A personal blog by a graying (mostly Anglo with light African-American roots) gay left leaning liberal progressive married college-educated Buddhist Baha'i BBC/NPR-listening Professor Emeritus now following the Dharma in Minas Gerais, Brasil.
Choose one identity you hold dearly. Does this identity depend on others not being that way? For example, can you be American without the existence of non-American people? The meaning of the identity is shaped entirely by what it excludes. If one thing relies on another for its meaning, can they really be separate? Even when we think we are speaking only about “Americans,” we are in truth referring to both Americans and non-Americans together.
Follow this contemplation until the boundary between “me” and “not me” softens and eventually dissolves. What remains when you see that your cherished identity is inseparable from everything that seems to stand outside it?
Meditation teacher Martine Batchelor reflects on identifying with her former self and asks us to consider the conditions that lead us to feel a certain sense of identity.
Learn more about koan practice in this four-part video teaching with Master Bon Yeon (Jane Dobisz), the co-guiding teacher of the Cambridge Zen Center.
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