In the 21st century West one of the socio-political ‘hot topics’ is gender identity. For the first time in modern history, what it is to be female, male, or non-binary, is being openly discussed, clarified, and hopefully, accepted.
From a Zen perspective this is great! But why stop there?
A core teaching of Buddhism is “no-self”. One view of no-self is the coming to grips with the fact that what we identify as “self” is an ephemeral and transient confluence of causes and conditions. What we call self is really identity. Provisionally speaking, the problem of self is that we identify (from the Latin idem, meaning “same”) with our identities.
The identities we identify with are numerous. Biologically, we identify as Homo sapiens. Personally, by such things as race and gender. Chronologically, by the various gradations of young and old. Socially we identify across a plethora of spectrums: ethnic, linguistic, familial, gender, religious, political, etc. ‘I’ am a teacher, ‘I’ am a mother, ‘I’ am a Buddhist. Innumerable identities which we routinely (and from a Buddhist perspective, mistakenly) identify as self. In Zen, all identities are non-real real versions of self. Huh?
Zen does not negate or obviate identity. It re-cognizes identity as necessary for personal survival, growth, transformation. But identity is re-cognized as being constructed, made up of other things. Identities are like containers for sets of experiences, which give rise to actions (behaviors), which become more content. The identity-container however is not predetermined, it is determined by its contents. The contents come and go as a function of circumstance. And the circum-stance (the circle in which identity stands) is change. As conditions change, so does identity. The container-content of identity has no fixed reality beyond the moment it is occupying. Identity is fluid.
Identities are really just the mind of comparison doing its thing. Today ‘I’ am young, today ‘I’ am old. But ‘I’ am only young or old compared to some ‘other’. And the criteria for comparisons are arbitrary, created by the where and when of here-now. The Ch’an adept, Mazu Daoyi, when ill and dying, was asked about his condition. He answered “Sun-face Buddha. Moon-face Buddha”. He was pointing to ‘things-as-it-is’ not as difference, but as change.
Our lineage offers the practice phrase, “there are no identities, only activities”. All the activities which constitute ‘I’ are not fixed in time-space. They are verbs, not nouns. And verb-activity is always changing. One of the skills of Zen is transforming ‘I-noun’ into ‘I-verb’. Not being in a circumstance, being the activity of circum-stance. This is one meaning of Buddha’s appellation, Tathagata, “thus(ness) coming and going”. Identity as activity.
Sun-face buddha, moon-face buddha. Coming and going. Activities not identities.
Walt Whitman, in his “Song of Myself”, expresses it succinctly, “…The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them. And proceed to fill my next fold of the future….(I am large, I contain multitudes)…”
Not one, not two; not me, not you. Enjoy!