“We must constantly die in order to live. In the storms that make life possible, we must die repeatedly.”
“The self, where we reside, is an illusionary space. Goodness is associated with an effort to see beyond oneself… Against the ideas of individualism and self-actualization so fundamental to Western philosophy, Iris Murdoch wrote in a masterpiece from 1970, “to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is.” Today, techniques like metta meditation and mindfulness, which are rooted in the dissolution of the self and which remain the most difficult of human tasks even for the most devoted practitioners among us, flood the global mainstream. These techniques are drawn from the groundwater of ancient Eastern philosophy and were first introduced to Westerners in the 1960s and 1970s.
The foremost of these was the revered Zen Master and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh. Thich Nhat Hanh traveled to the United States in 1961 to study the history of Vietnamese Buddhism at Princeton Theological Seminary. He returned to his native Vietnam two years later and dedicated his life to the cause of peace, for which the South Vietnamese government exiled him for four decades. Half a century later, having established Plum Village in France, been nominated by Martin Luther King Jr. for the Nobel Peace Prize, and survived a stroke that left him unable to speak or walk, he was finally permitted to return to his native country, leaving the West that hailed him as the founder of mindfulness.
Half a century after Thich Nhat Hanh first started keeping a journal upon his arrival in America, Fragrant Palm Leaves: Journals 1962-1966 was released (public library). These are still his most private writings, a rare documentation of his selflessness that shaped him into the monk who popularised mindfulness.
Thich Nhat Hanh reflected on the illusory and interdependent nature of the self as he faced his own multitudes, pitted in the universal inner conflict that comes with being a person in the world, a private cosmos in a public sphere, ten days before his 36th birthday, the age at which Walt Whitman opened his Leaves of Grass with the declaration “One’s-Self I sing, a simple separate person”:
Funny how much our environment affects how we feel. Our environments have such a profound impact on our joys and sorrows, preferences and distaste, that we frequently let them determine our course of action. We conform to “public” sentiments to the point where we even lose sight of our own true goals. We are completely shaped by society, becoming strangers to ourselves. My “real self,” as opposed to the “fake self” that society has placed on me, can feel conflicted at times. How frequently we conflate the two and believe the social mold represents who we really are. Rarely do conflicts between our two selves end in a peaceful reunion. The Five Aggregates—our being’s form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness—become scattered across our mind like wind-driven debris, creating a battlefield. Houses collapse, branches break, and trees fall.
Thich Nhat Hanh continues: “Two centuries after Coleridge viewed the storm as a lens on the soul and a century after Van Gogh praised the illuminating power of storms in nature and human nature.”
These are our most lonely times. But each time we make it through one of these storms, we gain a bit more. I would not be the person I am today without storms like these. However, I hardly ever hear such a storm approaching until it has already reached me. It appears suddenly as if it were walking silently on silk slippers. When such a frenzied hurricane hits, nothing outside can help. I know it must have been simmering in my own thoughts and mental formations for a very long time. I’ve been beaten and pulled apart, but I’ve also been saved.
Akiko Miyakoshi’s The Storm artwork
In line with Alain de Botton’s understanding of the value of breakdowns, he reflects on what the storm that had the greatest impact on his life taught him:
I realized that the thing I had assumed to be “myself” was a fabrication. I came to the conclusion that I was far more like myself in reality—uglier and more lovely than I could have ever dreamed.
He continues with a memory that causes my own bibliophilia soul to quake with the tenderness of recognition as he describes what sparked the storm of his unselfing, which is his interpretation of Virginia Woolf’s garden revelation that revealed her life’s meaning:
On October 1st, just before eleven o’clock at night, the feeling started. On Butler Library’s eleventh floor, I was perusing. I spotted a book that was relevant to my research just as the library was about to close. I took it in my two hands after sliding it off the shelf. It was big and weighty. According to what I read, it was published in 1892, the same year that it was donated to the Columbia Library. A slip of paper with the names of the readers and the dates they checked it out of the library was attached to the back cover of the book. It had been borrowed twice before, once in 1915 and again in 1932. The third would be me. Can you picture it? On October 1, 1962, I was only the third borrower. Only two other individuals had stood where I did for the past seventy years, taken the book off the shelf, and made the decision to read it. I had a burning need to talk to those two people. For some reason, I wanted to give them a big hug. But they were gone, and I will soon follow them in disappearing. Never will two points on the same straight line cross. In space, but not in time, I was able to come across two persons.
All boundaries vanished at once, giving way to an infinite field of awareness devoid of time, place, or self. I’ve lived a long time and feel like I’ve experienced a lot of life. I’m not young—I’m almost thirty-six. But that evening, as I stood in Butler Library’s stacks, I realized that I am neither young nor old, existing nor nonexistent. My pals are aware of my capacity for childlike playfulness and mischief. I enjoy making jokes and completely participating in life’s games. I have also experienced anger. And I am aware of the joy that comes from praise. I frequently feel like crying or laughing. What else, though, lies hidden beneath all of these feelings? How do I get ahold of it? Why would I be so certain that there is something if there is nothing?
Still holding the book, I suddenly had a flash of understanding. I realized that I have no beliefs, aspirations, points of view, or allegiances. I have no obligations to anyone. The idea that I was an entity amid other entities vanished at that very instant. I was aware that this epiphany was not the result of ignorance, despondency, fear, want, or disappointment. A veil was silently and effortlessly lifted. That’s it. Everything that is deemed to be “me” will vanish if you beat, stone, or even shoot me. Then, what is actually there will emerge: illusive as emptiness, flimsy as smoke, but neither emptiness nor smoke; ugly, but not ugly; lovely, but not beautiful. It resembles a screen shadow.
The Holland House Library in London, which housed thousands of rare and historic books, was destroyed following the 1940 Blitz. However, out of this sense of losing oneself and the complete destruction of one’s individuality, there emerged a strong sense of having reached oneself and an essential oneness of his being with all beings.
I suddenly had a strong sense that I was home again. I had lost all of my belongings, including my clothes, shoes, and even my very soul, and I felt as carefree as a grasshopper resting on a blade of grass. A grasshopper has no concept of separation, resistance, or blame when he is sitting on a blade of grass. The grasshopper is green, and it perfectly matches the grass. It doesn’t beckon or recede. It lacks any philosophical or idealistic knowledge. It is only appreciative of its routine existence. My darling friend, hurry over to the child from yesterday and say hello. You yourself will come back when you are unable to see me. You will always find the same grasshopper on the same blade of grass, even though your heart is full of misery. There are some problems in life that cannot be resolved through study or reason. We simply coexist with them, fight alongside them, and merge with them… We have to constantly die in order to live. In the storms that make life possible, we must die repeatedly.
