COMMONPLACE BOOK
No Fixed Self
We slip from one life to another without even realizing. There are breaks, moments of transition when we leave behind not just places or times, but whole forms of existence, worlds to which we can never return.
Hari Kunzru Blue Ruin (p.51)
Peace to all beings, Within each being here,
Those beings that are of the past, And those that are yet to be in the future,
May all beings be well and happy and free from fear.
John Garrie Roshi
Freeing the world of me.
Jennie Kerrigan
Listen Śāriputra,
this Body itself is Emptiness
and Emptiness itself is this Body.
This Body is not other than Emptiness
and Emptiness is not other than this Body.
The same is true of Feelings,
Perceptions, Mental Formations,
and Consciousness.
From The Heart Sutra a new translation by Thich Nhat Hanh (2014)
Self And Other
I was about twelve, and had to walk to my father's shop through a large park, which was a long, dreary walk. I suppose, too, that I was rather scared. I didn't like it, especially when it was getting dark. I started to play a game to help to pass the time. You know how as a child you count the stones or stand on the crosses on the pavement — well, I hit on this way of passing the time. It struck me that if I stared long enough at the environment that I would blend with it and disappear just as if the place was empty and I had disappeared. It is as if you get yourself to feel you don't know who you are or where you are. To blend into the scenery so to speak. Then, you are scared of it because it begins to come on without encouragement. I would just be walking along and felt that I had blended with the landscape. Then I would get frightened and repeat my name over and over again to bring me back to life, so to speak.
R.D. Laing The Divided Self (p.110)
'I forgot myself at the Ice Carnival the other night. I was so absorbed in looking at it that I forgot what time it was and who and where I was. When I suddenly realized I hadn't been thinking about myself I was frightened to death. The unreality feeling came. I must never forget myself for a single minute. I watch the clock and keep busy, or else I won't know who I am.'
L. Dooley The Concept Of Time In Defence Of Ego Integrity (1941)
James told of how, when walking on a summer evening in the park alone, watching couples make love, he suddenly began to feel a tremendous oneness with the whole world, with the sky and trees and flowers and grass - with the lovers too. He ran home in a panic and immersed himself in his books. He told himself he had no right to this experience, but more than that he was terrified at the threatened loss of identity in this merging and fusion of his self with the whole world.
Masks
"But then, it just occurred to me... it's probably a good thing to go to the movies occasionally. The whole audience puts on the actor's face. No one needs his own. A movie's a place where you pay your money to exchange faces for a while."
"That's true. Maybe it is good to go to the movies once in a while."
"It definitely is, I think. Because at least it's dark, isn't it? But I wonder, wouldn't it be awful if you didn't like the actor's face? You put on his face, so half the fun would be gone if it didn't fit perfectly, wouldn't it?"
Kobo Abe, The Face of Another (p.87)
Make a mask larger than your face.
Polish the mask every day.
In the morning, wash the mask instead of your face.
When somebody wants to kiss you, let the person kiss the mask instead.
Yoko Ono, Mask Piece I (1961)
...during the luckless 1980 season, season-ticket-holding fans of the New Orleans Saints football team began to appear at the stadium wearing paper bags to conceal their faces. As their team suffered loss after loss, more and more fans donned the bags until TV cameras were regularly able to record the extraordinary image of gathered masses of people shrouded in brown paper with nothing to identify them but the tips of their noses.
Robert Cialdini Influence: The Science of Persuasion
'A man without a mask' is indeed very rare. One even doubts the possibility of such a man. Everyone in some measure wears a mask, and there are many things we do not put ourselves into fully. In 'ordinary' life it seems hardly possible for it to be otherwise.
R.D. Laing The Divided Self (p.95)
I peered into the mirror. A man I did not know looked coolly back at me. Indeed not the slightest detail would make one think that it is me. The colour, the lustre, the feeling were all successful - a perfect disguise. Yet, what in heaven's name was this emptiness? Perhaps it was the fault of the mirror - the lighting seemed somewhat unnatural - at once I opened the shutters and let in the daylight.
Kobo Abe, The Face of Another (p.99)
Anyway, in that time even the most trivial expression became deeply etched on the surface of my face as an unalterable coat of arms. For example, if I had repeatedly made artificial smiles, then my mask would be forever branded with artificial smiles. So I was obliged to be prudent of even casual imprints when I considered that they would be formally recorded as a part of my life.
Kobo Abe, The Face of Another (p.91)
Seeing And Being Seen
“When you let the looker be, within awareness,
It is free of colour and form, vividly empty. ”
Chokgyur Lingpa
“In seeing there is love, in being seen there is abhorrence. One grins, trying to bear the pain of being seen. But not just anyone can be someone who only looks. If the one who is looked at looks back, then the person who was looking becomes the one who is looked at.”
Kobo Abe, The Box Man (p.81)
In consequence, she tried looking at herself in the mirror but never managed to convince herself that she was somebody. She never got over being frightened if there was no one there.
Kazuhiko Hachiya - Inter Discommunication Machine (1993)
False Memories
“It seems that I was always destined to be deeply concerned with vultures, for I recall as one of my earliest memories, that while I was in my cradle, a vulture came down to me, opened my mouth with his tail and struck me many times with it's tail against my lips.” [link]
False Self
