Appearances

A beauty salon seems an unlikely place to reflect on the Buddha's teachings of renunciation. This morning while I waited for a haircut I watched other ladies get permed, foiled, manicured and blow dried. I plucked a fashion magazine from the coffee table and read that bikinis are a must-have wardrobe basic this year. I suspect the young fashionista who wrote that did not have 50-something matrons like me in mind.

My first Zen teacher sometimes called the physical form a "skin bag." Like it or not, skin bags require some upkeep. They must be washed, fed and clothed. We do what we can to make them presentable. But who is doing the washing, feeding and clothing? Who experiences hot and cold, taste and smell, sound and sight?

The doctrine of Anatman -- that there is no "self" in the sense of a permanent, integral, autonomous being within an individual existence -- must be the most difficult and least understood teaching of Buddhism. Yet it is essential to understanding all the rest of Buddhism. Anatman makes the difference between Buddhism as a path of transcendent liberation and Buddhism as a feel-good philosophy worthy of greeting cards.

One cannot grasp the significance of even the Four Noble Truths without some appreciation of anatman. Nearly always, when I run into some wrong-headed criticism of Buddhism that completely misinterprets the Dharma, anatman is the factor the writer leaves out.

Mahayana Buddhism takes anatman further, to the doctrine of shunyata, "emptiness," which is that all things are void of self-nature, and all existence is interdependent. Sylvia Boorstein wrote in the Shambhala Sun (September 2002), "I have moments in which I understand that there is no one who owns the narrative of my life, no one to whom the events of my life are happening, that all of creation is a huge, interconnected, amazing production of events unfolding in concert with each other, connected to each other, dependent on each other, with no separation at all."

But then, she says, she also has moments of confusion. As do I, frequently.

Photo Credit: Jupiter Images.