[AUDIO AND TEXT]
This is the fourth talk given by Nona Strong Roshi at the August 2023 East-West meditation retreat at Mercy Center Burlingame.
In his book Listen to the Desert: Secrets of Spiritual Maturity from the Desert Fathers and Mothers (© 1996, Liguori Publications, Liguori, MO), Fr. Greg Mayers cites this anecdote about a fifth century desert hermit named Abba Poemen:
Abba Poemen said to Abba Joseph: Tell me how I can become a monk. And he replied: If you want to find rest here and hereafter, say in every occasion, who am I? and do not judge anyone. [p. 9]
In our tradition, this “Who am I?” is the fundamental inquiry or question that we are all exploring. In fact, this question seems to be ubiquitous among people with a spiritual bent, whether in Eastern- or Western-flavored traditions. In addition, the question serves up a whole bunch of variations, touching different aspects of our existence. For instance, here are four variations that have been proposed by an author named James N. Judd, D.D. (See his book, The Four Great Questions of Life, © 2000, Xlibris US). These variations, as he phrases them, may bear consideration:
- Who am I?
- Where do I come from?
- What is my purpose?
- Where am I going?
Notice that the operative function in each of these questions is “I,” “me,” “my.” They all focus on the personal dimension – of ego, of “self.” It’s clear, of course, that we couldn’t function in this world without benefit of ego. What other part of our psyche is equipped make decisions – should I cross the street here or proceed to the crosswalk – or stop us from harming someone or handle whatever life presents to us in a given moment. But when ego, or “self” becomes the dominant mover in our very existence (which it is in most of us, at least as we enter adolescence and adulthood), we may find ourselves running into trouble. Here is Fr. Greg again (p. 13):
Who, we may legitimately ask, is in charge here? Who is coordinating the cast, who is choreographing the play, who is asking the question, and who is reading this text?
Me! we are quick to answer. But who is that? My awareness? What happens to “me” when I fall asleep or lose consciousness? Am I my personality? My talents? My preferences? My physical shape and weight? My history? A simple accident that damages the frontal lobe of the brain, or the onslaught of Alzheimer’s disease, can erase all the traits and patterns that I consider to be me, like the accidental deletion of data from a computer disk. So who am I when you take away all the props and rehearsed answers?
I figure that most of us on this retreat carry these kinds questions around in the foreground of our consciousness, whether we speak them to ourselves or not. But I also suspect that most humans who go merrily (or not so merrily) about their daily lives carry these questions as well, somewhere in the back rooms of their own minds. They may not even realize that the questions are working within them, but it’s a good bet that they are. If people go to church, if they have an affinity for religion or philosophy or psychology or language or the humanities or any of the other sciences of the mind, if they ever stop to think about how time and the world began, these kinds of questions are swirling about within their consciousness, whether they experience them or not.
Unbeknownst to these folks, it’s these questions that have led them to the various practices they have embraced. They wonder why they were born. They ask what their purpose is in life, why they do the things they do, and to what end they are doing them. They want to know what happens after they die. They want to know what their place is in the big, bad world in which they find themselves. They are, in short, engaged in a quest for self-realization. To discover who they are. “Who’s in here, anyway?”
Maybe some folks decide there is no overarching answer to any of these questions. They want to believe that everything and everyone are just random happenings, with no meaning at all. They are content to live unburdened by the question of “Why?” Others, however, find what they accept as pat answers to these questions – in religion (or in the rejection thereof), in philosophy, in psychology, or whatever. Still others don’t even bother to ask; they don’t admit the existence of questions like these at all. They go for the WYSIWYG approach to being (i.e., what-you-see-is-what-you-get). And if that approach works for them, who are we to say they’re wrong?
But for us who venture to spend long periods of time sitting in silence – alone or with a group – these questions and their kin are at the heart of the matter. Who am I? Where do I come from? What is my purpose? Where am I going?
We are explorers, seekers, questioners, wonderers, wanderers, however we want to characterize ourselves. We are not content to lie asleep – deaf, dumb, and blind to the wonder of existence. And even if physically we be deaf, dumb, and blind (let us bless the remarkable Helen Keller and others like her), we still seek to discover the thread that holds between our own being and that which lives around, within, and beyond us.
Around, within, and beyond. Therein lies the unquenchable intuition that spurs us on in our drive to connect – with whatever is in there / out there. That’s what our intuition has gifted to us: the sense that the within, the beyond, and even the around, are indeed something to discover. And here we find that we have been granted the courage to do what’s needed to let our intuition propel us on the quest.
Answers? Try this for one answer to our fundamental inquiry, again from Fr. Greg (pp. 19-20):
It is nothing in particular, not this [and] not that. It is like ice and water or the wave and the ocean. It is not so much a matter of the relationship between them, but of the connaturality of the two.
The connaturality of the two. Just this. Just this. Part of us still wants to find sure answers to all of these life questions. But the bigger, wiser part of us knows that somehow, the questions are unanswerable. Rather, our answer is to live in the questions. And relish them with the gifts they bring. How wondrous and how alive that engagement is!
EMPTY CLOUD ZEN 