By DAN TISCH

The year-long intensive, Deconstructing the Myth of Self, came to a close with a retreat that felt, at least conceptually, like the perfect ending. After nearly a year of earnestly looking for the self, thinking I had found it, losing it, refinding it, and then not finding it again, the retreat seemed designed to provide either clarity or exhaustion. Possibly both. 

During the retreat, we focused on analytical meditation: a practice that persistently turns the wheel of introspection, again and again asking, Where is the self? For someone like me, someone for whom thinking, analyzing and knowing are deeply entangled with identity, this was both intense and, after a while, brain-numbing. After about a day of learning and practicing this technique, my head hurt. I was very much looking forward to the daily work meditation assignment, imagining it would provide relief from all that thinking.

On that day, I was assigned a very Zen-like task: separating white shells from brown stones in the garden. I greeted this assignment with enthusiasm bordering on gratitude. Finally, something simple. Something concrete. Something that did not involve asking my thoughts where they thought they were coming from. 

Of course, as often happens, the work meditation turned out to be just another opportunity to practice exactly what I had been trying to avoid.

(Continued from Mindfulness Matters)

Sitting on the ground, looking at a messy mixture of stones and shells, I began to watch my mind engage the task. I noticed how quickly it set about discerning: shells versus rocks, white versus brown. I also noticed something else creeping in—an idea of doing a “good job,” of getting it right. Clearly formed shells went in one place, clearly formed rocks in another. So far, so good.

Then the easy pieces ran out.

What remained were fragments, ambiguous bits that resisted clean categorization. Where did shell become rock, and rock become shell? I began to see not two distinct categories, but a continuum. This, I realized, was interbeing quietly making its point without saying a word.

As I worked with smaller, broken pieces, the shells appeared less shell-like, the rocks less rock-like. What I was picking up were aggregates (parts of shells, parts of rocks) each in different stages of decomposition. The solidity I had initially assumed simply wasn’t there. What I thought were stable, independent objects revealed themselves as impermanent, conditioned and deeply entangled with the ground beneath them.

There I was, sorting shells and stones and inadvertently encountering impermanence, non-solidity, and interbeing, all without my head hurting.

It occurred to me that this hour of work meditation neatly summarized the yearlong intensive and the retreat itself. I had come looking for something solid called “self,” and instead found fragments, processes and continua. Just like the shells and rocks, the self seemed real enough at first glance, but much harder to locate once I looked closely. This lack of solidity and certainty was unnerving at first, but on reflection may be the source of freedom and aliveness.

Apparently, even when I think I’ve escaped thinking, thinking finds its way. Fortunately, the Dharma does too. 

Dan Tisch has been a member of FCM and practicing Buddhism since 2018 and is a retired health and science project manager. He lives part-time in St. Petersburg, Florida, and Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife, Robbie.