This Body Takes Me for a Walk

another radical non-duality post, for no reason

So I watch this apparent body as it rides down the elevator and takes ‘me’ for a 90-minute round-trip walk to the shores of Burrard Inlet, the closest reach of the Salish Sea and the Pacific Ocean to where I live.

Why is it doing this? It’s certainly not something ‘I’ would choose to do. I’m naturally lazy, and this walk is tedious and fraught with hazards — loud, smoggy traffic, endless traffic lights to navigate, inattentive drivers and walkers, unmasked passers-by sneezing and coughing, and the occasional bear or coyote on the more remote paths of the journey.

But I’m just along for the ride, a reluctant, anxious passenger. 

This body does exercises of various types for about two hours a day. There is not much smiling or even noticing while this is happening. It’s all conditioning: This body has been conditioned to exercise even though it doesn’t much like it. Like a hamster on a hamster wheel I guess. Though it does like the reward of the feeling of accomplishment afterwards, which I suppose is also conditioned.

The brain in this body is not ‘me’. The brain is  just one part of the body, a body that ‘I’ presume to inhabit, without any compelling evidence. But ‘I’, my ‘self’, do not sense I am in any particular place in it. (There’s an urban myth that, when asked to point to ‘themselves’, the majority of men point to their heads while the majority of women point to their hearts. I have no idea if it’s true.)

This brain is, fortunately, not in charge of this body. The body does most of the essential things a body must do to survive, autonomically, without even checking in with the brain.

The body is, in simple terms, a watery bag of cells, tissues, and organs, plus resident bacteria and viruses. The brain evolved to help all these constituent creatures detect what’s happening inside and outside the bag. The brain is not any more ‘important’ than any other constituents of the body with which it co-evolved, and it is not even essential for complex life (as jellyfish, which have been around longer than almost all brain-containing creatures, can attest).

‘I’ am merely an affectation of this body, something it made up. It’s not merely a mental construct, though; ‘I’ am a fully embodied invention, one that evolved, apparently, to try to make more sense of the firehose of signals reaching this body than would be possible without incorporating into its model (the model of ‘what is and what it means’) the idea of a central self, existing in space and time and separate from everything else. 

In short, ‘I’ am a fiction.

Nevertheless, here ‘I’ am, hitchhiking in this body, which is simply carrying out its conditioning. Part of that conditioning is its brain’s attempt to make sense of what’s going on inside the body, and what’s happening ‘outside’ the body that might affect it. 

Everything conceived in the brain is a story, trying to make sense of what is perceived by the body. Stories — including scientific ‘explanations’, beliefs about gods and souls, the idea that things are happening in time and in separate space, with causal connections between things that are apparently happening — seem, at least for now, to explain quite compellingly what is being perceived. But they are just stories. 

‘I’ am just one of these stories. ‘I’ will of course selectively appropriate many of this brain’s stories and claim them as ‘mine’, as if ‘I’ wrote them. But as ‘I’ am just another story, ‘I’ can only plagiarize the brain’s stories, and claim this brain’s thoughts and stories, and this body’s actions, as ‘my’ own. There is nothing more to ‘me’ than that.

This body looks up at the apparent clouds and seems to feel and see and hear wind and rain. These are immediate stories, based on the senses’ direct perceptions. ‘I’ am not needed to make sense of them. ‘I’ am not needed for anything.

This body heads up to the hot tub. Its story is that after the long, chilly walk, hot jets of water will feel good, and stories about pleasure are very compelling, feeding directly into its conditioning. There will be some consideration of the fact that exiting the hot tub into the cool wind will be unpleasant, but the body doesn’t need ‘me’ to weigh in on that, any more than a dog needs a ‘self’ to weigh the later discomfort of having to shake off a lot of water from its fur, before joyfully jumping into the lake or ocean. 

I think about what makes ‘me’ happy, things I describe as ‘my’ ikigai:

PLEASURES: 

  • my favourite music; 
  • hedonistic pleasures (eg hot baths by candlelight); 
  • just being in a state of equanimity, curiosity, and discovery; 
  • clever humour and theatre; 
  • play (online and board games, occasional flirtations, philosophic ideas like radical non-duality and no-free-will, clever exchanges, challenging crosswords, and collaborative creative activities)

PLACES: 

  • the view from my ‘terrace in the sky’ home; 
  • tropical ocean beaches and tropical rainforests

PEOPLE AND ANIMALS: 

  • my few true friends and small blog community; 
  • the more-than-human world; 
  • gentle, joyful, exceptionally bright/perceptive people

LEARNING AND PRACTICE: 

  • reading and writing in order to learn new things 
  • my creative writing (words and music)

Many of these things are things that wild creatures would enjoy, though perhaps in a less cerebral, more analogical way. So I have to think that this list describes this body’s ikigai, its preferences, things that would continue to be done and enjoyed even if ‘I’ — the story of me — was absent. 

