Inquiring Into the Self: More Compost Heap Than Hero
Zazen is a focused investigation of the mysterious nature of the self as it grows gradually transparent to what is, not by directing oneself toward something special, rather, just (just!) noticing and gently abandoning all alternatives to unadorned being, sitting and breathing. (Murphy, 33)
A leaf has built into its understanding a relationality. (Snyder, Lecturette)
The Myth of Separateness and the Myth of the Hero
Two things are true as it relates to the self: We are storytelling animals who cannot be extricated from the web of stories and we are relational creatures who cannot be extricated from the web of life. Our myths are the stars we trace to navigate our way through this life. We tell stories rich with enchantments; we sit around fires (once actual, now more often virtual) to help our descendants (as living ancestors) survive. Myths are guiding stories, not lies – they are the educational and spiritual formation on which our survival depends. Many of us, most of the time, are living in the myth of separateness. Is this story, the myth of separateness, the world we want to live in?
There is a related myth–the myth of individual ascension, the myth of the hero who slays dragons and overcomes adversity. This myth will not take a self through the rigors of the accelerating environmental crisis, but will instead lead to a lonely demise. A separate self cannot slay the dragons of white supremacy or environmental catastrophe. Dominance, “winning” and overcoming are not stories for these times. The myth of the hero’s dominance and the individual’s separateness will not create flourishing for our planet.
We need myths of failure, of getting lost and we need theology from the cracks and crevices. We need stories of not knowing, stories of failure, and stories which begin with compassionate questions.
Who am I? Who could I become? Who do I long to know? What can I learn from the Levinasian other?
More Kin Than Hero
The self contains multiplicity, as Walt Whitman reminded us (“I contain multitudes”), and a self must hold both separateness and unity. To thrive and awaken we must hold both the sovereign being we experience as ourselves and relearn to be self-less. The relief of our ecological, spiritual, psychological, and social suffering can only be found in an initiated collective that has reawakened to our interbeingness.
Sharon Blackie invites us into a post-heroic time:
“The post-heroic community is not about slaying the dragon. It makes the dragon a part of your team with his fire-breathing skills. You leave your belly half empty, to give half to the mouse, and someday the mice might come along and help you sort the wheat from the chaff.” (The Mythic Imagination, TedxStormontSalon 8:32)
From Automaton to Erotic Interbeing Through Mutual Indebtedness
The myth of separateness, the myth of accumulation, the myth of dominance, the myth of the individual self: these are old stories that have been refined and reiterated to control the masses. It makes our lives laboring out of debt. In the indigenous, original world, debt was not seen as a problem but a ritual of sacred reciprocity. Martin Prachtel talks about the village as a place where a roof is made, so it must be repaired. I am up on your ladder, raising your barn, and you are up on mine. We are in a relationship, exchanging and tending our connection in this in and out breath. No one wants a roof that lasts forever, because then they would have no friends. With a plastic roof, we need no one. We don’t fall back into the earth, we are “protected.” There is no protection for death, and ultimately we are more compost heap than hero.
What does interbeing mean? It means I am in an erotic relationship with the land. I live in a village and am indebted to my neighbors, in sacred reciprocity and kinship with the web of the living and the dead. I am not an individual, but a collection of influences, flowing out, a bit of good pigment in water, relational as a leaf, or mycelium, as a wild strawberry. Symbiotic and embedded, though porous. I am connected and heavy, and the doors of my heart are swung open, open windows everywhere. This is my true abode, a place of ecological breathing, arboreal time, and deep connection.
Amnesia and Anesthesia
We live in a culture that encourages us to forget and to get out of pain. A rigorous pain that is a necessary part of initiation. Though I live in this braided web, I fall into slumber with the powerful siren’s call of the Myth of Separateness, where I live as an automaton, intending to owe nothing to anyone. I fight for my good life and the good conditions of my family. I am a bounded self; I carry my identity, and I protect my borderlands with reaction formations, ego, trauma, and limitations. I am a bit of ore from another galaxy. I am discrete and heavy, fighting for my place in the world.
Belonging
To belong to the world is not a choice, and entrance does not require a rigorous application process. A worm is entitled to both eat dirt and to become dirt, an ouroboros eats its tail, and the cycle begins again. We are at home in the bone house of our bodies, and we are at home on this island earth. We are co-created by one another, stories for one another, living ancestors. There is no individual in the anima mundi, there is a mutual interdependence, the presence of our ancestors, an indebtedness to the children, the earth. We are remade in every moment.