This thread reminds me of something I read somewhere that a person is three things, what they think they are, what others think they are and what they really are. But consider the implications. If a person is who he thinks he is but is really who they really are, then who we think we are can’t be who we really are or we don’t actually have three identities. Similarly, if who others say we are is not who we are then the idea that we have a third identity could only be discovered and known to people from an unknown dimension.
If you read the thread, for example, you see it is all about how we see ourselves or how others see us, nothing about how we really are being an issue until now perhaps.
I hear in this thread a deep existential suffering that I am familiar with, that drove me to seek deeper understanding. I was trapped in a certainty that because of my need for some truth to make me feel good about life, and my failure to find it that I would never again know happiness. I found this Zen koan and it saved my life:
Once upon a time, as a man was walking through a forest, he saw a tiger peering out at him from the underbrush. As the man turned to run, he heard the tiger spring after him to give chase.
Barely ahead of the tiger, running for his life, our hero came to the edge of a steep cliff. Clinging onto a strong vine, the man climbed over the cliff edge just as the tiger was about to pounce.
Hanging over the side of the cliff, with the hungry tiger pacing above him, the man looked down and was dismayed to see another tiger, stalking the ravine far below. Just then, a tiny mouse darted out from a crack in the cliff face above him and began to gnaw at the vine.
I have seen some explanations for what this koan is supposed to mean, as if it were intended to be amenable to rational thinking rather than to joy beyond conception or the self that is real.
If you seek the truth from a Zen master I am told, if he sees you have a stick he well give you one and if you don’t have one he will take it away.
If you seek a way out of a prison the door will always be 180 degrees from where you look. Who is the seeker? How is it that to seek is to find while what is sought after can’t be found?
The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.
The truth can’t be poured into a full tea cup.
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When I was first exposed to these ideas and more like them from Zen traditional literature and while in a pit black hopelessness and despair, having lost all my naive dreams there was anything meaningful that could be shown to be so anywhere, I felt massive blind rage.
“Now now Moonbeam, you know you are not supposed to get angry”, the voices in my head told me, but I know what good that advise did for me. Don’t be like Gulliver and let the voices of Lilliputians tie you down.
To seek the truth is to seek it out of ego need which means it remains hidden. To surrender in defeat puts you in the road where Grace can run you over. Grace is a mystery you may believe does not exist, but whatever you believe if you let it go Grace will not deny you. But don't forget that if the ego seeks a reward for modesty it will only be modesty as a pretense to achieve an ego goal. 180 from where you look remember.