False Self and Original Nature: Reflections from Suzuki and Merton

Copyright 1994 by John R. Mabry

"Evidently," D.T. Suzuki writes, "Zen is the most irrational, inconceivable thing in the world."1 This is a common response amongst those investigating Zen, or Ch'an Buddhism for the first time. It is baffling because it evades logical explanation, and often avoids, in fact, any explanation at all. One of the most baffling aspects that the newcomer encounters is the assertion that we are not who we think we are. We are not the person we have been brought up to believe ourselves to be, and our delusion is the source of most of our troubles. Zen is a process that reveals to us who we really are, and calls our real identity our "Original Nature."

Thomas Merton, who derived his philosophy from both Western and Eastern sources, called the self we think ourselves to be our "false self." As in Zen, the spiritual journey, for Merton, is the quest for the Original Nature, or as Merton calls it, the True Self. For Merton, "the self that begins the journey is not the self that arrives."2

Just what is this elusive Original Nature or True Self, and how does it differ from the False Self? In this paper we shall take a look at both, and also comment on how to make the journey from one to the other.

A Buddhist fable is told of a small fish that hears a tale about the ocean, which sounds like a wonderful place, indeed. Immediately, he sets out to find this place. He swims far and wide and cannot find any sign of this thing called "ocean." Finally, he meets a wise old fish who tells him that he is already swimming in the ocean, that he need search no longer. The little fish is overcome, and swims away, enlightened.3 This is a tale of the True Self. We, like the little fish, believe that the Ocean, that Life, that God is somewhere "out there." The truth is that we are swimming in God, and we never even knew it. We are not separate, we are not cut off, we do not need to look for anything.

In Zen teaching, the idea that we are separate creatures is an illusion, and the ego that we have built up for ourselves, this "I" with which we refer to ourselves, is also an illusion. Merton agrees, and says that "when the...identity of the ego is taken to be my deepest and only identity, when I am thought to be nothing but the sum total of all my relationships, when I cling to this self and make it the center around which and for which I live, I then make my empirical identity into the False Self. My own self then becomes the obstacle to realizing my true self."4

In clinging to this illusion, we perpetuate the suffering that plagues us. We know that something is very wrong, and we scramble to fill the void we instinctively feel inside us in the only way we know how. We have been well-trained as consumers, and our addictive rush towards anything that will pacify us, however temporarily, reveals the depths of our individual and cultural bondage. "We live in a shadow existence," writes James Finley, "in which we find ourselves between ourselves and God. As helpless observers, we watch ourselves living out a life we know to be a fragmented tragedy."5 The False Self is itself this fragmentation, the very thing that cuts us off from wholeness.

The Zen practitioner realizes that the ego-self is, in Merton's words, "not final or absolute; it is a provisional self-construction which exists, for practical purposes, only in a sphere of relativity. Its existence has meaning in so far as it does not become fixated or centered upon itself as ultimate."6

Of course, once we begin to realize some of this, the ego invariably feels threatened (with good reason!) and switches into survival mode, fighting with everything it has for its continued sovereignty, sometimes causing "spiritual emergencies" and psychotic episodes that are really "spiritual emergences." According to Merton, the False Self "fears and recoils from what is beyond it and above it. It dreads the alluring emptiness and darkness of the interior self."7 Even so, the ego may play along for a while, and allow us our forays into meditation and spirituality, allowing it to be stretched almost to the vanishing point, but so long as it can "snap back" and regain control once the meditation period ends, we are still acting out of the False Self.

"As long as there is an 'I' that is the definite subject of a contemplative experience," writes Merton, "an 'I' that is aware of itself and its contemplation, an 'I' that can possess a certain 'degree of spirituality,' then we have not yet passed over the Red Sea, we have not yet 'gone out of Egypt.' We remain in the realm of multiplicity, activity, incompleteness, striving and desire."8

When the False Self begins to realize its unreality, then, according to Finley, "it begins to convince itself that it is what it does. Hence, the more it does, achieves and experiences, the more real it becomes."9 Unfortunately, this is a futile effort, and in its insecurity, in trying to prove its efficacy in the world, the False Self can drive a person to exhaustion or madness. Suzuki says, "If you want to seek the Buddha, you ought to see into your own Nature, which is the Buddha himself. the Buddha is a free man--a man who neither works nor achieves. If, instead...you turn away and seek the Buddha in external things, you will never get at him."10 The great Ch'an master Hui-neng agrees, saying "the deluded mind looks outside itself to seek the Buddha, not yet realizing that its own self-nature is Buddha."11

Eventually, the seeker must realize that "the nothingness he fears is in fact the treasure he longs for."12 Merton says that

