Disappearing? Transcending?
In the past year I've noticed a feeling of "disappearing" in the world ... and to the world. I think it's a common feeling as you grow older. I heard my parents, my spouse’s mother, and friends discuss the sense of their own slipping relevance in the people and world around them. It's a byproduct of our culture. A culture of the young. And in that culture, older people disappear.
This isn’t an ah-ha moment, I realize that. In our current globally connected culture, the world moves at the speed of light. Moving at that speed, it is a challenge to stop and notice someone who is becoming less relevant to everything everyone else is doing and, therefore, is starting to disappear. It even takes some reflection to notice it in yourself; that you are disappearing.
There are thousands of media pieces and books focused on trying to get you more visible. Much of the time, the advice in the articles and books is to get out there and participate in the movies, TVs, books, games, and social media trends popular with those decades younger than you. Which would make you more visible. And in some cases, it might make you happier and at least more engaged. But is it real? Does it feel natural? Does it bring peace or does it deposit another little nagging thing in the back of your mind telling you to do something?
I have tried to apply a shift in perspective around the phenomenon and maybe that shift can help someone else have a change in attitude—at least occasionally. I admit that I haven’t shifted my attitude completely. I still have moments—and sometimes days—of sadness and some depression, of feeling robbed of my life by time. Or by those who only seem to live in youth time.
And, to prematurely ward off any criticism, I am not blaming younger people who have older relatives or friends that slip into a secondary or tertiary focus. I did it too, in middle age. And I especially understand those with children. After work and kids there isn’t much energy or time left to give to anyone else, if only in a text or phone call.
In my case, I believe slipping into invisible mode might have come prematurely—at a younger age than it typically happens. I am 69 and I only started noticing it with any intensity in the last year or so.
The why of my early disappearance is probably, in part, because of the pandemic. I have been relatively housebound since March 2020 like most people, but unlike most people, an autoimmune condition continues to keep me housebound almost consistently even now in April 2022. That is except for a brief get-away last June, riding a dip before the Delta Covid wave.
Another contributing factor is that my spouse and I are married without children. And only a few of one side of our family are near us, physically and/or emotionally, and the closest on the other side are not near us physically.
Despite the cause, I’ve felt that feeling of being invisible. The feeling that a certain part of life is over. Sure, other parts are stronger and I embrace the evolution. But there are still those times where my awareness focuses on my disappearance and it brings a wave of sadness. But, as I said, I am sometimes able to be completely content with my disappearing self through a change in perspective. I believe the shift was possible through a combination of a deep understanding and belief in Mahayana Buddhist teachings, my experience with meditation, and study and work with Japanese Psychology.
The good news—and there is good news—about seeming to disappear is that it reveals the absolute truth of things as they are, not as we wish they would be. The truth that we’re not as solid and relevant as we seem—especially to ourselves. But we constantly fool ourselves into thinking otherwise. That’s the condition of ignorance in Buddhist terms. It doesn’t refer to being stupid, just deluded. It’s a belief in the illusion of our solidity as a self and the solidity of all other people and things.
My change in perceiving what seems to be my new disappearing self is a shift to an understanding (sometimes only momentary) of the disappearing nature I always was. And it brings a peace and freedom that is rarely available in other ways.
I titled this piece, “Disappearing? Transcending?” It’s a simple twist of the head.
Am I disappearing or am I transcending?
In the Heart Sutra, one of the Prajnaparamita (meaning perfection of wisdom) texts, it teaches emptiness, or sunyata, as described here from a brief part of the sutra:
…the original nature of all things is this: not born, not extinguished,
Not defiled, not pure, no gain, no loss, therefore in emptiness;
No form, no feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness,
No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind,
No color, sound, smell, taste, touch, object of mind…
According to Rev. Gyomay Kubose (the father of my teacher, Rev. Koyo Kubose), who wrote a translation and commentary on The Heart Sutra (Maha Prajna Paramita Hridaya), the "essence of Buddhism" is emptiness. The doctrine of emptiness is based on indirect causes and conditions arising. All things arise and subside, appear, and disappear, according to the direct and indirect causes and conditions.
He writes:
Water becomes steam, then water, then ice, then water again …
because of the conditions.
All things appear and disappear; nothing is permanent. There is no THING as such.
There is nothing about which you can say "this is IT." It is continuous change.
This emptiness is really a very dynamic state
and it is the reality of all things, the essence of our life.
So, you see, my “disappearance” has always been the natural order of things. So is yours, no matter how young you are now. As quoted from above, “All things appear and disappear.” Perfectly natural. The basis of life as it is. I am—and you are—always changing. And we are changing based on different causes and conditions that are happening to us. Regarding my feeling that age is what is causing my seeming disappearance, that’s only part of it. In truth, I have never been a solid thing “as such” but I fooled myself into thinking otherwise.
