I was re-reading one of my favourite blogs this morning - Willow's 'Life as a Dervish'. Her blog resonates really strongly, I guess because I've also lived abroad for many years in a totally different culture from the one that I was born into. And for me, that experience was just like meditation - a mirror which illuminated so much, so much that I previously took for granted and didn't see, because it was just too close and familiar. But I get a sense in her blog that although it seems as though that new cultural experience is very alien, in a sense, it's more 'home' than 'home' ever was.
One phrase above all others has stuck in my mind from her postings is 'My Identity is Portable', which seems to keep popping up in my consciousness like a cork floating in water. I too have a sense of carrying an identity around with me .. not a solid one anymore, as in pre-Dharma days ... where 'I' was 'me', and I knew who I was ... and strongly attached myself to all manner of views about myself .... but more an amorphous shimmering visage, which mutates like a shadow play before my eyes, endlessly reinventing itself in colours and shapes, most-times reflecting back what is projected forward. An identity which tells more about what looks, than what is looked at .... which coalesces around thoughts and feelings at that moment .... an illusory solidity, which conspires to reassure, yet is ultimately groundless, absent, and a phantasm.
Yet the magical display proceeds ... and pops up here and there ... a sense of continuity, a sense of centre .... a knowingness which lies behind both seeming identity and appearances that arise. This luminous knowingness which projects as both identity and world perceived ... creator, knower, that which obstructs nothing, yet enables all to be ...
All is not what it seems, so no wonder conventional notions seem complex, confused and paradoxical. My Identity is Portable ... nothing to get worked up about ... just a magical display ... in the mirror of ..... ?
1 comment:
Dear Chodpa,
Thank you for introducing Willow's blog - an enjoyable read.
I was reflecting on your musing about the portable identity. I resonate so much with your line: "a (luminous)knowingness which lies behind both seeming identity and appearances that arise." This is our pure, true nature at the center of all, beneath the mind fluttering, beneath ego, beneath everything else. Above this, we do seem to reflect, as a mirror, others around us, our culture, our experience. This is interesting and colorful, but peace is really luminous knowing and moving from the center.
Thank you again for your thoughtful insights,Chodpa.
Meredith
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