The only full and authentic purification is that which turns a man completely inside out, so that he no longer has a self to defend, no longer an intimate heritage to protect against...the full maturity of the spiritual life cannot be reached unless we first pass through the dread, anguish, trouble, and fear that necessarily accompany the inner crisis of "spiritual death" in which we finally abandon our attachment to our exterior self and surrender completely..."13

This is the purpose of Zen practice, then: to bring us to this point. It may seem a lonely and desolate point indeed, but it is only in this sort of death that the True Self may be born in our consciousness. On the eve of writing this paper I had a dream. In it, I had been condemned to death by burning. All of us who were condemned were together in a classroom receiving instruction from a cheery man on how to die. We were told that it would not be painful and that we would have the best seats in the house! What was most curious though was that we would die in neat rows, sitting in a zazen position. I was scared of course, but the instructor was very comforting. Perhaps it would not be so bad, after all, I thought. After I awoke I realized what a meaningful dream it was. Zen is about death. The death of the False Self; the extinguishing of the ego and the birth of our true knowing. As Jesus says, "He who loses his life, shall find it."

Merton uses similarly macabre imagery when he says that,

"Zen enriches no one. There is no body to be found. The birds may come and circle for a while in the place where it is thought to be. But they soon go elsewhere. When they are gone, the "nothing," the "no-body" that was there, suddenly appears. That is Zen. It was there all the time but the scavengers missed it, because it was not their kind of prey.14

Let us now endeavor to discover the "no-body" who is always there. In a famous Zen story, Ming once asked Hui-neng what Ch'an was. Hui-neng did not answer his question directly. Instead, he replied "Show me your original face, as it was before you were born." Ming was instantly enlightened.15

This enlightenment was the result of Ming's sudden realization of his True Self, his "original face." Zen has many words for this same concept. "Original Nature," "Self-Nature," and "Suchness" are a few of the more familiar. In Chinese, according to Therese Peng, "self-nature" is composed of two characters, "tze" and "hsing." "Tze" means "self," or "one's own," and "hsing" means "innate," "uncreated," or "spirit." "Thus," writes Peng, "'self-nature' implies one's innate nature or spiritual nature, one's original nature."16

One's "original nature" is not grounded in our ego; it does not depend on anything we do. It is about who we are. It is not about our little "self" which the False Self is so interested in, but about our big "Self," our identity with the cosmos, with God. Merton writes,

Let us remind ourselves that another, metaphysical, consciousness is till available to [us]. It starts not from the thinking and self-aware subject but from Being, ontologically seen to be beyond and prior to the subject-object division. Underlying the subjective experience of the individual self there is an experience of Being. This is totally different from an experience of self-consciousness. It is completely non-objective. It has in it none of the split and alienation that occurs when the subject becomes a aware of itself as a quasi-object. The consciousness of Being...is an immediate experience that goes beyond reflexive awareness. It is not "consciousness of" but pure consciousness, in which the subject as such "disappears.17

Our True Self is not distinct, then, from the rest of reality. Who we are is what is. And what is, is God; or as our Zen friends would say, Buddha. In the ancient Zen writing, The Record of the Transmission of the Lamp, Tao-hsin explains it thusly,

The immeasurable subtle virtues are in the source of mind. All the doors of precept, meditation, wisdom, spiritual penetration, and transformation are contained in one's mind and will not separate form the mind. All obstructions of defilements and karmas of worry and trouble, are, in origin, empty. All causes and effects are dreams and illusions. There are no three realms from which we can leave and no Bodhi for which we can seek. the inner natures and forms of man and no-man are equal. The great Way is empty and vast. It si beyond thought and deliberation. You, at this instant, have this Dharma and are without lack. You are no different from Buddha....Whether you walk or stay, sit or lie down, and whatever you see or meet, all are the subtle functions of Buddha. It is joy without sorrow. This is called Buddha.18

There is nothing but Buddha. In the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, Buddha is often seen as a personification of reality.19 There is nothing but Buddha, nothing but God, and once our identity is rooted in Him, then our True Self can emerge. Merton says, "since our inmost 'I' is the perfect image of God, then when that 'I' awakens, he finds within himself the Presence of Him Whose image he is. And, by a paradox beyond all human expression, God and the soul seem to have but one single 'I'."20

Finley explains:

Our union with God is our person, it is who we are and not any thing we know. It is precisely our identity that emerges once we are freed by death from all the things we thought ourselves to be. Therefore, nothing can be said that, by the sheer informational content of the statement, could bring about awareness of our identity-giving relationship with the living God.

