In her last talk, Tammy got to a place where she was struggling with a concept. It seems she thought the concept was not clearly articulated, so she tried a few more times and got a little flustered. At least that was the way it seemed to me. I felt for her. I’ve been there when giving talks. But I thought she was being very clear about a central teaching.
Tammy said something like, “It feels like there are times when the self is grasping, but if we look close, we see that the grasping is creating the self.”
Those are all pretty simple words, but Tammy probably had the intuition the words were not making sense. My guess is that the words were making sense and not making sense at the same time. That is what words do when they are released and fly between people as little packages that are supposed to contain meaning.
My hunch is that Tammy was speaking from a personal insight into what makes the self. An insight is something that Tammy saw directly and was trying to communicate. Insights are at the center of understanding Buddhism. In one sense, Tammy was clearly talking to a room full of selves. We each sat on our own cushion or chair and each was listening And Tammy was questioning the very notion of where all those selves in the room and at home joining by zoom were coming from.
The self is not grasping.
Grasping is creating the self.
The same is true of positive qualities. The same night as Tammy’s talk, Deb talked about dana (generosity) in announcements. She mentioned the Buddhist practice of trying out generosity by giving something from left hand to the right. Are you generous? Are you grasping? How does it feel to move a cherished object from hand to hand?
The self does not have generosity.
Generosity gives rise to a generous self.
While this is true about generosity and the self, it is not quite as true as grasping and the self. Grasping is the central thing. But generosity can go to work on that central thing. So can compassion and patience and loving kindness and other virtuous qualities. These positive qualities can be like rain that falls on a mountain of grasping and wears it down a drop at a time.
I’ve been using Tinkertoys to describe the noble eightfold path in my latest talks.Let me play with the Tinkertoys a little more here. Imagine you, the self, as a basket full of Tinkertoys. That basket of toys moves through the world as causes and conditions arise, then configurations emerge from the basket. In the basket there is grasping, aversion, generosity, patience, compassion and lots of other things in the form of Tinkertoys. Don’t imagine YOU carrying the basket, but the basket moving and things emerging from the basket in response to causes and conditions.
In that box, grasping is the most powerful toy to jump forth in response to life conditions. Grasping is what creates and sustains the self. But other things can arise in response to conditions. Compassion can arise as can aversion, patience and generosity and more. All the wholesome and unwholesome qualities can arise.
Imagine if the situation is something like this and the box of Tinkertoys that is moving and responding now has some structure built over it called YOU. Now it is YOU doing all of these things. YOU owning all of the toys that are energies, inclinations, and habits. Things get heavy and burdensome.
Most of us start with little wisdom and it grows over time. It grows in the form of insight. We might actually see something like, “It is not the self that is grasping, it is the grasping that is creating the self.” Then we can see the basket of toys as a collection and not an entity in itself or a collection owned by a self.
So what or who, you might ask, is on the path if there is not a central self in charge? I listened to a talk recently by Ajahn Amaro. He was pointing to the territory beyond personality view. Mindfulness and wisdom are operating; they eventually do not need to be held by a sense of self. Do you see that saying, ‘I am being mindful’ and ‘I am being wise’ already has the seed of grasping in it that has created the self? Once you have said that, you have a back you can pat yourself on when good and a forehead you can slap when bad.
Mindfulness and wisdom do not need that heaviness of the self. It’s a basket of Tinkertoys that is held in mindfulness and the pieces emerge in the handless hand of wisdom.
Even if you do not have the experience of seeing this statement about the self and grasping as true, try to contemplate the impact of the words. If we see that the quality of grasping is at the time of grasping creating a certain self in the form of grasping, we see that a certain inclination of mind is creating the self. My self or your self is not one that has grasping qualities; the very grasping is one of the things that can create the self. Grasping is, in fact, the central thing.
Please don’t say, “Oh I don’t understand that” and just drop the concept. Also, don’t say, “Oh I understand that” and move on. I can’t say I understand the concept of grasping giving rise to the self in a sense that the mind has transformed to the view of wisdom. But I can contemplate the concept of what arises in the territory I call self to question the causal order of things. Grasping giving rise to a self and not a self-grasping is a radical teaching at the heart of the Buddhist insight.
Maybe you say you understand. Maybe you say you don’t understand. The first teacher I sat with who had a rep for being enlightened had a favorite saying, “Only don’t know.” He would tell us to just keep “don’t know mind.” Grasping creates self? Don’t know. Don’t know mind can look and see with open eyes. The mind that knows is closed.
Was this all confusing? I hope so. I hope not. Don’t know.
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We have many opportunities to study and deepen our practice this fall. All are offered freely. Dana is gratefully accepted.
We are offering the Introduction to Insight Meditation course in October. This four week class meets every Monday evening during October, beginning at 6:00 pm lasting for about an hour. Drew Consalvo, resident teacher at IMFW, is teaching. This class is offered in person only and meets at 2332 Sandpoint Road, Fort Wayne, In. If you are interested in attending or would like more information about the course, please 
