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This text is an excerpt from my book The Secret Book of Zen.

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The human mind

The state of the mind before satori

In order to incrementally understand Zen, one’s own ego and hence oneself better as a human being, it is helpful to examine the state of the human mind as it is prior to satori. In Zen, this mind is called the monkey mind, because nearly all people are in such a state of mind. So how does the human mind function?

Buddha believed that we all have always had the Buddha-nature in us; it has become obscured over time by the ego and we have consequently forgotten it. How could this happen? A child lives from within its Buddha nature, in unity with itself and the world. Only as it ages does an ego-based consciousness develop in the mind; the sense of a subject and an object develops. As a person (as subject), I find myself here, and there is also something there (an object), with which I am in relationship. The thing may be something I want to have, or it can be quite a different mundane thing, idea, or another person. Because I as a subject separate myself in my mind from the thing or the other, I stand there emotionally completely alone. I feel cut off from the people in front of me. If in terms of feelings I am something other than this person in front of me, the question arises: who am I actually?

Basically it always comes down to this one question: who am I? We no longer know because we have become alienated from ourselves, and we feel disconnected from ourselves and from our Buddha nature. This one question gnaws at us deep inside throughout our lives, even if we have so far perhaps not been explicitly aware of it. We have the feeling that we are living somebody else’s life because we feel empty and incomplete. We are always running after something, are searching, because we have in us a feeling of being disconnected. This can lead to a deep sense of powerlessness, or to a search for the true meaning of life. If we were like a child one with the world again, we would again be perfect and the sometimes overpowering fear that we feel would be gone.

We constantly try to somehow compensate for this inner fear by using external objects to try to distract ourselves. Usually these are things or people we desire in various ways. Or we try to differentiate ourselves from others in order to somehow distinguish ourselves from them. For example, we might use our self-image to start to differentiate ourselves from others. In the process, our self-image arises through constant unconscious self-definitions. Someone defines him- or herself as a student, and therefore differs in some ways from a worker. In this way a distinction arises between one person as subject, and the other as an object. One person defines himself as good-natured, therefore differing, in his view, from those who are not good-natured. The person is emotional; therefore he differs from those who act rationally.
In this way we all feel that we have an autonomous self, which is actually only imaginary. We feel as if we were independent of other people and the world. We feel as if we were the center of the universe, which consists of itself and always will. The opposite is the case.

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The ignorance of impermanence, interdependence and the different boundaries between us and others creates an imaginary sense of a separate, immutable self, which we refer to as ego. This supposed ego makes us appear real. The definitions of the ego image are numerous and go deeper than you may currently be able to imagine. The ego arises from not just a single attempt to define it, but from many such attempts. Our ego is the result of countless unconscious attempts to define it, comparable to a piece of pie. In the above example, it would consist of a sensitive, good-natured student’s ego, an ego pie, which consists of three small ego parts.

That would not be so bad if we would not unconsciously elevate this definition of our ego above other people and their own ego definitions. On the one hand, this means that we identify ourselves with our ego’s self-image and on the other hand, that we view this ego as being the best and the biggest of all, and we perceive it as being better than the egos of others. In this way a feeling of security is created, because we believe that our ego is our true Self. We can only rediscover the true Self, our Buddha-nature, through Zen. The ego and the true Self are two very different things.

How I define my ego is therefore the best possible definition that exists for me emotionally. This is because only if I can build on my rock-steady ego do I feel, without knowing who I am, as if I have apparent control. This is precisely why I feel that I don’t have to deal with who I really am. That means, for example, that as a married man, I consider myself better than single people in order to define my imaginary ego-based self just to make myself feel secure. If my marriage ends in divorce, that can throw my ego concept into a tailspin. The ego, which I constructed so laboriously, breaks down or is damaged. That humiliates me and can make fear arise inside me again. Because I don't want this to happen, I cling to my ego concept. Otherwise, I'll be insecure once again, and the original question "who am I really?" can reappear.

Because we cannot repair our currently humiliated, imaginary ego, we suffer and define ourselves through our wishes. If we cannot fulfill our desires, our ego also seems incomplete. Suffering therefore arises because deep down inside, we don't really know who we are and we consider our ego as being real. Suffering arises from the fact that we cling to the wishes, imaginings and expectations of our egos. Since desire is always connected with our ego, we cling to it precisely because we want to protect it. This is also the case with all our habitual ideas about the world and how it is supposed to work. We ourselves actually have no opinion of our own, but instead use predetermined opinions and standards that fit our ego image and our view of the world.

If we had re-discovered our true nature, we would no longer have to use some kind of concept to define our ego. We could accept ourselves as we are and could let all things be as they are. We would have integrated all our good and bad aspects, and would once again be whole. All these persistent efforts to define the ego would finally be over.

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