I and Other
by Stephen Lavine
In entering into relationship, we are treading on one of the most highly charged areas of the mind-- the holy/unholy ground of I and Other. Other is our alienation. So, it turns out, is I.
The synapse between I and other is filled with mythical serpents and familar demons. It is the distance between the heart and mind.
In the process of relationship, this wild terrain must be explored. Noting that on the same level on which resides our sense of a separate self there exists the common grief, the primal terror, that someone will find out we don't really exist.
I creates other in the very infrastructure of perception. This cloying self-consciousness doesn't go away by itself. Indeed, it must be examined gently to its root, or the posturing to mask it will reinforce its tendency to view our loved ones, and even ourselves, as other. To investigate this sense of separation, as a painful, though natural phenomenon of mind is part of a process unfolding, is a key to a conscious relationship with ourselves and the human heart. When we explore self-consciousness unselfconsciously, when we admit at last how long we have related to ourselves as other, I and other disappear altogether into a mystical union.
When there is no other, the I is inseparable from the Beloved. it has the ego of space. It has the body of stellar motion. Although the mind may still produce such separatist images and inclinations, there is little attachment to any reinforcement of their clumsy proddings and volitional flickerings. The emotional trance of I and other is broken and in its place a continuity of heart that goes beyond the mind to discover its whole life.
When you break the conspiracy of I and other, something to do of the mystery is revealed. no longer relying on other to define our I, we approach directly this aspect of mind that we call, depending on our mood, ego or Narcissus or self. Who, you ask yourself, is that crouching in the shadows of small mind, protecting its smallness, defending its pain into suffering? Who is it that wonders who it is, and keeps falling out of love with itself?
Who is that is offering himself/herself in relationship.
Indeed, before we can fully comprehend what other is, we must explore what I means. We must inquire within what we are referring to when we say, I am.
Settling back and observing the inner dialogue we call me, we discover that it seems to be a running commentary on the mind, by the mind. An ever-unfolding flow of consciousness composed of thoughts, feelings and sensations; and of memories and ideas about who is thinking all this. Examining the ever-changing contents of the mind, we see that nothing we call I stays for long. That everything experienced is in a constant state of change. That what I call me, that consciousness, is a process. And how could other be any different? That every thought, every emotion, every experience which has a beginning has an end. That every moment of pleasure, every moment of pain, every sensory experience, every thought and feeling has been impermanent. No wonder the self-image often finds no place to stand, and nothing solid to stand on. When we attempt to make solid the ever-changing unfolding, it leaves us rigid and insecure.
If I ask you, to what does this I am refer, the mind, will immediately react with a dozen passing identities. I am this, I am that, I am a carpenter, I am a mother, I am a spiritual being, I am a woman, I am a hero, I am a father. But whenever anything is attached to our essential I am, we sense we are not telling the whole truth and suffer fro a small case of claustrophobia. All the 'thises and thats' we cling to in are our battered models of correctitude, the dead ends of our spirit. Whenever we attach anything to our essential amness, we discard the vast flow of being for something containable and just barely beyond our controll. But all that we attach to I am is impermanent, and our attachment to it is the root of our ongoing suffering. Anything which camouflages our true identity, that attaches to I am, reinforces grief and the dread of death and loss, as well as the fear of being in relationship.
Attempting even deeper to answer the question, "Who am I?" we find, after tossing a dozen possibilities on the table, nothing independent of conditioning or change, nothing permanent enough to hang your hat on. So, looking yet deeper, we rummage through thought after thought, feeling after feeling, sensation after sensation, seeking something permanent, something solid to identify with, to prove we exist.
But when we explore that to which I am refers, we eventually recognize that what we are looking for may not be found in the tiny I, but in the vastness of being, im amness itself. That I belongs to the personal, but amness is the universal. Indeed, using 'proper grammar' one might say that the I refers to the 'personal impermanent' and am to the 'universal immeasurable.'
All the experiences of being alive have been impermanent except one. Since the moment you were aware you were aware, whether that occurred in the womb, or at the breast, or the day before yesterday, there has been a single unending experience: the experience of simply being. The experience which, when we settle down and leg to of all other experiences, remains. Suspended in the midst of the luminous presence, we sense there is more to us than the ever-varying I. Letting go of the thoughts that try to define it, and the feelings that attempt to possess it, we enter directly this ongoing experience vibrating at the center of each cell. We explore this sense of presence by which we suspect we exist.
But if I asked you to define it, to answer who indeed you ultimately are, you might have to reply, from the depths of this unnameable suchness, from the midst of the 'hum of continuity,' simply, 'uh'- the soft explaination of the formless essence finding itself in form. This outcasting of the breath in search of a name for that which animates, is more than, our body and mind ends in exasperation.
Does Uh take birth? Does Uh take death? Or is it the ocean from which these waves are born? And into which each subsides?
