How to Be Sick by Toni Bernhard, Sylvia Boorstein Read Free Book Online Page B

developed, the particular energy configurations we have cultivated.
     
     
     
    Think of who you were ten years ago. The part of your personality that seems to be consistent from then until now results, not from any permanent entity carrying over from one moment to the next, but from each moment being conditioned by the previous one. You cannot identify a permanent self that has carried over from ten years ago until now. “I” is a thought and a feeling, held on to so resolutely that the experience of a fixed person appears to be real.
     
    Think of a bicycle. It’s just a temporary assemblage of steel, plastic, and human intelligence in a particular combination we conveniently designate “bicycle.” There is no inherent “bike-ness.” It is the same with humans. There is no immutable, unchanging personality (“Toni Bernhard”) that exists as an entity separate from the arising and passing of physical and mental activity—activity that is conditioned by preceding causes. No phenomenon—mental or physical—exists separate and independent from the conditions that give rise to it. This view is in contrast to religions that posit an immutable, eternal being or spiritual essence that is beyond cause and effect. As Steven Collins says in Selfless Persons , “there is nothing more to the ‘person’ but a temporary assemblage of parts.”
     
    Contemplating the truth of no-fixed-self has helped me tremendously since I became chronically ill. Haven’t we all at some time thought, “If I could only get away from myself!” Intuitively, we know what a relief it would be to take I Me Mine out of the equation. (George Harrison’s voice gently reminds us of the unremitting presence of “selfing” when he sings, “Even those tears, I-me-mine , I-me-mine , I-me-mine .”) Experiencing no-self lifts a burden and brings a sense of spaciousness and freedom to everyday life.
     
    Seeing impermanence can help us experience no-self. Joseph Goldstein said during a retreat I attended that the mind and the body feel substantial, set, and solid, but if we watch carefully, there’s nothing to hold on to. “Where’s the mood you were in five minutes ago?” he asked.“Where’s the thought of a few seconds ago? Where’s that expert knowing self of two hours ago?” He suggested the answer was, “Gone!” When I contemplated his words, I saw that mood, that thought, that expert as momentary arisings in the mind.
     
    Joseph went on to explain that we take these momentary arisings and string them together and soon they feel like something solid. Again, I contemplated this. “Ah, yes,” I thought. “I string my thoughts together and then feel like the fixed entity: Toni Bernhard.” He asked us to see if we could control this fixed entity by issuing commands such as “Let me only have pleasant moods!” or “Let me not have this aching back!” I tried but could not get the mind or the body to obey these commands. What happens in life arises out of conditions, not from a “me” in control.
     
    This teaching can be disturbing to people, but I hope that, like me, you find it liberating. I like to purposefully think, “I am Toni Bernhard” and then contemplate if this is true. People call me “Toni Bernhard” and I respond when they do. (I get up from the waiting-room chair at the doctor’s office when those two words are called out!) But I can find no fixed, unchanging, permanent entity. There is no Toni Bernhard. And that’s fine. Life is a process and will take whatever course it takes.
     
    Contemplating the perennial question “Who Am I?” can also help us experience “no self.” This question is a tool used by Western philosophers and Eastern mystics alike, although their answers to the question may differ. For instance, in The Only Dance There Is , spiritual teacher Ram Dass discusses the difference in the Western and Eastern approaches to this question, comparing Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am”