I Can't Define Myself
Q: in The Ten Thousand Things, Chapter 33, you said, "In trying to define 'myself,' one suffers a complete and total lack of perspective—an absence, I mean, of any non-self vantage from which to regard the matter."
I am not sure I really understand this. Do you mean that if "myself" is made to be something, then there is no more perspective left, which is not the self, from which to regard everything.
Not only have I a bit of a problem to understand the no-self vantage linguistically, but I also have trouble understanding why, if myself is defined as something, let us say as Brahman, or as Héctor, the baker, why is then there no non-self vantage left?
A: Essentially, defining is a matter of negation, of nihilation. One defines “myself’ by saying, either explicitly or, more often implicitly, everything one is not. For example, if I say, “Robert is a human,” that nihilates Robert is a gorilla, Robert is a unicorn, etc. So far, so good.
When I say the impediment to arriving at a definition of “myself” is the lack of any non-self vantage, I mean this:
Suppose I say, “I am a human,” and you ask, “Who knows that?” If I reply, “Myself knows it. I, Robert, know it,” that is a tautology, a kind of circular reasoning that does not add any information to the matter. Then we just have naming, which is not understanding.
This is a crucial, basic point: naming is not understanding. A word can mean only what it evokes within one's own experience. So, for example, the word "God" is meaningless to me. Yes, I know the standard definition: "the creator of all that exists," but since I cannot imagine such a thing (something that is not "all this," but stands apart from it as its author), "God" means nothing to me.
The word "God" is part of my experience, but for all I know, that to which it refers, a so-called creator, may not exist except as a word. To repeat, naming is not understanding. The word "unicorn" exists, but that to which it refers does not, except as an object in imagination.
So, something knows that I am a human primate animal, but what is that something? If I say, “Well, awareness knows it,” what is awareness? How do you define that?
One approach has been to nihilate everything but awareness—to claim that awareness is “real,” but the objects “in” awareness are not real. This assumes a kind of “pure awareness” that exists prior to objects. That idea is a traditional religious idea, but it seems to rely on facts not in evidence. It’s pie in the sky—another case of naming not adding to understanding. Frankly, I have never experienced any “pure awareness” and have no idea what that would be like or what the phrase even means.
If you see that, you will see that I have no way of standing outside of “myself” to impartially nihilate everything but “myself.” Everything I see, feel, think, and otherwise experience is “myself.” The very act of nihilation is an expression of myself. Seeing, feeling, thinking, naming, denying, nihilating, etc., are qualities of myself. As long as I live and breathe, I will have a perspective, a point of view, a “vantage,” as I call it.
The vantage can change—it will change--but it cannot be impartial, so what “myself” is cannot be defined. I can never be outside of myself. I have no “non-self vantage" from which to regard the matter.
There seems to be no perspective, no high mountain from which to contemplate oneself completely. For that one would have to be outside oneself, and this is impossible because any perception remains inside oneself.
Even to say that we are human primates is nothing more than a matter of definitions, of classifying and labeling knowledge. Definitions are useful but they are not the answer.
Ultimately what we are left with is wonder, the wonder of existing. And this amazement occupies everything.
Yeah...we do default to the assumption that naming (categorising, dividing) equals knowing - language has a primacy in how most of us think most of the time. Another post that prompted me to drop concepts for an instant...which is always welcome. I wish you well.