I just bought a book by the Dalai Lama, called How to Practise (it's the British version, thus the different spelling of "practice"). It's a bit perplexing, because it doesn't read like the other material I've read by the Dalai Lama--it reads like a rule book, telling us that in order to do this, you have to do that. And you have to do it in the right order. It's like a prescription for a "meaningful life," with all the directions you'll ever need to make your life meaningful. The book is irking me because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense--there are no real rules to life, no way to guarantee yourself certain outcomes in the areas of happiness and fulfillment. That's just the way things are.
I think that my reaction is a result of a couple of things, having to do with instinct and intellect. Instinctively, I know that we're all doing the best that we can, and that what's necessary for me more than likely isn't going to be necessary for you. Because life is fluid and ever-changing and dynamic, not static and predictable. It's not like combining water and flour to get glue, or adding sugar to something to make it sweeter. There are certain concepts and ideas that seem to be universal, but the key words there are "seem to be"--the true test of universality is that they work the same way for everyone, and that's always debatable. Yes, there are some universal principles (kindness is a positive part of life), but they're always relative (kindness in certain situations may make things worse than sternness or self-assertion).
I think that the most important thing that I'm taking away from the book is that even the Dalai Lama can stumble--something that he, himself, admits to doing in the text. And that it's very important that I listen to my instinct and my years of studying such material to recognize something that isn't really going to help me at all. Not everything that has been written is going to be useful or helpful to all of us, no matter what the source. I simply feel that this book doesn't serve me in the place I am right now. Perhaps if I were thirty years younger, I might find that the claim of a need for rules would be more amenable to my situation, but right now, my mind constantly goes to the idea that my life has been improved constantly by the times when I didn't "follow the rules," when I allowed my passions and my instincts to help me make decisions about what I should do in certain situations.
Not following certain rules is risky, of course, and I have experienced setbacks, but even the setbacks have been great learning experiences for me. I can't help but feel that if I had focused always on following the "rules" of life, I wouldn't have been able to experience most of what I've done in life--the good and the bad, the agony and the ecstasy, the positive and the negative. And to me, life is about experiencing all that we can, without harming others in the process, or at least doing our best to learn how not to harm others when we do the things we do.
Yes, there are certain principles to life that we should follow if we want to be good and caring and loving people. There are things like love and hope and awareness and mindfulness and giving that almost always will provide us with experiences that add to our happiness and well-being if we make them parts of our lives. But these are things that we need to approach and learn about in our own unique ways. I know people who love much better than I do, but if I tried to do things that ways that they do them, I would fail miserably because I wouldn't be expressing my authentic self--I would be trying to be them. And I'm not them.
Perhaps what we need to do is make up our own rules. Maybe we need to realize that even if we want things to work out in certain ways, the prescriptions that we've been given by others won't work--they'll simply provide us with a close approximation to what we hoped and expected from them. I would say that as long as we follow one important rule--don't harm others--we'll have a very good chance of finding happiness and contentment on our own terms, rather than finding it on someone else's terms. So let your life shine in the decisions that you make, and don't worry a bit if your decisions aren't the same ones that other people have made. You're not those other people, so their decisions won't necessarily help you a bit. Besides, it's more than likely that a lot of those people are dissatisfied with the decisions that they made, and they wish that they had made a different one. Make yours different now--follow your instinct and your heart rather than the voice of the crowd or the teacher or the prophet.
The
path of awakening is not about becoming
who you are. Rather it is
about
unbecoming who you are not. -Leonard
Jacobson
I don't know if this quotation speaks to me more about awakening or more about unbecoming who I am not. I think it's the latter--though over the years I've gotten to be pretty good about trying to be my own person and not trying to be what I think other people want me to be, it's still quite a difficult task, that of dropping all pretenses and simply being the person I am.
One of the major reasons for which I definitely want to be truly who I am is the fact that I teach high school students, and I want them to see me as being an authentic person--whether they like me that way or not. We keep telling young people that they should be themselves, that they should let themselves shine through all they do, and then we model completely opposite behavior, acting in inauthentic ways because we're trying to get others to like us or approve of us. It's ridiculous, when all is said and done, but it's something that we keep on doing.
But who am I not? I know that ethically, I'm not a liar, I'm not a murderer, I'm not a thief. But I can think of situations in which I would tell an untruth for very good reasons; I can think of situations (such as defending loved ones) in which I might actually kill someone; and I can think of situations in which taking other people's stuff may be not just justified, but necessary. I don't say these things to muddy the waters or to justify bad behavior, but simply to illustrate just how difficult it may be to define just "who I am not."
I think that what Leonard is getting at, though, is our tendency to try to pretend to be something in order to get other people to approve of us. It's about us trying to become something other than our authentic selves in order to fill some role that we think we want to be in. Who among us hasn't said or done something that we don't really believe in order to impress that girl or that guy? Who hasn't smiled at something that we don't consider to be funny in order to possibly get that job?
I've done this sort of thing many more times than I like to admit. Fortunately, I've lived long enough not just to realize that doing so wasn't a good thing for me, but also to start to live my life in a different way and to stop doing it. I've been able to change my behavior and my perspective, and I can now act just the way I feel like acting, without worrying a bit what others will think of it. And that's not a bad thing. I still avoid doing things that harm others, but not because I want to make an impression--now I don't do such things because I truly don't want to harm others. I obey laws not because I'm afraid of getting caught breaking them, but because as a member of my communities, I feel a responsibility to obey them.
We like to pretend, and we like to act in ways other than our authentic ways. It's a way for us to protect ourselves, to make our lives easier, to accomplish certain things that we wish to accomplish--in ways that are easier on us. But any time that I act as I am not, there's a great deal of tension between the person I am and the person I'm pretending to be--and that tension affects me and the other people in my life in negative ways.
Who are you? It's a great question to ask, but perhaps the better question may be, "Who are you not, and who are you pretending to be?" If we can be truly honest with ourselves and realize from time to time that "that's not me," we have a chance to live much more authentically, much more happily. Perhaps it's time for all of us to take some time to reflect on the ways we act and the things we do, with an eye towards finding out what we're doing or saying that's not really us. Because if we keep on acting as people who we are not, then just what can we hope to accomplish with and for the other people in our lives, those who are dealing with a person other than our authentic selves--and who thus can't truly trust the people we seem to be?
