Chapter four

Finding the True Self

Few days ago, as I was doing my yoga, I thought I would put on the news just to find out what madness had happened in the world in the past 48 hours. I didnt get round to news channel but stopped at a program when the suave presenter Kilroy Silk was leading the audience talking about Too scared to grow old. Although such a talk-show wasnt my choice, I was stunned by the expression of a woman of my age, probably very late 40s (at the time), very well dressed and quite elegant. She was saying: Every time I look at myself in the mirror, I find it hard to admit that the wrinkled face in the mirror is me because I dont feel like that person. That is not my real self. In my heart I feel like another person who is not like that face in the mirror. As she was revealing her true feelings in front of the world, I could share the agonizing pain she was going through in her heart. Her make-up might be able to hide a few wrinkles on her ageing face but in no way could it hide her fear and vulnerability showing all over in her eyes. I deeply sympathise with her and was wondering how on earth this woman could live her life, as she had to grow older every day. Indeed, it was also her phrase, my real self which was the reason I stopped and continued watching the program till the end. As the program went on, there were more and more revelations about what and how women had to do to combat their inevitable aging process. The most popular one is of course having plastic surgery and the Botox treatments, which involve injecting a very tiny amount of poisonous substance into the wrinkled area so that the sagging skin will swell up and fill up the spaces in between the creases. The Botox treatment has to be done every 4 to 6 months to keep up with the so-called perfect look and it costs around 200 to 300 pounds per each visit, so I learnt from the ladies in the program. Although I was aware of such practices in society, it was still quite amazing to listen to the first hand experience of those individuals who felt so strongly that they needed to deal with their old age and that they actually went through with either the painful plastic surgery or the Botox treatments. As the discussion went on and the opposing audience frequently brought up the phrase Why cant you be your real self, I felt a bit desperate to hear some real wisdom. To my disappointment, apart from hearing no real wisdom from the audience, something also went very wrong. Following a question from a young audience member who clearly felt the privilege of his youth why are you so scared of growing old? Whats wrong with it?, a woman in her 50s answered, Well, please dont forget that growing old means dying as well. Do you want to die? Another woman in her 40s talked so proudly that she could seduce a man younger than her and manage to keep him with her so far. Some of the young people cringed and showed their disgust.

Apart from the older people showing no wisdom, the young ones also did not grasp the fact that in another 20 or 30 years time, which will pass by just like a snap of the fingers, they too will be in exactly the same position as the older people they criticised. Maybe they will feel the need to sustain their eternal youth as well. Although there were just a handful of people in the audience, their dialogues do mirror the actual view and practice of a large number of people in affluent societies. Plastic surgery has become a norm. People as young as 12 years old up to people in their 80s have been through plastic surgery one way or another. There was a case of an 83 yearold grandma who had a boob job so that she could feel attractive to men! Even a more shocking case was a mother who injected Botox into the face of her 8 year-old daughter as a way to prepare her for a young American beauty pageant! This self love and emptiness are powerful driving forces behind this huge multi-billion pound industry, which solely aims to boost the vanity in both men and women. Not trivial at all To those who have no time for vanity, all these issues may sound trivial. But in fact they were talking about a few of the most important issues in life, facing old age and death; how to sustain eternal youth or immortality and above all struggling to find the mysterious true self. It is quite shocking that such important topics havent been clearly addressed in our mainstream education. Consequently, false views and misguided actions take over and result in having more sad and unhappy people in society. As a matter of fact, Buddhism and its practice can provide good answers to all these important issues. People like to talk about being our real self as if it is a very easy thing to do. If being our real self was as easy as many think, I am sure we wouldnt have so many sad people around to participate in talk shows like that and merchants definitely would not make huge amounts of money out of peoples vanity. That is for sure. Being our real self is, in fact, a very difficult task and thats why we all have problems of knowing our real self. Investigate our real self To begin with, can anyone give a straightforward answer as to which part of our life form is our real self, the real I or the real you? OkI am sure most people would answer, not the body but the mind is our real self. So we shall then move on to the mind and ask further questions. When the word mind is mentioned, it begins to get complicated as far as its definition is concerned. There are at least ten definitions to the word mind, i.e. a complex of elements, the conscious and unconscious mental activity of an organism, a substratum or factor in the universe and so forth. One can narrow it down by asking, what really is the mind? Is it the brain, the grey matter in our skull, which we (are led by scientists to) believe produces thoughts, feelings and emotions? Or is the mind another independent formless entity which has its own autonomy to control and order us to act upon our thoughts and feelings? Although I dont have the figures handy, there is no doubt that the majority of the western intellectuals would go for the meaning of the word mind as the brain. Although the research into the human mind is still going on and there hasnt yet been any conclusive outcome, intellectuals have a tendency to believe the mind is the brain.

