Vinaire's Blog

Reference: Book III: What is the Mind Really?

Everything that appears in the world can be said to be “being.” A stone is being according to the laws of matter. A plant is being according to the biological patterns encoded in its life. An animal is being according to instinct, sensation, memory, and adaptation. Human beings too participate in this universal order: the body develops through inherited biological processes, the mind acquires language and habits from society, and personality forms through the accumulation of experiences.

In this sense, being is not mysterious. Things exist and behave according to the laws of nature and the blueprints of life. They arise, change, interact, and pass away. Their forms may be complex, but they are still expressions of conditions: physical, biological, cultural, and psychological.

The difficulty begins when the human being mistakes a constructed identity for the one who is aware.

The Constructed “I”

What a person ordinarily calls “I” is not a single, permanent entity. It is a composite. It consists of inherited tendencies, ancestral identifications, bodily characteristics, learned language, social roles, memories, fears, ambitions, wounds, loyalties, and impressions gathered through experience.

Someone may say:

“I am a parent.”
“I am successful.”
“I am a failure.”
“I am my body.”
“I am my memories.”
“I am my beliefs.”
“I am my nation, religion, profession, or past.”

Each statement identifies the self with some content of experience. Yet all such contents are conditioned. A body changes. A role changes. Opinions change. Memories fade or are revised. Social identity depends on recognition by others. Even deeply held convictions can be altered by new understanding.

The ordinary “I” is therefore made of substance in the broadest sense: material substance, mental impressions, emotional residues, conceptual structures, and acquired identifications. It is an organized bundle of contents. It is real as an appearance and as a practical personality, but it is not necessarily the ultimate subject.

There is a difference between the contents of awareness and awareness itself.

The Person as Pure Awareness

Behind the changing contents of the “I” lies the simple fact of awareness. Thoughts are known. Feelings are known. Bodily sensations are known. Memories are known. Even the feeling, “This is who I am,” is known.

That which knows these things cannot be identical with every one of them.

The person, understood as the ultimate mind, is pure awareness: not a particular thought, identity, sensation, memory, or image, but that within which all of these are perceived. The personal “I” is an object within awareness; the person as pure awareness is the witnessing presence to which that object appears.

This distinction is subtle because the constructed “I” speaks in the first person. It says, “I am angry,” “I am afraid,” “I am important,” or “I am lost.” Since this voice is intimate and continuous, it is easily mistaken for the person himself. But intimacy does not prove identity. A thought may feel personal without being the ultimate self.

The anomaly of being begins precisely at this point.

The First Anomaly

The first anomaly is the person’s belief that he is the “I” made up of substance.

The person, as pure awareness, is empty of bodily, psychological, and conceptual substance. Yet he identifies himself with what is perceived: the body, its history, its social position, its preferences, its memories, and its wounds. He takes the contents of consciousness to be the owner of consciousness.

This creates a fundamental confusion. The person says, “I am this body,” but the body is observed. He says, “I am this thought,” but the thought is observed. He says, “I am this emotion,” but the emotion arises, changes, and disappears in awareness. He says, “I am this past,” but the past survives only as present recollection and impression.

The human problem is not that the “I” exists as a functional pattern. It is useful to have a name, a memory, a body, and a practical personality. The problem is the claim of identity: “I am that.”

The moment awareness identifies itself with a particular object or condition, it becomes psychologically confined by that condition. If “I am my reputation,” then criticism becomes a threat to one’s being. If “I am my achievement,” failure becomes annihilating. If “I am my body,” aging and illness become not merely events affecting the body but assaults upon the self. If “I am my past,” then old impressions dictate the present.

The first anomaly is therefore a misidentification: the person mistakes the conditioned content of experience for the unconditioned awareness in which that content appears.

The Second Anomaly

The second anomaly follows from the first. Having identified with the constructed “I,” the person assumes that this “I” must be eternal.

The desire for permanence is understandable. The personal “I” contains one’s cherished memories, relationships, knowledge, projects, and self-image. Because it is taken to be the self, its change or disappearance is experienced as a threat of nonexistence. The person then seeks continuity for what is inherently conditional and changing.

But the “I” is assembled from impressions and identifications. It is a process, not an unchanging substance. It evolves with the body, environment, education, relationships, culture, and time. To demand that it remain eternal is to demand permanence from what belongs to the realm of becoming.

This produces anxiety. The person tries to preserve a self-image that life continually modifies. He attempts to secure what cannot be secured. He seeks immortality for a psychological construction whose very nature is impermanence.

The mistake is not in recognizing continuity. There is continuity in memory, character, causation, and personal responsibility. The mistake is in converting continuity into absolute permanence. A river maintains an identifiable course, yet its waters never remain the same. Likewise, the ordinary “I” may show patterns of continuity while remaining a changing configuration of substance and impressions.

The anomaly is that the person, who is empty of substance as pure awareness, imagines himself to be a substantial and eternal object.

Emptiness and the Absence of Substance

In Buddhism, emptiness does not mean that nothing exists. Nor does it mean despair, nihilism, or the denial of lived experience. It means that things do not possess an independent, fixed, self-existing substance of their own.

Applied to the person, emptiness means that the ultimate mind—the awareness that is aware—is empty of substance. It cannot be reduced to a body, a personality, a thought, a memory, a role, or an inherited pattern. These are appearances and conditions within experience, not the final identity of the one who knows experience.

To say that the person is empty is therefore not to diminish the person. It is to free the person from false limitation.

