From @dharfields_gharma

The problem

We don't know the limits of conceptualisation.

It's is an incredibly useful frame for understanding the world and our interactions with it (and is also the only one we have available), but has a huge limitation - a concept can never be what it represents. The concept of "cup" is not a cup. This is intellectually obvious, and thus easy to believe, but we do not know it.

This doesn't cause any apparent problems when we're using conceptualisation to deal with things external^[1] to ourselves, because the limitation isn't apparent - we don't experience that the concept of "cup" does not capture what a cup is, because we are not cups - we don't know the experience of "being a cup" that would make the limitation obvious.

The problem occurs when we start trying to conceptualise ourselves - that is, construct egos, or "what we believe about ourselves". This is the only instance in which we do have access to the experience of being the thing which we are trying to conceptualise. So, it doesn't work. As much as I think about myself, whatever I am cannot be fully captured in conceptual thinking. Rather than realising this enterprise is misguided, we tend to assume that it'll work if we just keep butting our heads against the problem. But it won't ever work. Like trying to hammer a nail with a rubber dildo, we're using the wrong tool for the job, so we're not getting anywhere. "That's weird", we think, "why isn't it working? It worked fine when I was fucking myself with it."

That's not to say that thinking about ourselves isn't useful or necessary. A lot of people get the idea that the ego is bad or undesirable and should be eliminated, but this is not the case at all. If you've experienced full ego death, you can understand how being in that state constantly would render a normal life impossible. Having mental models of ourselves enables us to interact with the conceptual world, despite that not being the world we fundamentally exist in. You might think of them as our "conceptual avatars". In the same way we need an avatar to interact with the world of a video game, whatever it is that we are needs a conceptual avatar to interact with the world of concepts. Despite these avatars not actually being what we are, it's useful to know that "I like ramen" if someone invites us out for a bowl. Or, at a more fundamental level of ego, that we are bounded entities - subjects - within the conceptual world of objects. So, we understand that we become hungry sometimes, and eating alleviates hunger.

But, when we don't understand that our conceptualisations of ourselves are not what we are, things get out of hand. What does it say about me that I like ramen? Am I a sophisticated citizen of the world, or a weeb loser? Should I stop watching mecha anime - is it cringe that I do that? I really like Gunpla too, so I guess I am a weeb. That's bad, women don't like weebs. Maybe if I changed that, I could meet someone? Is that the thing that's fucking me up? Man, I'm such a loser. But this is what I am. I guess it's over for me.

It never, ever ends. We can only achieve respite via distractions. And when distraction ceases, there we are again, obessively working over this lump of clay, not understanding why it stubbornly refuses to be sculpted into a brass. But you can't alchemise between direct experience and concepts.

So, the problem is that we don't know that our concepts of ourselves are not ourselves and never can be. Following the video game avatar analogy, it's like we forget the avatar is not actually us, and thus forget we can relate to experience other than through our avatar's eyes, and on its terms. Then keep wondering why we can't get a date despite being a level 80 paladin with a sick mount.

The result of this is, in short, egoism - being puppeteered by our egos, letting the tail wag the dog. We identify with our egos, believing they are literally us.

If you think of yourself as a considerate person, and someone tells you "Actually, you were really inconsiderate of me last week", it has no inherent meaning. Nothing about your personality or past behaviour has changed. But the natural reaction is to become defensive - because this accusation is a direct challenge to what you believe is your self. The ego is a conceptual entity, and thus is vulnerable to conceptual attacks. It wants to protect itself. You might start to try and "disprove" this person, by thinking of instances when you did behave in a considerate way, or by asking friends "Do you think I'm a considerate person?" You might weigh up evidence and decide that the person is simply wrong. Or you might accept the criticism and amend your self-image. Whichever way it goes, it's not a pleasant experience. Challenges to our egos cause suffering because they feel like existential attacks. If I'm not what I thought I was, then... who, or what, am I?

The solution

In short, is to remove the misconception by achieving knowing that our egos are not what we are. This ends the process of compulsive/neurotic self-image construction, because we recognise the shortcoming of conceptualisation and thus realise that it cannot capture what we are.

