This article continues a series of “active reading” posts dedicated to personal and subjective reading of a “Cutting through spiritual materialism” book. I thought to myself that a literary journey to Buddhism has to start somewhere. So it seems that this book, covering common pitfalls in attaining enlightenment is as good of a starting point as any.
The plan is to read actively, meaning reading a few pages each day and sharing my thoughts and commentaries about particularly interesting passages with the void, my ego, or imaginary reader.
On today’s menu is the following passage from Page 5:
“The heart of the confusion (on the path to enlightenment) is that man has a sense of self which seems to him to be continuous and solid.”
This passage reminded me of one of my acquaintance who claimed his personality to be the same as 10 years ago, never changing and set in stone.
His was a ridiculous idea, contradicting one of the most significant qualities of life and itself, namely the ever-changing dynamic nature of life. After all, if our body changes every second by the constant replacement of cells in our tissues, why should the spirit stay static?
But there is another side to the claim of my friend, namely some kind of strange wish to see own self as something unchanging. It’s quite interesting to contemplate where this desire may originate from and what Buddhists have to say about it.
Page 5 of the book comes with the following answer to this question:
“You sense that YOU are reading these words. This sense of self is actually a transitory, discontinuous event, which in our confusion seems to be quite solid and continuous.”
One can only applaud such a ruthlessly accurate description of the dynamic nature of self. Sense of self is indeed transitory. You, the reader who just read the beginning of this article is not the same reader who reads its end. Those are two slightly different selves separated from each other by a time-span, albeit a short one, and a span of thought and emotions that occurred within this time-span.
Why then do humans desire to see the self as something solid, unchanging? Is it possible that change in one’s core, in self is akin to a small death? A fear of oneself, not being as it was anymore. This change can occur suddenly through death, but can also happen gradually through a myriad of small but ever-present changes.
So many fascinating questions, and so little time to answer them!
As it’s getting quite late, it seems that I have to stop here and return to “active reading” tomorrow.
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