Stephen Hawking regards the brain (the mind) as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark, Hawking told the Guardian newspaper in May 2011. If the mind is indeed the brain, this means that we havent yet really abandoned the body as our true self because the brain is part of the body, is it not? How exactly can we be our real self? Even if we agree that the mind is the brain and is responsible for all our thoughts, feelings and emotions, which frame of mind can we truly call our real self then? Since we have such a wide range of thoughts and feelings coming through our minds, which thought and which feeling can we precisely call our true self or real self? How exactly can we be our real self? Does it mean we must hold firmly onto certain thoughts, certain beliefs, certain feelings or what? Ok lets suppose that was the answer. We must hold on to a set of thoughts or beliefs saying something like: I must be my real self. I must not be afraid of old age; I must enjoy life as it is; I must live my life of today and not worry too much about tomorrow, and so on. The next question is: how can we sustain those thoughts, beliefs and feelings? We all know that our thoughts, beliefs and feelings change all the time just like clouds, constantly moving and changing their shapes and locations. We are also social animals, we need to socialise and interact with people. Consequently, our mental activities are conditioned by our environments, i.e. our own perceptions, the materials we read, the television programs we watch, the political party we listen to and the daily conversations we engage in and so on. We know from experience that our thoughts and feelings can change so easily after interactions with those daily events. Its true that we have tried our very best to cling to certain thoughts and beliefs: i.e. keep on telling ourselves not to be afraid of old age and death, we must not pay too much attention to vanity, it is the least important as there are millions of people who die of starvation every day, we must let ourselves grow old gracefully, and so on. But whenever we have to socialise with someone who is mentally stronger than us, we cant help to be swayed by their opposing views. We cant prevent ourselves from being conditioned by other peoples thoughts and beliefs. The power of advertising Lets put the right and wrong issue aside first and focus purely on the environmental influence thrust upon us on a daily basis just by having perceptions, which we cannot escape. If my close friend strongly believes in self love and vanity, she must look her best in older age, and very likely will seek the magical result of what plastic surgery and Botox treatment can do to transform a woman of our age. On top of that we are living in a highly materialistic culture in which advertising plays a huge role. The advertising industry can make us think that vanity is immensely important as it means being trendy, fashionable, sexy, classy and so forth. They can even make some of us feel guilty if we dont do something about our aging face and body. Back to square one again

Of course, we are only human and would naturally be tempted to think and believe what our friends (who have also been influenced by advertising industry) and the media tells us. Their views count a lot if we are mentally weak the result of not knowing the true self! Then, we are back to square one, back to the point when we have to struggle to hold firmly onto certain thoughts and feelings, whatever they are, and try to believe that they are our real self. Then, we find ourselves trapped in this vicious circle, dont we? What a mess we are in! Trying to break away from this vicious circle means that we have to go back to alter something in our brains or rather to adjust an out of balance chemical in our brain, which (we are led to believe by our doctors) is responsible for our stress, worries, anxiety, depression and so on. If that is the case, it means that trying to be our real self (our happiness) lies in the hands of doctors and chemists, who are also in the chains of making money themselves. It might be possible that these people doctors, chemists, drugs companies are using mental illnesses as a commodity to make profits for self-gains; they might have to lie to people to achieve that goal. Despite the research from Hull University, which underlined the placebo effect of antidepression drugs, corporate firms use the propaganda engine (advertising) to convince people (consumers) that we need anti-depression drugs, which are now dispensed to mischievous children as young as 8 years old! This wide spread prescription drug culture has further affirmed that we have little or no control over our minds whatsoever. Our lives, our destiny, happiness and suffering are placed in the hands of doctors, chemists and drug companies, and the rest of the medical system. Now, not only have we failed to find our true self, we also have had to absorb these shocking claims made by the medical community surrounding our daily life. Can you see that once we really investigate and look into the issue of finding our true self, it isnt as simple and straightforward as many people seem to think? Most of the time, we dont even know if we are coming or going. We just know that we are all being dragged along by all these daily events, some of which have real impact in shaping our entire lives. In between all this chaos and turmoil, we try to search for the real meaning of life by asking who our real self is. This is where we are now. My answer is that as long as we dont know the real meaning of the mind, and its location, we will never find our true self either. This is the main reason why I always insist that my students should ignore their past assumptions that the mind is the brain. If they dont totally abandon that piece of information, it is impossible for them to make room for the Buddhas wisdom which, thankfully, will give them a much clearer understanding and ability to find the location of the mind. The Buddhas analysis of the mind The knowledge about the mind has been clearly explained by the Buddha under the topic of the five aggregates, which I have elaborated in chapter three. I have clearly stated that a complete life form is made up of both the physical self and the mental self and how the two selves work together so that we can have a so called life and living. I have made it clear that our consciousness element (the 5th group), which I call mental self, is indeed the nature of our true self. Without the consciousness element/true self, there is no life. The woman who was scared of

her own reflection in that chat show was quite right when she said that in her heart, she didnt feel like she was the old face with wrinkles in the mirror; she felt like she was another person who was not old. She was, in fact, talking about her physical self and mental self, which are two separate entities. Unlike our physical self/body, the consciousness element/mental self, which is in energy form, doesnt age and bears no wrinkles. The quality of this consciousness nature is to know, to be conscious, to be aware of our physical body, thats all. All the monologues in our heads, i.e. the worry about the old age, scare of the bleak future, and so on are Jerrys talking. Being lost in mental jungle In Chapter three, I talked about the four formless entities, which I allegorise as Tom and Jerry, blending into what feels like one whole nature that we subsequently call mind. But in fact, the mind is made up of Tom (the subject/observer) and Jerry (the object/observed). The problem is that without the practice of the four foundations of mindfulness or bringing the mental self back home, our true self (Tom) is being entangled with Jerry (thoughts and feelings), which is associated with all the vanity issues and the fear of old age. This predicament symbolically equates to our mental self (true self) being lost in our own mental jungle woven by Jerry a long series of fearful thoughts about old age.