This underlying sense of presence, this Uh is the only experience of a lifetime which has not changed. It is the space in which change floats. The Uh of our universal amness is the only constant in the midst of life's inconsistencies.
Everyone's I is different, but everyone's amness is precisely the same. Indeed, the experience of amness, of simply being, never changes. It is the same now as when you were three, or thirty-three, or eighty-three. The experience of amness has been the same for all beings from Attila the Hun to Mother Theresa, just [i[Uh,[/i] the essential being.
And so we see in the ever-deepening investigation of "Who am I" that nothing impermanent that we attach to the I gives relief for long. That only in amness are we free. That there at the center of experience, where consciousness originates, is the hum of endless being.
Continuing our investigation into this sense of endless suchness, we come upon life itself vibrating luminous at the center. And enter that which has no beginning and no end, the deathlessness of our underlying nature, our essential amness. The Uh of boundless being, which for lack of a more expressive term, we call the Beloved.
But even calling it Uh we verge on holy war. To name the unnameable is to tempt the small mind's tendency to stop at "understanding." Understanding is not enough. It is only the beginning. The idea of the Beloved is like a bubble floating on its vast ocean.
When we come to realize that everything is impermanent but our true nature, that we are amness in this distressing disguise, we do not hold so to our suffering, our ever-protected I, our defensive smallness. When we surrender to anmess, when we rest in being, we open to the Beloved, our shared suchness, and notice any sense of separating dissolving into the inseparable.
We hear the 'battle of the sexes,' or of people being 'at war with the world,' but all skirmishes are fought between I and Other. Other is the basis of every cruelty, all bigotry and war. In order to harm someone, to lie to someone, to steal from someone, to kill someone, you must see them as other, racially other, sexually other, politically other, ethnically other, morally other, religiously other, personally other. We see that when the small mind projects the distrust of itself onto another, it is easy to receive that person as not same, as nonfamily, nonfriend, nonrelationship, nonhuman, nonfeeling.
And we see that our relationship to other is our relationship to self an an other aspect of amness. To the degree we judge another, we judge ourselves. jesus wasnt just moralizing when he said "Judge not, that ye not be judged." He recognized that the judging mind, doesnt know the difference between "I" and "Other." It just condemns what does not suit its self image.
The investigation of amness ends the war between I and Other. It stands like Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita between battling clans, examining their fortifications and intentions. It recognizes war as the unfinished business of our unexamined grief. It ends war by investigating our fear that I is essentially different from other. It knows that when you say I and when I say I the flags unfurl, the trumpets blare and the implements of war are unsheathed. it knows, too, that when we reside together in amness we are peace. And whatever distances seem to remain between individuals are filled with kindness and wishes for their well-being. No longer attempting to "maintain its space," but to enter directly the unnamed such ness that is the breath of the beloved.
In Zen, a teacher may hold up two objects such as a bell and a book and ask the student, "Are these the same or different?" If the student says same, they are mistaken. If they say different, they are equally incorrect. As the old Zen master said, "such distinctions set heaven and hell infinitely apart." The appropriate reply is often just to ring the bell or read from the book. They are what they are! Each has the same deep essence manifest in a superficially different way. Each is buddha-nature at a costume ball. Each is susceptible to definition. Each is other in precisely the same manner.
So the Zen master might ask "Is I and other the same or different?" Dont answer! Dont reply to quickly. If you answer from the I and say different, you will not be telling the whole truth. If you answer from amness and say same, you will equally be mistaken.
The answer, of course, is not to say it but be it. To do the psychological (different) work as well as the spiritual (same) explorations to have a whole relationship. Indeed, Rama Krishna says that one of the things that makes God laugh is when bickering lovers say they have nothing in common. Are they same or different? They are the same arguing about differences. the same differences!
And there is nowhere that these same differences can be observed more clearly than in disagreements about individual perceptions. Nothing exacerbates the sense of I and other and creates the emotional trance like two people unable to agree on what occured during a mutual experience. To disagree about how each sees differently is to be blind. To argue about what is heard is deafening. To contend about what is felt is to be insensate. When it comes to individual perceptions, small mind agreement is, on occasion, nearly impossible. Who's right? Neither if they disagree-- both as they shrug into "Big don't know."
It is precisely this open-hearted, open-minded, "don't know" that the Zen master is attempting to stimulate when she asks "Same or different?" It is the openess beyond conceptualizations, to the truth as it may present itself. In this "dont know" big mind observation, I and other float in amness.
In the mystical wedding, the real joining of real hearts, they do not ask "Do you take this person..." instead they ask, "Same or different?" And give you the rest of your life to answer-- to end the duality that separates mind from heart, and heart from heart. I from other. I and other coincide on the common ground of being and the sympathy and harmony it encourages.
When the mind sinks into the heart, is it the same or different?
