This week, as I look for a new apartment, I’m going through a lot of my old stuff (enough to create a small landfill), and I’m a little amused by what I find. Old pictures. Jeans I wouldn’t wear now if you threatened me with torture. Books I never read and now wouldn’t want to start. Shirts with skulls on them. Leather chaps. Car parts. Even a bunch of mala beads I no longer wear. Half of this stuff feels like it belonged to another person. Which it did.
As long as one breath
There’s a classic Buddhist story in which the Buddha asks a group of monks, “How long is a human life?”
One monk answers, “Um… eighty years?”
The Buddha responds, “You don’t understand the reality of human life.”
Other monks answer: “Sixty years?” “Thirty?” “One year?” “A week?” All receive the same reply.
Finally, one monk says, “Human life is as long as one breath.” The Buddha says, “Now you understand the reality of human life.”
Frames in the movie
We tend to think of death and change as things that happen over a long period of time. But looking back thirty years, to when I was six, surely nothing in me is the same. My body is different down to nearly every cell. My thoughts, opinions, values, interests, likes and dislikes have nothing in common with that six-year-old. The same goes for me at ten, fourteen, twenty-four, all the way to the moment before this one. You could say all of those people died, so that the “I” in my present state could be born.
The frames in our heads spin so fast that it looks like a continuous movie, with a solid character shifting and changing. When we sit down and slow the breath, we slow the movie down, and we begin to notice the frames, then the sub-frames. Then it’s easy to see how the mind changes from one fraction of a moment to the next.
We shed physical cells, thoughts and everything that makes up our “identity,” every moment. Feelings come up, last a second and disappear. Every sensation arises, lasts a moment and ceases to be. We actually experience birth and death from moment to moment, every moment. Waking up in a great mood, going to sleep in a bad one. Loving something today and hating it tomorrow. Long hair today, shaved head the next.
Who is the I am?
The most fascinating thing about watching this cycle is noticing that behind all the constant change, there is always a sense of “I am.” At six, I felt “I am” this. Thirty years later, I feel “I am” someone else. The body, mind and intellect will keep changing. But who is the “I am”?
That’s the real reason we get on the mat. That, and the six-pack abs, respectfully. :)
