The Illusion of Me

      One thing I have become painfully aware of as a result of my hours on the cushion is that there is a subjective experience of physical pain. No surprise there, right? At times this pain can be lessened by any one of several methods and will often disappear all together. But at other times there is just nothing I seem to be able to do but relax and be with the experience. It's during these trying times that I have recognized that there is also, for lack of a better term, an objective recognition in the form of an observer sans the subjective, painful experience. During meditation it's as though there is a part of me sitting up in a glass enclosure watching and knowing that the sitting-me is feeling pain, without however the experiencing the pain. I actually have this image in my mind.
      Now the way that I have depicted this mental splitting is not to be misconstrued. It should be understood only as the way I envisioned the experience during meditation. It seems that I was able to separate from the actual physical sensation but needed some sort of picture and metaphoric representation of a place "to go." For some reason, possibly attached to my years in law enforcement, I created a vision comparable to the common area in a prison with the glass enclosed watch-tower in the center. Metaphorically speaking we might say that when I was able to stay within the tower I was free of the experience of pain. I have often tried to stay with that observer. I am able to do so for only a short period of time and will fall back into focusing on the physical experience once the pain is avoided.
      So much for my introduction. What I want to talk about here is the fact that when I refer to a "part of me" it implies that this me to which I claim ownership, is able to shapeshift or in some other way separate into a second....what shall we say...."alternate me?" Like that entity we hear referred to as an alter-ego perhaps. Philosophically interesting - maybe; and while helpful in describing my experience, it may not be at all helpful in understanding the notions of impermanence and no-self in Buddhist teachings. Each of us must judge for ourselves in these matters.
      So now more to the point. Ego is a term that designates an "enduring and conscious element that knows experience," (Philosophical definition based on Random House Dictionary 2010). This definition leads us to imagine an enduring and conscious "self" refuted in the Buddhist teaching of Anatta (No-self). Robert Kennedy says, in his book Zen Gifts to Christians,“The self is the sum of its functions in the present moment.” When I imagine a function as an experience, it allows me to understand the essence of ego or self, not as an entity but rather, as a verb. A verb which denotes a mental construct (perhaps we might read as "illusion") manifested in physical behavior commonly referred to as an act of grasping, wanting, desiring, or evading. In this way it becomes quite easy, in light of dependent-arising, to understand ego as an action arising out of attraction or aversion which arises out of sensory contact. Think about it - the brain, working with its biologically determined functions, responds to sensory contact and from them arises wanting and the result is dissatisfaction or suffering.
      It stands to reason then if we stop wanting, being attached, and grasping after things, the ego or “I” will no longer arise. In the absence of wanting, this thing I think of as "me" will simply be one with whatever is at the moment. The Buddha told us that life is suffering because of this grasping; our tendency to strive for more and more and never be satisfied.  We find ourselves dissatisfied with life; we suffer from want. We tend toward becoming covetous of that which we don't have, neurotically attached to what we do, and in fear of losing it once obtained. Ego, desire, suffer; they are one and the same. We get off track when we think that ego is an actual entity.
        To be free from want we must disentangle the threads of "I" in the tapestry of self arising from the world of form that plays behind our eyes.