When you know that you are not your ego, people can say what they like. You still reflect on their words, and you still experience the thoughts and egoic responses they give rise to, but you know that there's no threat to your "you-ness", because you are not your ego. The responses are just thoughts, just feelings - as real as ever, but now understood correctly. You know that many of your reactions and emotions are ego-driven, all are (like everything) impermenant, and none of them are you. This allows one to live more skilfully - to be less emotionally reactive, more compassionate. We can even feel compassion for our egos and their insecurities. "Buddy, you are fucked up. I'm sorry you got hurt like that."

The self is exposed - again, for real, not in the wooly arena of belief, but through knowing - as being inconstant. We realise that none of the things we thought defined us ever actually did.

Bridging the gap between "here" and "there"

"Pointing instructions" relate to mystic practice. Mysticism seeks to gain understanding and experience of the true nature of what it's like to be whatever we are^[2]. Many religions, or traditions within them, have a shared understanding that our egos are not what we are. Most prominently Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism. But also mystic traditions of Christianity (Eastern Orthodox), Judaism (Kabbalah) and Islam (Sufism), amongst others. They all call this different things, and have different theological interpretations of and elaborations from it, but I believe they're all talking about the same psychological phenomenon.

Realisation is a difficult project^[3] because it depends on direct experience of the true nature of our reality. As has been discussed, we tend towards using conceptualisation to frame our experiences. But you cannot get "there", into understanding of direct experience, from "here", the world of concepts. And yet, the only way we can communicate is via concepts. You can try to explain these things in language, which is what "pointing instructions" do, but naturally we run into the limitations of concepts.

Intellectual understanding of all this stuff about ego and reality is pretty straightforward. Intellectually recognising and accepting all the relevant concepts, as beliefs, is trivial. The problem is that intellectual understanding operates on too high a level, separated from direct experience. We often believe things without knowing that they are true. For example, I believe some people have landed on the Moon and walked around there. I don't know that's the case because, not having accompanied them, how could I? All I've seen are videos. Based on whatever heuristic subliminal processes, it seems legit. But if you were to ask me if I knew, beyond doubt, that it happened, and if I were to answer honestly, I'd have to admit that no, I don't. The only things I actually know are things I have directly experienced. Which, if you're honest with yourself, you'll find really does not amount to much.

Pointing instructions attempt to nudge seekers in the right direction. To challenge their experience, and the way they engage with the world. Zen koans are a good example. Commonly in the West they're conceived of as unanswerable questions, but that's not the case - they do have answers, and Zen students are expected to arrive at and deliver them. They will unavoidably be answers expressed in conceptual terms, but teachers should be able to figure out whether an answer means the student has "got it" or not.

The point is that these answers aren't meant to be reachable via rational, conceptual thought. The koan aims to show students the limitations of this frame in engaging with reality, and push them outside of it, into direct experience. The idea being that, if you sit in meditation with a koan, an answer - an insight - eventually arrives. To use a famous example:

Two hands represent dualisitic experience, of subject and object - the default mode with which we engage the world. One hand represents nondual experience. The "sound" of one hand is simply experience (or consciousness, awareness, mind, whatever you want to call it - the pure, empty phenomenon that underlies your sense of "what it's like to be you").

It's not that intellectual understanding isn't helpful. But direct experience is required if we wish to truly know. However much we might wish to know, the gulf between conceptual understanding and true knowledge cannot be bridged by thought. You can't get there from here. But, intellectual knowledge does help us to identify what we're looking for when we find it. The quest for realisation is usually most productive following a two-fronted approach - contemplation, and seeking direct experience. An analogy might be visiting a grocers' shop to buy some apples, never having seen an apple before. You've been told that apples are roughly spherical, red and/or green, about 10-15cm in diameter, and usually have a little stalk on top. That's the intellectual knowledge. So you turn up and look around until you find something which fits that description. You pick it up and feel its weight, see its colour and sheen, and take a bite. That's the direct experience. You then know what an apple is (so far as we can know apples) - you have had a direct experience of the thing which your intellectual understanding of "apple" points to.

So, what does realisation of this truth mean? Why bother? The best metaphor I can come up with is that it's like realising we were "in" the ego, by stepping outside of it, looking around and saying "Well damn, I was really in that bitch?". The ego is still present, but now we can see it and its operations clearly. So we come to recognise it for what it is, and to recognise that it's not what we are. This means that we can relate to our egos in a more skilful manner, rather than being puppeteered by them.

We all believe, conceptually, that egos are something we "have", instead of something we are. But we're so lost in them that we don't know it to be the case.

How the hell do I do this?

Some people just spontaneously have this realisation, without deliberately seeking it out. Most of us are not amongst that lucky few.

