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Self and other
Feb. 20th, 2025 07:34 amToday was a lot more discussion of the nature of reality, and the interdependence of all things. Of course the purpose of all the philosophy is to encourage compassion for all beings, and to realize that on the level of ultimate reality the distinction between self and other is false. I was thinking of that Jewish saying "to lose one person is to lose a whole world" as I was meditating this morning, and when I think of how much my own mind contains (as I watch the thoughts arise, jumping from song fragments to memories of dreams which themselves are references to other memories) and then imagine billions of people in the world who contain as much, it is staggering to contemplate. I often come back to a memory of my grandmother, when we had to get up very early one morning (I assume she was driving me to an airport or train station, though I can't remember clearly), saying that she'd been dreaming of people who'd been dead for years. And while of course I knew my grandmother, in her many years of life, had known and loved many people, I think something in that moment made me think of generations and generations of people retained in the memories of those left behind. So in some ways we contain not only our own worlds but those of others as well.
And yet we are utterly separate as well. In some ways I contain my grandmother, as Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us--not just in the sense that the leaf contains the sunlight, but in a real genetic way where I have copies of some of her genes that have shaped my biology, not to mention whatever personality traits and habits of thought and being that she passed on to my dad and he passed on to me. And I have memories of her, but I don't have her memories. Who was it she dreamed about? Her parents? Her grandparents? Her dead siblings? All waves are part of the ocean, but each wave is singular and distinct.
From today's chapter: "Have you ever looked into the eyes of your loved one and asked deeply," Who are you, my love?...who are you that comes to me and takes my suffering as your suffering, my happiness as your happiness, my life and death as your life and death. Who are you whose 'self" has become my 'self'?...Some day, you will even have to question the person you hate the most in this same way: "Who are you who brings me such pain who makes me feel so much anger and hatred? Are you part of the chain of cause and effect, the fire that forges me on the path?" In other words, "Are you me myself?" You have to become that person. You have to be one with him or her, to worry about what he or she worries about, to suffer his or her suffering, to appreciate what he or she appreciates...You are that person, the same as you are your love, the same as you are yourself.
"Continue practicing until you see yourself in the most cruel and inhumane political leader, in the most devastatingly tortured prisoner, in the wealthiest man, and in the child starving, all skin and bones. Practice until you recognize your presence in everyone on the bus, in the subway, in the concentration camp, working in the fields, in a leaf, in a caterpillar, in a dew drop, in a ray of sunshine."
And yet we are utterly separate as well. In some ways I contain my grandmother, as Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us--not just in the sense that the leaf contains the sunlight, but in a real genetic way where I have copies of some of her genes that have shaped my biology, not to mention whatever personality traits and habits of thought and being that she passed on to my dad and he passed on to me. And I have memories of her, but I don't have her memories. Who was it she dreamed about? Her parents? Her grandparents? Her dead siblings? All waves are part of the ocean, but each wave is singular and distinct.
From today's chapter: "Have you ever looked into the eyes of your loved one and asked deeply," Who are you, my love?...who are you that comes to me and takes my suffering as your suffering, my happiness as your happiness, my life and death as your life and death. Who are you whose 'self" has become my 'self'?...Some day, you will even have to question the person you hate the most in this same way: "Who are you who brings me such pain who makes me feel so much anger and hatred? Are you part of the chain of cause and effect, the fire that forges me on the path?" In other words, "Are you me myself?" You have to become that person. You have to be one with him or her, to worry about what he or she worries about, to suffer his or her suffering, to appreciate what he or she appreciates...You are that person, the same as you are your love, the same as you are yourself.
"Continue practicing until you see yourself in the most cruel and inhumane political leader, in the most devastatingly tortured prisoner, in the wealthiest man, and in the child starving, all skin and bones. Practice until you recognize your presence in everyone on the bus, in the subway, in the concentration camp, working in the fields, in a leaf, in a caterpillar, in a dew drop, in a ray of sunshine."
