The "I" Of Your World

Series finale on human connection.

This is the last piece of a series I’ve been writing on the topic of connection. One way of distinguishing among the types of connection include self, other and world. Today the discussion involves connecting with the world.

But what is the world, really? Save for the astronauts, cosmonauts, and billionaires involved in the commercial space race, those blessed few who have beheld the globe in their direct visual experience, in one sense the whole world is only available to us secondhand through maps, apps and photographs. In another, it is so close as to be completely overlooked.

Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash

Your thoughts about the world aren't the world itself. They're about you.

Have you ever asked yourself, are thoughts real?

Many of us go through our entire lives never once questioning whether thoughts are real. Have you ever made up a story or an assumption about a situation only to discover just how wrong you were?

Some deny their reality, while other teachings claim “thoughts become things.” Perhaps it is possible to have no opinion either way. Regardless of their ontology, thoughts remain an important aspect of experience and influence reality. Thoughts may come and thoughts may stay awhile, yet they invariably seem to go.

Your mind is all you have to experience the world. Thoughts and feelings about others and “the world” are all happening in your experience.

So then, what is the world and what can we know about it?

Your sense experience and your awareness of it. That's it. Then there are thoughts about it and – just like that – we're already out of contact with the world. I’ll elaborate further. 

There’s your direct sense experience – seeing, hearing, feeling, etc. accompanied by a reflexive evaluation as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral – known as vedana in Buddhist terminology. An important distinction arises between first-order thoughts that arise in contact with a sense experience, and second, third, and n-th order thoughts which are thoughts about thoughts. This is what is implied by losing contact with the world, though even first-order thoughts are superimposed upon your direct sensory experience. Consider this an invitation to notice this distinction between first-order thoughts and the rest.

Thoughts are an intermediary layer upon the experience itself, like the difference between a sporting event and the commentary. Thoughts are always about something.

As the Buddha said, “Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought.” 

So then, to understand the mind is to understand the world.

There's one particular kind of thought that deserves special mention and that is the “I” thought.

It's the one that interjects, “I'm seeing this coffee mug,” “I like this coffee mug”, “this is my favorite coffee mug”; “I am seeing this iPad,” “this is my hand,” “look there's my car over there.” But is that actually the case? There is your visual experience of form, light and color then there's an unbidden narrative about it. And without skipping a beat, often a feeling.

That's simply what minds do. It doesn’t have to be a problem when understood clearly, though arguably it is the author of suffering.

This verse from the Dhammapada underscores this point: 

“More than those who hate you, more than all your enemies, an untrained mind does greater harm. More than your mother, more than your father, more than all your family, a well-trained mind does greater good.”

The “I” thought is like a contraction of consciousness, like a black hole that apprehends everything and binds it towards a center of experience that you apparently occupy. Upon close inspection though what is “I” referring to?

What does “I” point to? Or for that matter, I’s cousins “me”, “my” and “mine”?

A common mistake or presumption about meditation is that it's somehow about quieting the mind or getting rid of thoughts. While those are aims and stages of practice, it's more about becoming familiar with and befriending the mind through awareness, understanding and compassion.

It’s about making contact with the world directly. 

It’s about seeing through the illusion of separation between an apparent “you” and the world.

From the common sense perspective, there is the object of experience, the subject of experience, and the experiencing itself i.e. seeing, hearing, feeling, etc. 

From a non-dual perspective, there is seeing but no seer, there is listening but no listener, there is thinking but no thinker. There is doing but no doer. Observe how the mind interposes an agent between what is happening and your experience of what is happening. The known, the knower and the knowing is the conventional dualistic view. In a sense, the mind turns verbs into nouns, reifying processes into static things. What is a walker without walking? A runner without running? Is there such a thing? It’s redundant.

As the Buddha advises Bahiya, one of his followers, from the Bahiya Sutta:

"...[Y]ou should train yourself thus: In reference to the seen, there will be only the seen...to the heard, only the heard. In reference to the sensed, only the sensed...to the cognized, only the cognized... When [you do,] there is no you in connection with that... just this, is the end of stress."

And to get very practical, go into nature. The Japanese practice of “forest bathing,” or the more intense flavor of cold plunging will sort “you” out. Move “your” body. Notice how it conforms to the environment. Where does one begin and the other end? Find flow at the edge of your abilities and see if the mind doesn’t quiet down of its own accord. Regardless of method, gently notice that silent presence that precedes, remains and embraces all experience in tenderhearted empty openness.