First, we need an idea of what we're looking for, and how to go about finding it. Then, we start to search, typically (or at least, in my case) via the practices of meditation and mindfulness. We train our minds to be incisive and discerning. Time and time again we observe mental appearances arriving and passing away, until we start to gain a direct experiental understanding of their nature. No longer parsed through concepts. Eventually, we start to appreciate that something weird is going on here. What we thought we knew about reality starts to feel increasingly insubstantial. Instead, there's something else underlying it. Gradually, at first just glimpsing it, we start to become acquainted with the direct experience which underlies our reality.

My experience, relation to Buddhism

I've been practicing insight meditation, primarily aligned with Buddhism, for about four years now. It's a fascinating and rewarding endeavour for... anyone, I think, but particularly people who find themselves interested in (and/or dogged by) big questions. Why are we here? How did we arrive here? What's this all about?

All of this ties in neatly with Buddhism's three marks of existence. Again, these are universal truths, and I imagine other religions (of which I'm even more ignorant) recognise them. They're all simple to comprehend on an intellectual level, to the point that they probably come across as just being common sense.

• Dukkha (suffering, dissatisfaction)
  • Dissatisfaction is inherent in life. Despite our unending attempts to escape it, it is stubbornly inescapable.
  • So, plainly, it's ridiculous to try because our inevitable failures just create even more suffering. Yet, from egoic experience, we cannot submit either, because it's impossible to know this truth. We're cursed to keep obeying our ego's admonitions to attempt the impossible. This time it'll be different. I finally found the right self-help book. I found a new therapist^[4]. I'm moving to the country. I'm going travelling. I'm quitting drugs. I'm reading philosophy. I'm going to get fit. This is going to be the thing that finally does it. But, of course, it never is - dissatisfaction will return.
    • This isn't to say these things aren't worth doing, or can't mitigate suffering. But they are all about constructing or salving the ego, and so do not address the root of the problem.
• Anattā (no-self or non-self)
  • The lack of a fixed, unchanging self
  • The Buddha refused to be drawn on whether a "self" exists at all. First because it would have meant wading into a contemperaneous theological debate (between Eternalism and Annihilationism), and second because it doesn't matter - it's simply not relevant.
  • Ego construction is our attempt to put a line in the sand and stake out "No, this is me! I exist, and I know what I am!" But this is plainly not going to work. You as an adult are nothing like you were as a child. You're not the same as you were yesterday, or even one second ago. So, in this psychological Ship of Theseus, where are you to be found?
  • The answer is that you're right there, in front of your nose. Seeing that is the tricky bit.
• Anicca (impermenance - nothing lasts)
  • Try to identify anything in your direct experience which exists, and has always existed. You can't. Every emotion you've ever felt, every thought you've ever had, sound you've heard and sight you've seen, every single instance of qualia you have ever experienced (which is to say, everything you've ever experienced^[5]), has arisen and then passed.

True knowledge - that is to say, direct experiental knowledge, past faith, or "This makes sense, seems legit" - of the truth of these three marks is considered by Buddhists to be the first step towards enlightenment. You have realised that by failing to know your nature, you have been creating suffering where none need exist.

The appealing thing about Buddhism, especially to Western sceptics of spiritual/mystic practice (like I very much used to be), is that none of the important bits (there are also plenty of suspect but probably unimportant bits) require anything to be taken on faith. Indeed, none of it works if you take things on faith. All insight requires that one achieves direct experience of the truths being described, such that they can come to truly, experientally know them as truths.

Of course, then we get into religious screwiness. There were centuries in which insight practices weren't taught to laypeople in many Buddhist traditions, instead being reserved for monastics. Only in the 19th and 20th centuries did teaching resume. In the interim, Buddhism operated (and in large part still does operate) more like the mainstreams of Abrahamic religions - observe the rites and rituals, do what we say because we say it, and you are to take on faith that it's legitimate and for the best.

I am not a Buddhist. But there's a huge amount of wisdom and insight there, and probably in all religions. There's no need to throw out the whole fruit because part of it displeases you, and doing so would be to cheat yourself - instead, cut the displeasing part out and take what's good. And you can engage with this stuff on an entirely secular basis. That's what Sam Harris, for example, offers via Waking Up.

Nothing fantastical whatsoever is happening. No faith is required. All we're doing is enquiring, and seeing what we find.