it.”
“Ah,” said Bodhidharma. “Then I’ve succeeded in pacifying your mind for you.”
At this, Hui-k’o was enlightened. In other words, no matter how carefully he searched, Hui-k’o could not grasp the entity called mind, because such a substantial, separate mind (or self) simply doesn’t exist. Recognizing the essential emptiness and nonlocatability of mind, Hui-k’o finally awakened to the truth of his being.
The Tibetan Buddhist tradition known as Mahamudra (“great seal”), which I had the good fortune to practice under the guidance of several teachers, goes one step further by recommending that students ask a series of specific questions about mind and self that reveal their inherent unfindability. For example, I might ask you to examine the objects you call “mine” and find the so-called me to whom they belong. But no matter how hard you look, you won’t be able find it, because the body and mind are also “mine” and therefore can’t be the me to which “mine” refers. Or I might ask
you to sit quietly in meditation and then attempt to locate the mind and determine its density, shape, color, and form. But no matter how earnestly you try, you won’t be able to answer these questions.
Breathe and Reflect
Where do you suppose your thoughts arise? If you say, “In my head,” then try to locate them. Where exactly does thought occur? How big are your thoughts? What color, shape, and density? They seem to have so much reality, but can you point to them or describe them with any degree of accuracy? What happens to your thoughts when you try to describe them?
“Not finding anything, you may initially think that you have somehow failed,” explains Tibetan master Thrangu Rinpoche. “Either you misunderstood how to look, or you just haven’t looked enough. But in fact, this is not true. The reason you find nothing . . . when you look for your mind, is that the nature of your mind is utter insubstantiality, emptiness. We need to experience this directly in meditation.”
“Live with the sayings of the teacher and the reminders of truth these awaken,” my teacher Jean Klein used to say. “These unspoken reminders are the perfume of that to which they refer” and may naturally guide the listener back to their source. Even without formal self-inquiry, the essential teachings of the great masters and sages can precipitate an awakening in the student who is poised on the precipice
of truth. The Zen tradition uses the term
turning words
for the pithy phrases that spontaneously turn the student’s mind toward true nature. Often completely incomprehensible to the mind, these phrases are regarded as “live words” (as opposed to the “dead words” of conceptual discourse) and constitute the beating heart of many koans. (A disciple asked Zen Master Tung-shan, “What is Buddha?” The master responded, “Three pounds of flax.” When a student asked Zen Master Yun-men the same question, his answer was equally inexplicable: “A piece of toilet paper.”) Likewise, Tibetan teachers often use verbal “pointing-out instructions” similar to the turning words of Zen to point their students directly to the nature of mind.
But turning words often work their magic independent of koans or formal pointing-out instructions and may arise in any situation. As a monk, I was never particularly adept at formal koan practice, but my teacher Jean Klein was a master of spontaneous turning words, and his formulations would often shock my mind into silence and spontaneous self-inquiry. For example, I can still remember one particularly intense retreat in which he responded to a friend’s question with the following pronouncement: “Even though your body and mind have changed dramatically since childhood, you’ve always used the word ‘I’ to refer to yourself. What is this ‘I,’ the one who has experienced your life from infancy until today, through all the changes, but has itself remained unchanged?” Essentially, Jean was asking, “Who are you?” but the evocative way he described the unchanging
witness—and my openness and receptivity to his teachings—allowed his words to resonate and ripple deep inside me the way a formal koan had never been able to do.