Identity & vulnerability
It's hard not to reflect back on the story in The Brothers K of Zosima's brother, when reading what follows,p39 ...When we relax the clinging to our treasured beliefs and ideas, soften our resistance to the blows of life, stop trying to manage the uncertainty and hold ourselves more lightly, then we become a less solid thing. Less of a fixed identity.
In the months following my heart attack, I realized that the more I allowed my vulnerability to emerge, the less wedded I felt to being somebody. I became less occupied with the full-time job of self-generation. I could feel the exhaustion of propping up my personality... As I accepted the fragility of my life, it opened me. I felt myself a porous thing, more transparent, more permeable.
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Thanks to our vulnerability, the possibility of knowing our most essential identity is always present. We need not wait for some other time or for perfect conditions or for our death to realize it...
During my recovery, I felt permeable to everything. The sublime beauty and the horror of the world could enter my consciousness without resistance. I was receptive to it all. I welcomed it. There were no filters between me and any part of myself or the world. I was just Being.
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p40 The more permeable I became, the more I realized that we humans are just bundles of ever-changing conditions. We ought to hold ourselves more lightly. Taking ourselves too seriously is the cause of much suffering...
My sense of self didn't completely disappear after my heart attack... but my personality was no longer the dominant force it had once been...
Then one day, about six months after the surgery... I felt my sense of self return to my body... My self was reasserting itself with a vengeance.
p41 "I'm back. Don't worry. I'm in charge again," it said.
Strange as it may sound, I wasn't elated when this happened. It actually felt like a loss. I was afraid that I would slip back into my old habitual ways and lose touch with my newfound sense of my fundamentally limitless nature.
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When our sense of ourselves shifts toward Being, we move beyond our reactivity to impermanence...
Embracing our own impermanence is a journey, taking us deeper and deeper into contact with the true nature of things. First we accept that things around us change. Then we realize that we, ourselves, are ever changing: our thoughts and feelings, our attitudes and beliefs, even our identities.
p42 The beauty is that our impermanence binds us to every other human being. Empathy arises through an appreciation of our transience and an understanding of our interconnectedness. We are not separate... We are, in fact, deeply connected to everyone and everything.
Zosima would say "Amen" to this.
There's another passage I should record. This is an account of death based on the four traditional elements: earth, water, fire, and air.
p30 Samantha and Jeff had lived in nature... His body was in a very elemental way made up of earth, water, fire, and air. So in dying he was returning to the nature they so loved.
Jeff's body had become very still. This happens as the earth element fades...
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As the earth element -- form -- dissolves, it gives way to water. The person who is dying may then experience an inability to swallow fluids...
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Now the water element was dissolving, giving way to fire. When this happens, the body's temperature fluctuates...
As Jeff came closer to death, his hands and feet became cooler, the heat gathered in the center of his body...
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The fire element was dissolving, giving way to air. At this final stage of physical death, people frequently exhibit dramatic changes in breathing patterns... sometimes the only thing left in the room is breath. Death is much like birth in that way, with everyone's attention naturally focused on the simplicity of breath.
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p32 Earth dissolves into water. Water dissolves into fire. Air dissolves into space. Space dissolves into consciousness.
Dying, in many cases, does not happen all of a sudden. It is a gradual process of withdrawing from life in form...
I find that it is often helpful to think about DOG when the subject is supposed to be God. Usually I think of puppies in this context, they are so curious and open to everything and everyone, but as I was thinking about identity and death just now, a man walked past with an elderly, white muzzled dog with a limping gate. For him, a walk is still a biological necessity, but not much of an adventure. But if you need a guide for finding a nice place to nap in the sun, he is ideal.
But is the old dog really a better guide to life? Is his surrendering of his mature canine identity -- perhaps he was a racer or a bomb sniffer or a guide dog -- something to be envied if you aren't in the same age cohort? Are there even reasons to hope you live that long? (Puppies can appreciate a good snooze in the sun, too.)
And that account of elemental death (which I radically abbreviated), even before I saw that elderly dog, reminded me of a video I saw recently of the last surviving sniffer dog from the 9/11 WTC site. The old dog limped between lines of first responders into a vets office and came back out in a little coffin. Is there any reason to wish for the full course, elemental death that the dog skipped by being mercifully put-down? Was Ficre, from the last book, robbed of something valuable by dying of a heart attack before he even hit the ground? Can anyone actually imagine someone in that situation looking back at his body on the ground and thinking, "Damn, I so wanted a lingering death in which I could dissolve element by element. And not without pain and discomfort." As always, I'm not asserting the opposite; I'm really asking the question. I want the answer to be no, and even if the answer is Yes, I may still stick with my default approach to life and choose the easier path. I mean why wait for the nasty end to go for maximum experience?
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