Who am I? Tricks of Zen Buddhism.

Alan Watts and D.T. Suzuki were often called out for ‘spoiling’ Zen. They were accused of giving it away, of letting out its mysteries, insights and tricks too easily. Some may have thought of it to be akin to spoiling a magic trick by explaining how it was done.

This is, however, not the case. While Zen Buddhism has been described as “deceiving a child with an empty fist”, Zen never did any convincing that there was something hidden in that metaphorical hand, but rather people insisted that there must be something there. The ‘job’ of Zen was then to skilfully uncover that the fist was empty the whole time without leading the seeker to believe that the master made that ‘special something’ disappear.

In other words, there is no ‘spoiling’ Zen. The seeker attributes specialness and uncommon attributes to Zen. Zen works towards dispelling this illusion. So then, spoiling Zen would be Zen. Zen was in the business of spoiling Zen all along.

In the same way, I don’t think that there is such a thing as giving things away when it comes to spirituality, whether we are talking about spiritual practises or ideas. Or maybe what I have written so far was just a long introduction justifying what I’m about to say next.

The spiritual practice of finding and experiencing your true self has kept me in a bind for so long. The idea is that once you become aware of your true self, you become enlightened. This is the proposition. This is the trick. However, the proposition is not quite untrue. It’s actually the truth, but not in the way you initially think.

It may take you some time to realise and even more time to accept that you can never be aware of your true self. Your sense of self comes from awareness, in other words, you are awareness. And awareness cannot become aware of awareness. You can only be aware of yourself through the things you are aware of. The experience of thoughts, emotions, sight, touch, smell etc. affirm your awareness. Affirming your awareness, they affirm your existence.

So there is no point in trying to be aware of your true self. But if you’re not convinced, I urge you to continue trying.