Hardcore Zen_ Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth About Reality - Brad Warner [53]
But try this on: Experiencing anger is like sitting in the bathtub frantically thrashing around and throwing handfuls of water into the air while simultaneously wondering why the hell your head and face keep getting wet. You’re in a stupor so deep you cannot even see that you’re the one causing the problem. If anyone should know about this it’s me, by the way. I used to like to bust things up when I got mad. A lot of my stuff still bears scars from such outbursts long ago.
It takes far more energy to sustain anger than to let it go. It only seems difficult to drop your anger because you have built up a habit of responding in a certain way to certain situations. Reacting to anger is an addiction, pure and simple, just like smoking Marlboros.® Objectively it takes more resources to keep smoking than to stop. Yet giving it up seems much harder than continuing because you’re addicted.
But even the addiction of reacting to emotions isn’t the root addiction. Ultimately, you are addicted to the idea of “you.” It’s intoxicating, fascinating, compelling. You think that there is something called “you” that perceives things, that thinks about things, that feels things and knows things. You think “you” are reading this book and evaluating whether it’s true or worthwhile. But that’s an illusion. Perception occurs. Thinking occurs. But there’s no one doing that thinking, no one doing the perceiving. And there’s no one reading this book (actually I do hope some people read this book, but you see my point).
Books on Buddhism always go on and on about “awareness” and “mindfulness.” But these ideas are easily misunderstood. Being “mindful,” to most people, means bringing “me” into the situation. “I” am mindfully reading this book. This is a mistake. To paraphrase a line in Dogen’s Shobogenzo, real mindfulness includes you being mindful of the book, the book being mindful of you, you being mindful of you, and the book being mindful of the book. In real mindfulness, book and reader disappear completely, mind and body disappear completely. There is nothing to be aware of and no one to do it. Awareness pervades everything, awareness itself is people and books, and the smell of burning tar, the songs of birds, and all the rest.
The universe desires to perceive itself and to think about itself and you are born out of this desire. The universe wants to experience itself from the point of view of a tree, and so there are trees. The universe wants to feel what it’s like to be a rock, and so there are rocks. The universe wants to know what it’s like to be a famous Austrian body-builder cum film star and so there is Arnie. We don’t know if rocks and trees have an idea of “self,” and it doesn’t matter one way or the other. But we do know human beings like you and me and Arnie believe in the existence of “self.” And this belief is the root of all of our problems.
We all think that what we call “me” belongs to us alone. It doesn’t. It belongs to the whole of the universe. You belong to the universe. And the universe is more you than “you” could ever hope to be.
The shrill clanging of the temple’s brass wake-up bell shatters my uneasy rest a scant few hours after my encounter with my demons. I get dressed, wash my face, and stagger through the cool morning air into the zazen hall to start another day of staring at a bare brown wooden wall. Later that morning at the lecture someone asks Nishijima a question. I can’t remember who asked it or even what the question was. But in his answer, Nishijima says, “Just stop drinking alcohol.” I look up and see he is looking straight at me. I smile, he smiles back. I don’t have a drinking problem. In fact I really hate alcohol, never drank much, and hadn’t had any at all for years. But what he says penetrates right to the heart of my problem. The words themselves don’t matter. It is direct communication.
The idea of a self is the most potent intoxicant