Purely objective statements miss the mark, for God is not an object. he is Person. Nor are we, as persons, objects. here all is Subject. There is no "object" "out there" to "see." Here all is presence and communion. Here everything, including our own individuality, remains itself--or, rather, for the first time becomes itself, but does so only by opening out into the oneness that is God.21

But paradoxically, although this sounds very transcendent and metaphysical, this participation in Being is, in Zen's phrase, "nothing special." Things simply are what they are. And their natural simplicity--including our natural simplicity--is precisely what is so divine. "The proper harmony of the universe is realized" says Alan Watts, "when each 'thing-event' is allowed to be freely and spontaneously itself, without interference...Let every be free to be just as it is. Do not separate yourself from the world and try to order it around."22

This is a very different approach, of course, from the strategy of the False Self, which is to take command and force reality into a shape that pleases it. The True Self is just what it is--just what is--and needs no prodding or shaping. It is not dependent upon accomplishment, upon "righteousness," upon social stature for its esteem. "True Self esteem" comes from "my knowledge of myself in silence," as Merton says, "not by reflection on my self, but by penetration to the mystery of my true self which is beyond words and concepts...[which] opens out into the silence and the 'subjectivity' of God's own self."23

This "is-ness" is often called "suchness" in Buddhist writings. As the Bodhisattva Manjusri says in the Saptasatika,

Suchness neither becomes nor ceases to become; thus do I see the Buddha. Suchness does not stand at any point or place; thus do I see the Buddha. Suchness is neither past, future, nor present; thus do I see the Buddha. Suchness does not arise from the dual or the non-dual; thus do I see the Buddha. Suchness is neither impure nor pure; thus do I see the Buddha. Suchness neither arises nor comes to an end; thus do I see the Buddha."24

Simply living in the now, living the moment in simplicity is to live the life of God. This is the life in which our True Self can begin to emerge. Merton says that the True Self "is like a very shy wild animal that never appears at all whenever an alien presence is at hand, and comes out only when all is peaceful, in silence, when he is untroubled and alone. He cannot be lured by anyone or anything, because he responds to no lure except that of the divine freedom."25

When the True Self emerges and begins to live through us--for the False Self must, if this is to happen, relinquish its control--it is not our life but "Christ's life...When you eat breakfast, Christ is eating breakfast. When you go to work, Christ is going to work. When you meet your brother...Christ is meeting Christ."26 Eventually, it is possible to live a life that is "God living in God and identifying a created life with His own Life so that there is nothing left of any significance but God living in God."27

The paradox is that there is little we can "do" to achieve this consciousness. As Watts says, "since one's own True Nature is already the Buddha nature, one does not have to do anything to make it so. On the contrary, to seek to become Buddha is to deny that one is already Buddha--and this is the sole basis upon which Buddhahood can be realized!"28 There are, nonetheless, some methods which Zen masters, and Christian mystics have devised which can help.

In another Zen story, Chao-chou asked Nan-chuan,

"What is the Way?" Nan-chuan answered, "The ordinary mind is the Way." Chao-chou asked, "Please tell me which direction to approach it." Nan-chuan answered, "If there is any direction, it is the wrong way." Chao-chou asked, If there is no direction, how can it be called the Way?" Nan-chuan answered, "The Way belongs neither to knowing nor to no-knowing. Knowing is a false feeling. No-knowing is no feeling. If the real Way is achieved, it is like the supreme space which is empty and boundless. How can it be named right or wrong?"29

As in Taoism, the way ahead is not to "do" something, but instead, "not-doing." The seventh century Ch'an master Fa-yung said, "All talk has nothing to do with one's Original Nature, which can only be reached through sunyata. "No-thought" is the Absolute Reality, in which the mind ceases to act. When one is free from thoughts,one's nature has reached the Absolute.... The nature of Reality is invisible and cannot be understood by our conscious mind."30

Traditionally this is achieved by meditation. There is much debate, however, over the proper way to meditate. Some methods, popular in both the East and the West, involve concentration on a word, an image or an idea. This is called catophatic meditation by Christian mystics.

Another way, most popular in Zen practice, is to make the mind empty of all thought. This is called apophatic meditation and is advocated by many Zen and Ch'an schools, including the Renzai school. Achieving this "emptiness is not so easy, though. Alan Watts writes, "The true mind is "no-mind," which is to say that it is not to be regarded as an object of thought or action, as if it were a thing to be grasped and controlled. The attempt to work on one's own mind is a vicious circle."31 One way some Zen school have approached this problem is simply not to try, as in the method known as "just sitting," practiced by the Soto school. With this method, one does not try to empty the mind, nor fix it on any object, but simply sit and note what arises, immediately letting it go. The goal here is not emptiness, but mindfulness. Eventually, if one is successful, the mind will quiet of its own accord, without striving. Hui-neng said, "Our Self-Nature is at root clear and quiet. You have but to use this mind to directly become a Buddha."32

