>You want to improve yourself by changing your consciousness. But the self that needs to be improved is the same one doing the improving.
I think there's an issue here. Changing your consciousness is precisely the goal of the self — the self tries to take things as "me" or "mine" and then exert control over them, which is what leads to craving for things to be different. So I agree there's a paradox here in that you can't get rid of self by self-ing. However, that doesn't mean there aren't other ways to get rid of self — those ways just won't involve trying to change anything.
This itself sounds paradoxical on the surface, so let me try and draw an example. Imagine you have a fire. That fire is the self. If you try to make it go away by blowing on it or poking the logs, you actually inflame it and make it bigger — any type of active change you make to the fire will be counterproductive to making it go out. So how can you make it go out? Understand that the fire is only there because there are conditions supporting it, namely blowing on it, poking it, and, most fundamentally, the wood that's burning. Understanding that, you can realize that the only way to make the fire go out is to stop trying to make it go out and just let it burn. Eventually, the fire will burn up all the remaining fuel and will go out on its own. There's no ego involved in letting the ego exhaust itself, but there is ego involved in trying to make the ego sustain itself in a specific way.
Returning to the passage I quoted, the root of the paradox, I think, is that you can't destroy the self by trying to make it a certain way — whatever way it is, it will still *be*. But since all conditioned things are impermanent (selves included), then by ceasing to try to make it a certain way, you let its impermanence play out, and eventually it just goes away on its own. The issue is that enlightenment is typically conceived as a particular, pleasant state of consciousness, when it is (according to the Early Buddhist Texts) the permanent *absence* of states of consciousness. Trying to make your experience pleasant, which is the job of the ego, is indeed antithetical to trying to let experience be whatever it will be until it entirely fades away on its own.
Ah, the great cosmic joke: trying so hard to dissolve the ego that you build a shrine to its absence. The moment you think you've transcended, the ego smirks and hands you a certificate of enlightenment… signed by itself.
This is why the true sages just laugh. The more serious one gets about the spiritual path, the more likely they are to trip over their own robes.
If you ever catch yourself thinking, Wow, I’m really getting somewhere spiritually, congratulations—you’ve just walked into another trap. Now go sweep the temple floor, make some tea, and try again.
Learned this the hard way with LSD when I was 17. Zazen has been my primary practice since.
You should check out my Substack, we have a lot in common. I actually have some essays about Zen and LSD. Here's one of them: https://whatswhatwhoswho.substack.com/p/what-is-zen
Great read 😊
>You want to improve yourself by changing your consciousness. But the self that needs to be improved is the same one doing the improving.
I think there's an issue here. Changing your consciousness is precisely the goal of the self — the self tries to take things as "me" or "mine" and then exert control over them, which is what leads to craving for things to be different. So I agree there's a paradox here in that you can't get rid of self by self-ing. However, that doesn't mean there aren't other ways to get rid of self — those ways just won't involve trying to change anything.
This itself sounds paradoxical on the surface, so let me try and draw an example. Imagine you have a fire. That fire is the self. If you try to make it go away by blowing on it or poking the logs, you actually inflame it and make it bigger — any type of active change you make to the fire will be counterproductive to making it go out. So how can you make it go out? Understand that the fire is only there because there are conditions supporting it, namely blowing on it, poking it, and, most fundamentally, the wood that's burning. Understanding that, you can realize that the only way to make the fire go out is to stop trying to make it go out and just let it burn. Eventually, the fire will burn up all the remaining fuel and will go out on its own. There's no ego involved in letting the ego exhaust itself, but there is ego involved in trying to make the ego sustain itself in a specific way.
Returning to the passage I quoted, the root of the paradox, I think, is that you can't destroy the self by trying to make it a certain way — whatever way it is, it will still *be*. But since all conditioned things are impermanent (selves included), then by ceasing to try to make it a certain way, you let its impermanence play out, and eventually it just goes away on its own. The issue is that enlightenment is typically conceived as a particular, pleasant state of consciousness, when it is (according to the Early Buddhist Texts) the permanent *absence* of states of consciousness. Trying to make your experience pleasant, which is the job of the ego, is indeed antithetical to trying to let experience be whatever it will be until it entirely fades away on its own.
This is by no means to say that I have gotten the self to go away. This is just what I'm working with. I wrote a piece on this topic, you can view it here if you'd like: https://ottotherenunciant.substack.com/p/the-negation-of-self
https://substack.com/@johnshane1/note/c-102468195
Ah, the great cosmic joke: trying so hard to dissolve the ego that you build a shrine to its absence. The moment you think you've transcended, the ego smirks and hands you a certificate of enlightenment… signed by itself.
This is why the true sages just laugh. The more serious one gets about the spiritual path, the more likely they are to trip over their own robes.
If you ever catch yourself thinking, Wow, I’m really getting somewhere spiritually, congratulations—you’ve just walked into another trap. Now go sweep the temple floor, make some tea, and try again.
have a look at my podcast please. Today we talk about Zen.Cheers.