No Self, No Problem

Filed under Articles on 22. December 2006 »

Do you have a problem? Chances are you have several. The car just started developing a strange noise in the wrong place, you have three different bosses at work and none of them seems to like you very much, the NASDAQ is taking a beating, your back hurts, and so on and so on.

Most people, at least in western society, tend to experience their lives as a succession of problems; one popping up after the other, almost like a continuous game of existential whack-a-mole. However hard they try to figure it out, to get everything to work, it never really does. There’s always something that goes wrong, and even when things do occasionally level out the human mind will take it upon itself to create problems from thin air.

“One damn thing after another” is said to have been Winston Churchill’s definition of human history, and this can also be used to summarize how many people experience their lives.

And as if your personal problems weren’t enough, the world around you will be happy to tell you about some of its own problems. People come up to you and tell you that it “sure looks like rain tomorrow,” and how this "friend of their cousin Mary’s got diagnosed with cancer last month, the poor man."

And then when you turn on the television — flu season is around the corner, violent street crime is up — and in between the bad news you are offered a solution in the form of anti-depressants and consumer goods. Problems getting you down? Hand over your Visa Platinum and a Louis Vuitton handbag stuffed with all the Zoloft and Xanax it can hold will solve all your problems in a jiff.

We live in a culture that defines itself by its problems, and so a large part of our social conditioning is to perceive the world in terms of problems.

The core of all problems

The title of this article is taken from a little story I heard once in one of Eckhart Tolle’s talks, if I recall correctly, about a young Buddhist disciple who, when asking his master to explain to him the essence of Buddhism, the master replied simply; “No self, no problem.”

What the master meant was that all problems originate in the mind-made sense of self, the ego. That the very nature of seeing something as problematic is an intrinsic part of the illusory mind-made sense of self. And so that when the self dissolves, all problems dissolve with it.

In order to verify this for yourself, the next time you think you have a problem attempt the following: stand back as it were, and look at the mental image you have of the problem, the situation, and simply remove yourself from the scene. Act as if you were not there, or as if you were not at all. See the situation, but without getting yourself involved in the picture.

The exercise may or may not work for you at this point, but the purpose of it is for you to recognize within yourself a deep truth: that when you remove yourself from the problem, the problem disappears. When there is no self involved, what was seen as a problem is now revealed as a simple situation that requires you to either do something or not.

But doesn’t that sound overly simplistic? Of course it does. The ego will be inclined to answer with something to the effect of its particular problems being different, and not nearly that simple. That it has real problems, actual dilemmas with myriad details that need to be figured out. But this is the case with all essential truth, that it is too simple for the ego to give it any credit. The ego believes in complexity, and that problems need to be overcome with force and effort.

But that’s just the ego, and we already know that its efforts are futile. The ego cannot solve its problems if the ego itself is the source of these problems.

To quote Albert Einstein, “problems cannot be solved by the level of awareness that created them.”

Dirt on the lens

Another way of shining light on the root of all problems is to see how your inner state at any given time has an effect on the number of problems you experience.

On a ‘good day,’ when the sun is shining and you’ve just won the lottery etc., there are no problems anywhere to be found. Challenges maybe, situations that require you to do something, but the world is not experienced in terms of problems. You may notice a small ding on the hood of your car and, without making a fuss, promptly make a note to either have it fixed or to go at it yourself with a plunger.

On a ‘bad day’ however, i.e. when the ego is having a tantrum and even the slightest things get on your nerves, everything becomes problematic. You notice the ding on your car, and it makes you absolutely furious. You start making up stories about who could have done this to your car and what you will do to them when you find out etc., and on and on. There could be weeks until you stop thinking about it and decide to get it fixed, if ever. Chances are you’ll refuse to fix it until you find the bastards who did it, and in the case of a very strong ego, something that could have been fixed in two minutes with a toilet plunger becomes a life long grievance. The story you tell your friends at the retirement home at the age of 80, the tragedy of your nice car “and the day it was ruined.”

The correlation between ones inner state and problems can also be seen in the difference between a person with a very large ego and someone who is more humble. Who do you think has more problems, Kim Jong Il or the Dalai Lama?

When you see how problems are intertwined with the mind-made sense of self, you see that there are no problems but only a problematic way of seeing.

No time, no problem

An essential characteristic of the mind-made sense of self is that it depends on time for its existence. The ego consists entirely of mental images from the past being projected into the future, and so when you remove time the ego dissolves. And the same thing can be said for problems; remove time and the problem dissolves.

Have you ever dreaded something for days, even weeks, and then when the time finally came it turned out to be no big deal?

This is a case of a problem having dissolved simply by virtue of time having been removed from it. Something that seemed complicated and problematic when viewed through future projection is revealed as simple and unproblematic when confronted in the moment. Future projection is home turf for the ego, and so the distortion effect it has on your perception is mostly felt when imagining something in the future.

When you think you have a problem, ask yourself what your problem is right now. Not later today, not weeks from now, but right at this very moment. And when you do this, you will find that there is no problem right now. If there’s a particular situation you need to deal with, you either do something about it or you don’t. Simple as that.

“Yes, but I have this exam in a couple of weeks, and it’s a real problem because if I don’t pass, they won’t let me graduate.”

Is that really a problem right now? It cannot be a problem right now. And in fact, there is nothing at all problematic about a situation like that. So you need to take an exam, and in order to be able to pass you need to prepare for it. And so right at this moment, the only reality this situation has for you is in either sitting down with your books to prepare for the test, or not. Very simple.

And what if you fail the test even if you prepare to the best of your ability? Then you simply fail the test, and go from there. No problem anywhere to be seen, only choices to be made in the present moment.

When you let go of past and future by giving your attention to whatever is in the present moment, the ego will not be able to gain traction and so you will not experience problems. A problem, like the ego, does not fit into the space of the present moment. Problems are complicated, but the present moment is always very simple.

To the degree to which your ego is allowed to dissolve, the less problems you will experience in your life. And once you are able to fully let go of the ego, you will be able to answer like Nisargadatta Maharaj, when asked by an interviewer to talk about the problems in his life; “In my world, nothing ever goes wrong.”