Not I, not mine, not myself…
…just elements, said the Buddha to his son.
One teacher expressed “Not I” from another angle: “It’s not that you think too highly of yourself, nor is it that you think too lowly of yourself. Instead it is that you constantly think of yourself.”* This is not to say that we are self-centred in an arrogant way. It’s that mental formations are running our lives and are so often self-referential. Future thoughts are often about how to promote or protect ourselves. Thoughts of the past are usually reconstructions of the “story of me” and revisiting of things we wish we could change or relive. These create a cloak of self-identity — that is necessary to function in society, sure — but that we take too seriously, wear too tightly. And that keeps us closed off from the grand interplay of Life that is mysterious and wondrous. We open to that interplay when we are playing, creating, caring — when we’re not busy believing we know things for certain and suffering because of it.
One student asked how to connect with the earth in winter. The earth is in everything, but if you want something to press up against, the trees are an extension of the earth. Here in this image, also are the sun (fire) as highlighted by the shadows, water is in the snow, wind causes them to shift and tremble, and space holds it all.
The elements is one of the many ways the Buddha taught his disciples how to loosen the habit of selfing to see what he called emptiness, Thich Nhat Hanh and others call interbeing, and yet others prefer not to name. Every moment can be explored as an interplay of earth element (qualities of hardness and softness), water element (flow and cohesion), fire (degrees of warmth), and wind (movement or vibration) — all dancing together in space. Each breath is the wind element setting all the other elements in motion. Earth is in our skeletons and muscles that move us and work constantly to keep us upright. Fire is in our warm torso and even in our cold fingers and toes. Water is in our blood, sweat, and tears. Emotions can be like the warm kiss of the sun or raging like a fire; flowing like a river or keeping one frozen like ice. Our external environment, too, has all the qualities of the elements — including in our homes where we tend to think of ourselves as separate from the elements. In the same way, we don’t think of our bodies as being elemental. But where is any boundary between within and without when considering that all is elemental. Use this way of seeing, the Buddha advises his son, to release the habit of selfing and thereby open to the richness of Life that is not “me” or “mine.”
I feel immediate release of tension — in mind, body, and heart — when I remember this teaching and exploration.
It is great relief to realize that the mind’s many and varied lists are not mine. That the story it reconstructs about me in every moment is not myself. The whole of mind activity is not I. It’s actually an accumulation of a lifetime of familial and societal input, not to mention the collective unconscious and the many archetypes in a million plus years of human genetic development. Or karma, which in Buddhist terms is even grander than that and yet simpler somehow than western studies of the human experience. Karma, a coming together of lifetimes, eons even, of causes and conditions is elegant in its immeasurability. It is simply unknowable. You may baulk, as I first did, at the idea that you don’t own your thoughts. Fair enough; we have to act as though we do to be in relation to each other. But there is freedom in realizing we are not bound by the thinking mind and can instead let Life remember itself. Life has its own natural unfolding. Really interesting things happen when “I” get out of Life’s way.
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* The teacher quoted above is Matt Flickstein, a non-dual spiritual teacher that I worked with for four years. He is also an author and co-produced the documentary With One Voice.
The Buddhist contemplation of the elements is one of seven methods recommended in the four foundations of mindfulness for realizing freedom. We applied this method in a course I offered last year on mindfulness of breathing. I'm offering this course again starting on March 12. Anapanasati is the Pali word for this deceptively simple breath practice for deepening and steadying one’s meditation and living with ease and heart.
For a deep dive into the elements, my two wonderful teachers are offering Elemental Truth, a ten-day retreat that I highly recommend to anyone interested. Their retreats are life-changing, warm, and inspiring.
