‘Denying self is not self-denial, nor is it ascetism.’ Photo: by Emilie Lmt on Unsplash
Self-serving: Tony D’Souza has another tale from the Zen Buddhist tradition
‘Dying to self is central to all religions because it is the only way we can come to know the eternal within ourselves.’
You could tell by his eyes that he was a cold-hearted killer. They had a glassy, fish-eyed look about them that spoke of a heart from which all compassion had long ago been extinguished. He was indeed a killer, but that was just his job – it was nothing personal. As a samurai in thirteenth-century Japan, he never questioned his duty. He was entirely obedient to his feudal lord and to the warrior code of his class. During this latest battle between warring clans, he and his fellow warriors had successfully stormed a village and now he stood in front of the door of the Zen Buddhist temple.
He kicked the door open and entered, his sword held above his head. To anyone inside, he presented a curious vision of terror. His armour gleamed in the half-light and his clan crest stood out above his helmet like two horns. As he had burst in from the freezing cold, his silhouette appeared to be smoking as he stood framed in the doorway. He looked as though he was a demon come freshly from the bowels of hell.
There was nobody in the temple apart from a grey-haired old man sitting cross-legged in the centre of the room.
‘Who are you?’ the warrior screamed at the top of his voice.
‘I am the abbott – the master of this monastery,’ replied the old man.
‘Stand up!’ yelled the samurai, ‘Don’t you know you are in the presence of a man who could strike the head from your shoulders without a second thought.’
‘Sit down!’ said the master, firmly, ‘Don’t you know you are in the presence of a man who could have his head struck from his shoulders without a second thought.’
Both men looked into each other’s eyes. Both were unflinching; they seemed to look deep into each other’s soul. No sound disturbed the silence apart from the distant rustle of the wind moving through the trees. It seemed that time stood still and both of them were playing parts in a play that had been written long ago by an ancient, unknown hand.
After some time, the samurai dropped his sword and sat down in front of the old man. The legends of the region say that he enrolled as a novice monk the next day. He studied under the master, and when the old man died, he succeeded him as the abbott of the monastery.
This story illustrates how to die before you die – or how to die to self. Dying to self is central to all religions because it is the only way we can come to know the eternal within ourselves. As William Penn said, ‘The truest end of life is to know that life never ends.’ The old man in the story had achieved this insight through discipline, study and meditation. As time is the same for us now as it was in the thirteenth (or in any other) century, there is no reason why we cannot do the same.
In the eastern tradition, the way to die to self is through detachment and meditation. As we cannot know the eternal directly with the cognitive mind, detachment is the process of discounting everything that is not the eternal. First, however, purification is necessary. This often involves acknowledging the importance of a moral code of behaviour and following it. This is not aimed at stopping people having fun, it is merely the means to block the distractions which lead us away from the spiritual – worldly behaviours such as gossiping, lewdness and intoxication. Just as there is no point in mopping the floor while the tap is still running, if we want the spiritual life we must begin by forsaking the worldly.
The second method of revelation in the eastern tradition is meditation. When you start to meditate, you are assailed by thought, so you need an ‘anchor point’ to come back to once thought has carried your mind away. Many people use breathing as an anchor point, by constantly coming back to the breath as it slowly comes in and out of the body. In ten minutes of meditation, you may come back to the breath thirty times or more. It does not matter. It is the coming back that is important. Soon you see that thought is just thought. It is nothing more than an autonomous process in your head. In time, you will see that thought, and its products, feelings and emotions, need not run your life.
In the western tradition, the way to die to self is quite different. Christ said: ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.’
The egoic sense of self will tell you that to deny self is a recipe for a joyless life, and it will do this because it is frightened of losing control. The truth is the opposite. Denying self is not self-denial, nor is it ascetism. To deny self is to control, or attempt to control, our most destructive instinctual drives, and further, to make them subservient to the spirit within us. It means controlling negative emotions, not by denying them, or by bottling them up or displacing them in activity, but by overcoming them by love and compassion.
For example, if you stub your toe against a boulder there is no point in kicking the boulder. That’s just going to make things worse. Hopping about on one leg and swearing is not going to help either. The effective way to deal with the pain is through compassion. Imagine taking your shoe and sock off and cradling your injured foot in your hand. Look at the injured toe. You might want to blow on it or massage it gently until it begins to feel better. In the same way, when a negative emotion such as anger arises, try holding it in the light. Cradle the negative feeling with compassion. It has a voice, and has arisen because various preconditions have made it arise. Listen to it. What are the conditions which caused it to arise? Eventually, by holding it in the light, you can purify the conditions which caused the emotions arise, and when the conditions are purified, they will no longer arise.
To deny self is to put to death the self in all its forms so that the spirit may live and shine in you. It is exactly as the apostle Paul said: ‘When you follow the desires of your earthly nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, quarrelling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and the like. Let me tell you again – anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God. The Spirit produces a different kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against these there is no law.’