The opposite of emptiness is not simply “fullness.” It is the personal consideration, “I am that.” This statement gives substance to what is merely an appearance, a role, an impression, or an object of awareness. It turns a temporary condition into an identity.

“I am angry” becomes more than the recognition that anger is presently arising. It becomes an assertion that anger defines the self.
“I am inadequate” becomes more than a passing judgment. It becomes a substantial identity.
“I am superior” becomes more than a momentary success. It becomes a defensive structure that must be protected.
“I am this body” becomes more than a practical fact of embodiment. It becomes an absolute metaphysical claim.

The consideration “I am that” is the movement by which pure awareness becomes entangled in substance.

Suffering and Identification

All suffering arises from the personal consideration, “I am that.”

This does not mean that physical pain, loss, illness, and hardship are imaginary. Pain may be real, and difficult conditions may require practical action, compassion, medicine, justice, or support. The point is that psychological suffering intensifies when awareness identifies with the changing contents of life.

When a painful thought is regarded simply as a thought, it can be observed and understood. When it is regarded as “me,” it becomes a prison.

When fear arises, there is fear. But when the person concludes, “I am fear,” the condition hardens into identity. When failure occurs, there is a failed effort or an unsuccessful result. But when the person declares, “I am a failure,” an event becomes a self-definition. When the body changes, there is change in the body. But when the person believes, “My being is destroyed because this body changes,” he suffers not only bodily limitation but existential terror.

The formula of bondage is simple:

“Experience” + “Identification” = “Psychological suffering”

The experience itself may be unavoidable. Identification adds the burden of personal ownership and permanence. It creates attachment to pleasant conditions and resistance to unpleasant ones. It makes every change appear to threaten the self.

The “I” seeks security because it is made of unstable materials. It seeks permanence because it is built from impermanent impressions. It suffers because it continually tries to defend, improve, preserve, and immortalize an identity that has no fixed substance.

Neti, Neti: The Way of Resolution

The Vedic exercise neti, neti offers a direct response to this anomaly. The phrase means, “Neither this, nor that,” or more personally, “I am neither this, nor that.”

This is not an exercise in denying life. It does not require one to reject the body, abandon responsibility, despise emotion, or deny the world. Instead, it is a practice of careful discrimination between the person as awareness and the objects appearing in awareness.

One may observe:

• This body is present, but I am not merely this body.
• This thought is present, but I am not merely this thought.
• This feeling is present, but I am not merely this feeling.
• This memory is present, but I am not merely this memory.
• This role is present, but I am not merely this role.
• This belief is present, but I am not merely this belief.
• This self-image is present, but I am not merely this self-image.

Through neti, neti, the person loosens the false equation between awareness and its contents. The exercise removes one identification after another, not by destroying experience, but by refusing to make experience into an ultimate identity.

The body remains available for action. The mind remains available for thought. Memory remains available for practical life. Personality remains available for relationship and responsibility. But none of these needs to be mistaken for the ultimate person.

As described in Chapter 11 of Postulate Mechanics, the exercise is a means of dissolving fixed postulates of identity. Each time the mind asserts, “I am that,” neti, neti asks whether the asserted identity is truly the knower or merely something known. If it is known, changing, dependent, or describable, then it cannot be the final subject.

The exercise gradually shifts attention from the content of identity to the awareness in which identity appears.

Living Without the Anomaly

To live free of the anomaly of being is not to become indifferent or passive. It is to participate in life without being imprisoned by its changing forms.

A person can care for the body without believing that he is only the body. He can fulfill social roles without being reduced to them. He can learn from the past without becoming the past. He can feel sorrow without making sorrow his identity. He can act responsibly without building an eternal self out of action and achievement.

This freedom has ethical significance. When a person is less occupied with defending the constructed “I,” he becomes more available to reality. He can listen without immediate self-protection. He can admit error without collapse. He can respond to suffering with compassion rather than with the fear that another’s condition threatens his identity. He can meet change without requiring that the world preserve his familiar self-image.

The anomaly of being is not that things exist. Things naturally exist according to the laws of nature and the blueprints of life. Nor is the anomaly that human beings have personality, memory, and individuality. These are natural formations.

The anomaly is the claim that a person is identical with those formations, and that they must therefore be permanent.

The resolution begins when the person recognizes the difference between what he is aware of and that by which he is aware. The constructed “I” can then be seen as a useful but temporary organization of substance and impressions. Pure awareness, empty of substance, need no longer seek eternity for what was never fixed in the first place.

In this recognition, the compulsive statement “I am that” gives way to the liberating discernment:

“I am neither this, nor that.”

The Main Ideas

1. The things are existing or “being” according to the laws of nature and the blueprints of life.
2. This includes the human “I”, which is made up of ancestral identifications and impressions.
3. The person, as the ultimate mind, is pure awareness that is aware of this “I”.
4. The first anomaly about a person is that he thinks he is this “I” made up of substance.
5. The second anomaly about a person is that he thinks this “I” to be eternal.
6. EMPTINESS in Buddhism simply means that the person, as the ultimate mind, is empty of substance.
7. The opposite of emptiness is the person having the consideration, “I am that.”
8. All suffering arises from the personal consideration, “I am that.”
9. The resolution lies in Vedic exercise “neti, neti” meaning, “I am neither this, nor that.”
10. This exercise is described in Chapter 11 of the book Postulate Mechanics.

⁂