Korean Zen teacher, Hyon Gak 현각/玄覺 (born Paul J. Muenzen in 1964) not too long ago asked the question, “What is this I?” While a very good existential question and certainly one that is hard to get our head around, the Buddha never asked this question or one to that effect. He teaches us by a different method.
With regard to each one of the five aggregates (khandha/skandha), namely, 1) physical form, 2) feeling (or sensation), 3) perception, 4) volitional formations, 5) consciousness (which is also the rebirth transmigrant) the Buddha went this way with regard to each aggregate: “I am not this, this isn’t mine, thus one is detached (P., virajjati) from it [the aggregates].” In many other places, the Buddha said with regard to each of the aggregates, "this is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self [attā/ātman].”
As the reader can see this is the via negativa, i.e., the way of negation. We are setting aside or the same, decoupling our self from what is not intrinsic; which is conditioned (the aggregates are never other than conditioned). What remains for us is only the intrinsic self. Said in a different way, the result of setting aside, thoroughly, the not-self (anattā), which are the conditioned aggregates, we come face-to-face with our true self for the first time.
Let me say that the via negativa is not without difficulty. Decoupling from the influential power of the aggregates which, by the way, are also Mara the Buddhist devil, requires that we accept the fact that we will eventually have to give up all of our presuppositions about enlightenment, entering the so-called dark night of the soul.
Back to the existential question, “What is this I?” We are actually deceiving our self with this question. For the very source of this question—whence it arises—is what we are really looking for but cannot seem to find. We have to keep in mind that the source is totally unconditioned whereas, by contrast, every question we raise is never other than conditioned! This is why we have to proceed in a negative way. We keep scraping off the layers of black paint until we reach the gold.
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