This is the reason why we cannot be our real self. Our true self is being bombarded with all the thoughts and feelings related to our old age and the urge to follow the trend in prolonging youth just like those who give importance to vanity. Being lost in a physical jungle is a straight forward matter; we can easily locate the problem, seek help and find our way out of the jungle. This is not the case when getting lost in a mental jungle; it is a much more complex and profound matter. Without the enlightenment of the Buddha and his guidance, we have no way to really know our predicament of being lost in our own mental jungle piles of thoughts, memories and feelings. Being attacked by inner enemies

It is much easier if you can round up all the problems in your head and heart into mere Jerry. Our own thoughts, memories and feelings are our worst enemies. The reason you want to do some form of self defense is to deter the enemies from coming near your physical body. If they do reach your physical body, youll be in grave danger especially when you are out-numbered by the enemies. Not understanding the co-working of the five aggregates equates to not knowing the existence of our mental/true self, which means we then let our three inner enemies reach our mental self without any protection. Thats why mental wounds, despite being intangible, are much more agonizing and burning than physical pain, because the enemies have reached our real self. The pains are enough to make some people kill themselves. Our inner battle field is always one against three, if not a whole army of Jerrys as I depict in the following images.

Our weak mental self/true self is being bombarded by the three enemies: thoughts, memories and feelings.

The fear of old age is compared to our mental self/Tom being stabbed, hit and chopped by Jerrys.

This lack of independence of our mental self is the root cause of the problem making us afraid of our own aging and death. The cure By using the analogy like the above, it is easier for us to see from where our mental problems stem. Once we can locate the root cause of the problem, we can move on to the cure. If our mental self is lost in our mental jungle, the cure is to bring our mental self safely home. Home is the first place any lost person would think of. Home is also a safe place where no one can hurt us and we can totally relax being our real self. This is the concept of home. Having said that, living in a physical home still has no guarantee that we will always be safe as dangers can often happen in all households. That is because the physical home belongs to our physical self, which is not our true self only a shell! This is not the case for our mental home, which accommodates our mental self or real self. If the real self can find its way home, eternal peace is a guarantee.

Strengthen Tom up By using the analogy of Tom and Jerry to illustrate how human mind works, it is easier to understand the cure too. If Tom is weak, Jerry will run wild, rule Tom and make Tom as his slave; that is, answering to our unwanted and sometime painful thoughts by materializing them into speeches and actions. As a matter of fact, Jerry has been ruling the world for millennia due to the lack of understanding of the five aggregates (explained in Chapter three). Without the wisdom gained from the correct practice, we have no way to safeguard and protect our mental self whatsoever. It is similar to the mental self standing naked in the middle of a fierce battlefield surrounded by a whole army of enemies. Do you think the enemies would spare you?! I dont think so. Thats why the world is in such a mess as it is with one billion people live in starvation everyday.

If we want to stand up to Jerry, the strategy is to strengthen our mental Tom up by giving him the essential vitamins. Once Tom is strong, awakening, alert and fierce, Tom will have the strength to protect himself and chase Jerry out of the house (our mind). All the dangling and sticky problems that come with our thoughts will disappear into thin air once our mental self is strong and awakening. Only then will our mental self gain true independence, freedom and long lasting inner peace.

The descriptive analogies I have used, either about bringing the mental self back home or strengthening Tom up, all point to one sole practice: the four foundations of mindfulness or vipassana. This is the reason why I came up with the phrase bringing your mental self back home. This is the precise practice that will separate our mental self (Tom) from the bombardment of Jerry the root cause of all problems. As you engage in the practice of the four foundations of mindfulness, it is as if you are defending and protecting your true self, deterring Jerry (enemies) from getting near your mental self similar to a form of martial art protecting your physical self.

As a result, your mental self/true self is being shielded from your own thoughts and feelings the groups that bite you. This is exactly how you can be independent from your own thoughts and feelings; hence you are able to maintain your real self and keep you from being swayed by all the perceptions regarding vanity. Only then, will you be able to let yourself grow old with grace. Without true wisdom and the practice leading to it, it is impossible not to be affected by perceptions one way or another. Our current advertising industry is nothing more than a huge propaganda machine. It is extremely difficult to avoid being convinced by them. Thats why you need a wiser strategy. Finally through bringing your mental self back home, you not only find the location of your true self, you also find the way to look after your true self from danger caused by Jerry. That is by keeping up with the practice of the four foundations of mindfulness. Bringing this practice into your daily life is the only guarantee to maintain the independence of your true self.1

The practice of the four foundations of mindfulness can be found in my book titled: Bringing Your Mental Self Back Home, and my workshop teachings which are on my website and YouTube.