In his book, The Heart Attack Sutra, Karl Brunnhölzl talks about how to bring this concept of emptiness into an everyday practice. He says that we can connect with it, even at a very basic level, by being more relaxed in whatever we do. And he explains how to read the sutra so that it makes sense in your life. In reading the sutra, try to do this: Instead of saying “no eye, no ear, no nose,” etc., you can replace those with no age, no loneliness, no anger, no judgment, no fear … and on and on. Make it personal.
The other way to practice with this strange sutra is to realize that it doesn’t say all appearances DON'T exist without also saying they don't NOT exist. And this rids us of grasping to either concept. If it's not both and not neither, where do we go? There's no place for the mind to go, to grasp. And this leads us to freedom from elaborations, freedom from conceptual puzzles and stories.
How do we come to understand this kind of teaching? Not through thinking but through meditative equilibrium. The "experience" of emptiness cannot be explained. It's inexpressible, existing only in your own awareness, like explaining what “sweet" tastes like. You can’t really do it. You must experience it for yourself.
Experiencing it for yourself requires meditation. I briefly talked about a part of Buddhist teachings that helps. Now I’ll move on to the experiences I had in meditation that reminded me of the feeling of peace and perfection I get when my self disappears.
It goes like this. I am sitting and meditating in a chair. By the way, if you’re new to meditating, don’t get all hung up on the stuff: the zafu cushions, mala beads, etc. It’s not that there is anything wrong with them and they can be helpful. But for our purpose, in this everyday context, feel free to sit in a chair. Just don’t slouch. Sit upright but relaxed, with your feet on the floor.
So, back to the incredible disappearing-self story. I am meditating in a chair. My object of focus is alternately my breath, my feet on the floor, and the sounds around me. It’s a little after sunrise and the sun is slowly brightening the room. Morning bird song is insistent. Punctuating the morning bird call, I begin to hear the sound of the world starting to do its thing: school buses, more cars, and trucks on the interstate in the distance. I sense the world is going on without me. Its out there, starting the day, and I am beginning to disappear. The thoughts of the things I need to do today, regrets of things I said yesterday, a subtle feeling of pain in my knee, and a waft of sadness came then went. I have disappeared.
The sound of bird song is still there but, somehow, I feel my awareness became the bird song. The I that listened to the bird song subtly evolved to become the bird song. The narrating watcher and schedule-maker disappeared. Just like that. No I. No eye. No ear. Just bird song. There is no I to be sad or depressed. I disappeared, yet I only feel bigger in my awareness. Not trapped or trying to fit a what, when, where, and how. Just here. Beyond the body. Beyond the watcher and narrator. Everywhere.
This is what meditation is for me. I don’t do it as often as I think would be nice. I don’t know why I don’t, because the incredible sense of wholeness and peace is right there, available.
If you’re feeling lost and out-of-step with the world. Meditate. Become bigger than it all.
The next step in helping me turn my head to see myself as transcending instead of disappearing is Japanese Psychology. The part I’m referring to here can be summarized by the Japanese term, Arugamama, from Morita Therapy. I learned Japanese Psychology by Gregg Krech of the ToDo Institute. Arugamama means to accept things as they are.
What we are used to doing when we are uncomfortable with things as they are is to be depressed, to resign ourselves, saying, “oh well, that’s just the way things are.” There is a Japanese term for that, too. It is akirame. Akirame is a giving up or inactive resignation. As Krech explains, “In resignation, we are not trying to escape from our feeling, we are simply languishing in them.”
And in that languishing, we tend to tell stories about how miserable we are—either in our internal mental narration or in external complaining. As Shoma Morita, M.D. writes, the more we detail our complaints, the more we focus our attention on them. And that makes us miserable.
In arugamama, the practice is to let whatever discomfort we’re feeling kill us. Not literally, of course, but in the sense that we have no more resistance to it. This sense of “killing us” comes from a Zen koan by Dongshan who posed a problem for a student, which was, “how can we avoid cold and heat?” The student answered with a question, “where is there a place like that?” Dongshan replied:
When it is cold, let it be so cold that it kills you.
When it is hot, let it be so hot that it kills you.
If we are killed, there is no resistance and no effort to be otherwise. Pema Chodron puts it this way, from her book, The Wisdom of No Escape:
Resistance is the fundamental operating mechanism of what we call ego—
resisting life causes suffering.
So, if akirame is a giving up or inactive resignation, then arugamama must be active acceptance. And to people today that seems the complete opposite because acceptance is seen as inactive. But that’s not true and that’s the key to successful meditation and the transformation of disappearance to transcendence. If we accept our external and internal conditions actively, it is wise action. Or, using the words of the Heart Sutra, a wisdom that transcends.
My beloved teacher, Rev. Koyo Kubose, often quoted his father saying, “acceptance is transcendence”, with the emphasis on “is.” And for me, that has been a major key to reducing suffering. As my title suggests, it is the key to actively accepting my disappearance. Transcending it let me disappear completely.
Holding on to what I think I might be losing keeps me suffering and like a shimmering ghost that is unable to let go. Actively accepting the naturalness of this disappearance kills me completely and I relax into the disappearing self.