Having meditation as a base from which to begin our journey to our True Self, we must be careful lest we put ourselves in danger of becoming too transcendent, too "other-worldly," too far removed from ordinary life. Zen insists that Buddhahood is not found in spiritual extravagances, but only in ordinary, everyday experience. It is, as we noted above, "nothing special." Suzuki says, "Salvation must be sought in the finite itself, there is nothing infinite apart from finite things; if you seek something transcendental, that will cut you off from this world of relativity, which is the same thing as the annihilation of yourself. You do not want salvation at the cost of your own experience."33

Our way forward begins exactly where we are, not in some monastery, not in some arcane or exotic practice, but in getting up and shaving, going to work, cooking dinner, taking out the trash. We need to begin to view all our experience as spiritual practice. A bumper sticker I saw recently said, "How you do anything is how you do everything." Just living is a meditative practice, if we attempt to live mindfully, and aren't trying to be something or someone we're not--haven't we had enough of "False Selves," after all?

Thomas Merton once preached a sermon to some birds, saying, "Esteemed friends, birds of noble lineage, I have no message to you except this: be what you are: be birds. Thus you will be your own sermon to yourselves!"34

"The Ultimate standpoint of Zen," says Suzuki, "is that we have been led astray through ignorance of find a split in our own being, that there was from the very beginning no need for a struggle between the finite and the infinite, that the peace we ar seeking so eagerly after has been there all the time."35 The prescription for discovering the True Self, therefore, is simple: Be observant (pray or meditate) and be yourself. Nothing else is required. Anything else will be counterproductive. As Finley says, in describing our journey towards God, "Where must we go to see him?--Nowhere! What can we do to have him? Nothing! All we can do, at least for a moment (an eternal moment) is to abandon all doing and be who we are in him, and open ourselves to his life within us. It is then we will at once see him and ourselves."36

Suzuki call this "returning to one's home." He says, "You have now found yourself; from the very beginning nothing has been kept away from you. It was yourself that closed the eye to the face. In Zen there is nothing to explain, nothing to teach, that will add to your knowledge. Unless it grows out of yourself, no knowledge is really of value to you."37

It is clear that Suzuki and Merton have much to teach us. From their perspectives, Zen, and Christian contemplation, we get stereoscopic views of a universal human condition, the preoccupation with a pretender, the False Self. But we also have hope of discovering who we really are, our Original Nature, our True Self. The way ahead is not easy, it is elusive and perplexing, and mindfulness and sincerity are not instantly perfectible skills. We must be kind to ourselves, and in this way honor ourselves and our paths.

Hsin-hsin Ming offers us a poem filled with sage advice:

Follow your nature and accord with the Tao;

Saunter along and stop worrying.

If your thoughts are tied you spoil what is genuine....

Don't be antagonistic to the world of the senses,

For when you are not antagonistic to it,

It turns out to be the same as complete Awakening.

The wise person does not strive;

The ignorant man ties himself up....

If you work on your mind with your mind,

How can you avoid an immense confusion?38

NOTES

1. Suzuki, D.T. Zen Buddhism (New York: Doubleday, 1956), p. 13.

2. Finley, James Merton's Palace of Nowhere (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press,1978), p. 17.

3. Peng, Therese Meditation and Psycho-Spiritual Transformation (Doctoral Dissertation, CIIS, 1993), p. 1.

4. Finley, 18.

5. Ibid., 38.

6. Merton, Thomas Zen and the Birds of Appetite (New York: New Directions, 1968), p. 26.

7. Finley, 101.

8. Ibid., 130.

9. Ibid., 35.

10. Suzuki, 88.

11. Peng, 40.

12. Finley, 111.

13. Zen and the Birds..., 24.

14. Ibid., 9.

15. Peng, 44.

16. Ibid., 34.

17. Zen and the Birds..., 23-24.

18. Wu, Yi The Mind of Chinese Ch'an (San Francisco: Great Learning, 1989), p. 18-19.

19. Watts, Alan The Way of Zen (New York: Pantheon, 1957), p. 68.

20. Finley, 87.

21. Ibid., 124.

22. Watts, 71.

23. Merton, Thomas Thoughts in Solitude (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1956), p. 70.

24. Watts. 68.

25. Finley, 91.

26. Ibid., 72.

27. Merton, Thomas New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: Harcourt, Brace an Co., 1953), p. 284.

28. Watts, 69.

29. Wu, 85.

30. Peng, 38.

31. Watts, 93.

32. Peng, 1.

33. Suzuki, 14.

34. Finley, 108.

35. Suzuki, 13.

36. Finley, 112.

37. Suzuki, 97.

38. Watts, 89.