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Dharmette: Oneself (2 of 5) Self-Understanding

So this morning I'm continuing on the topic of oneself, that each person is the person responsible for their own practice. The Buddha said, "I only point the way; it's up to you to make the effort." Our agency, our involvement, our engagement with practice is an important ingredient in walking the path of liberation. Classically, back in the ancient world, it was a path you walked on, which means we bring all of ourselves to the path.

And so one of the important ways that we bring ourselves is to know ourselves, to meet ourselves. The way of meeting ourselves, of knowing ourselves, needs to be done with care. I love the idea of hospitality. I think I talked about it yesterday: that when we offer hospitality, it's an offering, it's a gift. It's something we have agency in doing. You don't just stay in bed all day and play host to the people in your house. You're engaged in caring for them, serving them, and doing whatever it takes when you're the host.

There's also a kind of putting aside of our own desires for ourselves. Not completely, but there is a deference, or a letting go of self-concern to a healthy degree, in being a host for other people. That is very different if you're living alone and you just do whatever you want, and you don't have to take anybody else into account.

So, to be a host for oneself—the host within the host is a saying in Zen—to have a hospitable environment for oneself, we have to engage in some way. One of the ways we have to engage is to show up, to be present. The other is that we also have to get out of the way. Our selfishness has no place when we're being a host for ourselves. If we're caught up in our desires, our wishes, our past, and our future, we can't really offer this hospitality to ourselves. There's no practice; we get lost in that world.

But to have hospitality towards oneself is a kind of letting go of self-concern and self-preoccupation in order to meet what's there, to be the host for what's here. One of the crucial things that we're trying to be the host for is to understand ourselves, to have self-understanding. The discovery of ourselves, the understanding of ourselves, comes from this hospitality, where we're also learning to let go of selfishness in the process. To be selfish, you can't really be a host.

Self-understanding is aided by things like meditation and mindfulness, where we're awakening our capacity to be attentive to what's happening within us, what's happening here. This is not limited to ourselves, but this is kind of the seat, the beginning place oftentimes in meditation and Buddhism, to understand oneself.

What are we understanding when we understand ourselves? We're understanding things that are unique to ourselves, what we are contributing to our lives, the things we are doing that are healthy, and the things that are unhealthy. We begin seeing how much we're distracted. All distractions involve some degree of attachment. If we can have understanding about how attachment works, recognize it when it's there, and play host to that, what happens to our involvement with attachment?

Chances are, if part of who we are is the host, that part is not involved with the attachment. There starts to be space for the attachment. There starts to be some degree of non-involvement with it, some degree of clarity and seeing it for what it is. Perhaps there is some idea that, "I don't believe in the attachment anymore. This is not where I want to be. It's not where I want to put my life energy, into these attachments." That's not a critique of them, it's not an aversion to them, but it's a wisdom that comes from self-understanding that this is not where I want to be.

But I am the host, so there's more opening up, more of a kind of letting go. To the degree to which attachment is closely connected to selfishness, self-preoccupation, and self-centeredness, as we let go of attachment, selfishness and self-centeredness fall away. Paradoxically, we become more self-aware but less self-centered. More self-aware, but less bounded by definitions of who we are, trying to prove who we are, or hold on to who we are.

And so we begin looking, turning inward with self-understanding and understanding: how do desires work for us? When am I caught up in desires? How do aversions work for me? To understand that, and how I get caught in the grip of those. Do I spend a lot of time in stories? Do I live my life in stories? Do I live my life in opinions, in what's right and wrong? Do I live my life in judgments? To really see this.

Self-understanding leads to wisdom. One of the maybe slightly unfortunate aspects of all this is that wisdom comes from familiarity, that a lot of the wisdom we see over and over and over again. We sit down to meditate, be mindful in our life, and we say over and over again, "Oh, there's the desire. I had no idea I was living in stories all this time. I had no idea that I'm so judgmental. I'm judging every little thing that goes on. I had no idea that I'm living in planning mind all the time. I had no idea that I'm so self-referential in my thinking."

By seeing that over and over and over again, something begins to shift. We tend not to be mesmerized or enchanted with those thoughts and those activities. We start having wisdom about how this is not the place to live, wisdom about not being committed to it, not being so interested in it anymore. The wisdom that lets us see it clearly and know an alternative.

The alternative that I'm suggesting today is to be the host, to be hospitable, to have hospitality for the stranger. Even the parts that are strange about you: maybe your selfishness, maybe your attachments, maybe your story-making, your opinions, your self-righteousness, your fears, and also what's beautiful about yourself. Let's hold that in a hospitable way. Not to condone it, not to accept it in some way like, "Oh, this is good and I have to just let it be," but as a way to make space and open up.

It's kind of like a stranger who comes into your home on a cold rainy day, shivering, and has no attention for you and is self-concerned with their cold and their wetness. As the host, you put them by the fire, you give them a warm blanket, you bring them warm tea. And this stranger begins to relax and warm up, and it turns out that as they relax more, the stranger becomes a wonderful person.

It's the same way with what's difficult and challenging within ourselves. Just to know it, to have the self-understanding of "there it is," and to have the self-understanding to know how to be the host. To know how to hold it, not exactly in acceptance, but with hospitality, without conflict, so that it can relax. Perhaps all attachments, all selfishness, self-centeredness, all greed, and hatred are just a stranger that needs the chance to relax, to warm up, and to thaw. Some of these things, when they relax and thaw, turn into something else, something that may be a surprise.

An important part of this Buddhist practice of ours is self-understanding. Yesterday, the topic was self-respect. So to always meet ourselves with respect, always to cultivate respect. Part of cultivating respect is being able to be a host, to have hospitality. To be able to prioritize self-understanding over self-preoccupation, over spinning along with our attachments, engenders respect: "Oh, I can see. I can understand. I can be the host here."

As we have more respect, we have more capacity to look at ourselves, to be present, to understand, and to be the host. That creates more respect, which supports this capacity to be present, to be fully here in a way that allows for greater understanding. At some point this grows so that the self part of self-understanding falls away. We just live mindfully and aware, with awareness and understanding available for wherever it's needed, whether it's within or without.

You are definitely worthy of hospitality. You're definitely worthy of understanding, seeing, and knowing. And to do it in the simplest possible way, maybe without analysis and a lot of thinking. A lot of thinking about yourself is more attachment. What we're talking about here is not thinking about ourselves, but really almost like a silent presence that sees and recognizes, "Oh, that's what's happening. I'm thinking a lot." Then we're host to that, so the thinking mind can relax and settle.

Thank you. I look forward to sitting again tomorrow in silence with all of you and continuing on this topic.