These things aren’t ‘my’ pleasures any more than this body is ‘my’ body. I claim ownership of them — that they are ‘my’ pleasures — the same way I claim ownership of this body and the things it does, and rationalize what this body does and doesn’t do as being ‘my’ decisions. ‘I’ am very invested in all this stuff being ‘mine’.

I watch this body doing things that ‘I’ think it should be doing (like eating more fruit) and things I think it shouldn’t be doing (like slouching), and laugh at the folly and hubris of believing ‘I’ have any say over any of it. This body has a mind of its own — it is its brain, after all, not ‘mine’. 

Can it hear my objections, though, I wonder? Can ‘I’ influence its conditioning? The answer is, categorically, no. Reservations, fleeting thoughts about possible consequences, the angel and devil whispering in one’s ears, the neuroses that arise from having thoughts or performing actions that are considered socially unacceptable or inadequate responses — all these things just arise in the brain as part of the conditioning process. 

What then happens is the only thing that could have happened, given that conditioning and the circumstances of the moment. ‘I’ have nothing to do with any of it — ‘I’ bear no responsibility and merit no credit or blame for the joys and traumas, the successes and failures, and how they weigh upon this body.

‘I’ am just a spectator, a dog barking in the stands. ‘I’ have no more impact on how this body is or what thoughts and feelings arise or what it does, than a viewer watching a football match has when they pray for the decisive shot to go in, or go wide. 

‘I’ am like an invisible helicopter parent to this apparent creature, this bag of bones and organs and its body and brain. I feel responsible, anxious for its welfare, sometimes even proud of it. But it doesn’t hear me, recognize me, or need me. It evolved to know what to do long before ‘selves’ appeared on the scene. It doesn’t believe in stories. 

Still, ‘I’ can’t help feeling a certain fondness for this body, this creature. I feel as if we’ve been through a lot ‘together’, and that we’ve both really done our best.

Even though we’ve never actually met.

Now, as this body presses the elevator button to return to what is, for now, its home — and ‘my’ home — I wonder: Who is writing this if ‘I’ am just a story? Is this creature writing it, and I’m just taking credit for it? Or am ‘I’ telling my own story through it?

Since a story cannot write a story, it must be this creature doing the writing. It is writing about ‘me’, its invention, its invisible imaginary friend with superpowers of consciousness and control, which it conjured up to try to make sense of this bewildering world. Perhaps the invention of ‘me’ helped it feel less scared. If so, ‘I’ feel like such a disappointment to it, after it invested so much energy in developing ‘me’. 

But of course, it is not disappointed in ‘me’, its own story. It is only a story.

Alas, ‘I’ am not so easy to get rid of. This story has taken on a life of its own. ‘My’ sense is that ‘I’, the story of me, was crafted to represent and defend this creature, this body. That is ‘my’ job, and I can’t just shrug and say “mission accomplished” or “I quit because what I think doesn’t matter”. If ‘I’ am just a story, perhaps I’m the cautionary tale that prevents the reckless character from doing dangerous things (as if it needed ‘me’ to take care of itself). Or I am the story of possibility, that heroic fable about things somehow being other than the only way they can be.

These are not, I confess, great stories. Surely ‘I’ should be able to do better.

If ‘I’, this story, were suddenly to be forgotten, no one would notice. Certainly this character, the forgetter, wouldn’t notice. Other characters in this character’s life might notice a little less anxiety and less zeal, with the cautionary tale and the story of possibility forgotten.

Still, this ‘me’ holds on. It doesn’t know how to do anything else. It cannot take the hint that it is no longer needed, or wanted, if it ever was.

Here we go, then. This body is apparently headed out the door again, and ‘I’ am dragged along as always. It’s going to the neighbourhood café. It’s already decided what it wants to order; indeed, it has the exact change set aside in its jacket pocket. 

Meanwhile, ‘I’ am still looking at the menu, considering all the possibilities. What if…? No wait, here’s a better idea. We could do…

OK, never mind then. Seemingly, that was the right decision after all. Home, James.

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3 Responses to This Body Takes Me for a Walk

  1. David Beckemeier says:

    “So I watch”, so your “I” seemed to do a lot of watching, and then seemed to write this post.

  2. Theresa says:

    I used to enjoy city walking & photo walks in GVR before it all became one confusing construction zone. but the thing that was most compatible with walking turned out to e listening to platonic dialogues, all that duelistic back & forth between Socrates baiting his students . Seemed to jive with the back and forth involved in walking, (especially light hiking on easy trails where you still have to watch where you put your feet). I rarely walk anymore myself so I’m surprised the activity would occupy your time more than, say, dancing or sailing or other less dualistic exercise. But then again I’m surprised that you like to write about civilization collapse from the top floor of a skyscraper ‍♀️

  3. Dave Pollard says:

    Best place to watch it collapse first hand, Theresa. Seriously, though, we’re just renting here. This place happened to tick a bunch of other boxes, notably being a stone’s throw from the SkyTrain. It’s a slow emergency, but I am starting to think about where I’d like to spend my last years, and collapse is a consideration. I’m still looking. The kinds of places that will survive collapse are not options for me at the moment.

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