Bananas, Buddhism, and Me, Me,
Me
Steven
Schwartzberg 11/02/2015 Huff Post
(I
spent the winter of 2012 in silence on a self-guided retreat at the
Forest Refuge, a Buddhist meditation center in rural Massachusetts.
This twice-monthly blog explores daily life in the silence, and how
intensive retreats offer a compass for everyday
life).
My first silent retreat was at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in
Woodacre, California. The food at Spirit Rock, even at breakfast,
was ample and delicious: hot and cold cereals, hard-boiled eggs,
breads, assorted jams and spreads, and, at the far end of the table
where the food was laid out, a big bowl of fruit.
The fruit bowl itself offered a generous selection.
Except for bananas. These were always in limited supply, and went
fast.
One morning towards the end of the retreat I waited
patiently on the breakfast line, inching toward the food table.
When I got near enough to look, I started eyeing the bowl of
fruit. Hmm, just a few
bananas left. I began a complex
mental calculation: the number of people in front of me, the number
of bananas, the odds I'd get one. It was close. Soon the bowl was
down to one banana, but I was almost there so it looked pretty
good. But then the guy on line right in front of me took the last
banana.
And I immediately thought: Dammit! He took my banana!
Not a banana.
Not the last banana. My banana.
That was ten years and a dozen silent retreats ago. I've had a lot
of time to ponder: How and when did that banana
become mine?
As I now understand it, my claim of proprietary
banana-ship started even before I saw the fruit bowl. Wanting a
banana - simple desire itself - was itself enough to set the wheel
of "mine" in motion. When vision, with its long, graspy reach, got
added to the mix, the gears accelerated. Then came the clincher:
seeing how few were left.
Had I reached the table and not seen any bananas,
this would have not have rankled (at least that morning). Had I
seen bananas but not wanted one, I would not have cared. Had there
been plenty of bananas, I would not have rushed to stake a claim,
allowing myself instead the false beneficence that comes with the
perception of bounty.
Here's what happens with resources we desire and
consider scarce: an automatic, fierce impulse towards ownership
kicks in, most often with urgency far disproportionate to the
actual circumstances. Resources we tend to perceive -- or
misperceive -- as bottomless come with an entirely different, but
no less perilous, set of traps (just ask the planet).
The sense of "mine" extends well
beyond the borders of our physical bodies. The claim
of "self" pushes beyond
the limits of our senses. "It's
my..." reaches out into the
furthest stretches, and down into the tiniest crannies, of mental
life. A wisp of thought, leavened with desire or aversion, is
enough for us to begin the assertion of proprietorship.
That there is no "self" in the way we habitually
experience it is a fundamental, provocative principle of Buddhism
and other eastern philosophies. It's a thrilling idea, supported
not only by New Agey seekers but also hard-core neuroscientists,
who thus far have been stymied in their attempts to map its
elusive, probably non-existent turf in the brain. But to move
beyond the idea of non-self and into the
actual experience of it? There's the metaphysical rub.
Nothing in our inner life is more counterintuitive.
After years of meditation practice I can now often watch thoughts
and emotions arise and subside, and know them as impersonal,
energetic habits -- a paradigm-shifting insight when this occurs.
Still, it is hard not to describe "my" mind as the location of
these experiences, or to move beyond the notion of a "me" as the
one who observes this emptiness. Me, mine, my,
I-- these may be unavoidable shortcuts to describe what
occurs within the innermost spheres of human experience.
None of this means that in the everyday world there
is no separation between you and me, or that we have no personal
internal history, no private subjective experience. But it does
suggest that there isn't a fixed, clearly-delineated "I" in the way
we habitually, unquestioningly assume it.
Try to pin down this "I," to catch or border it, and
it disappears like mist or a rainbow. You might as well measure the
substance of a cloud, or map the edge of a fog. From a distance
these phenomena seem clear. The closer you get, the more they
vanish.
That's why there are entire schools of meditation
rooted in just one question, enough to occupy a lifetime, and
enough to awaken: Who is it that meditates?
Touching the truth of this enigma, not as an
abstract idea but as verifiable experience, is one of the deepest
aspirations of serious meditators. Once the "self" disappears as a
reliable phenomenon and comes to light as a deeply ingrained habit,
many other Buddhist teachings make sense in a way that transcends
intellectual concepts. Non-self shifts the ground of practice, both
on and off the cushion. It is, ultimately, the linchpin of Buddhist
meditation. The key to awakening.
But none of this was on my mind that morning eating
breakfast at Spirit Rock, after the guy in front of me
thoughtlessly snarfed the last banana. What I would
have done, I ruminated over my banana-less
oatmeal, is cut the banana in two, take half, and leave half
for someone else. That would have been the decent
thing.
Oops -- I have to admit: the option of leaving the
whole banana for someone else, foregoing my wanting it completely,
honestly didn't cross my mind for a long, long time. It was only
when it did that I recognized the sham, pseudo-Solomonic generosity
of my aggrieved banana-less rationalization; what I in fact
imagined was the guy who took the last banana
-- him cutting it in
two, and leaving half for me.