No Self

There is a rule of evidence in the law which considers speculative statements by witnesses about another’s state of mind to be inherently unreliable. Consequently, they are forbidden at trial. To me this seems like a sound legal principle. Asking a witness to speculate about what another person is thinking is fraught with the possibility of error. After all, one person cannot be inside of another person’s head, and mind-reading isn’t accepted by science. While the rule is properly enforced in a courtroom, it is more haphazardly applied in our personal lives.

Every day we draw conclusions about what other people are thinking, often without any basis. Often times we go even further, mentally categorizing them based on brief observations and filing them away on a shelf in our minds. There they become part of our mental construct; another delicate strand in our carefully built web of assumptions about the way the world works. Of course it’s all bullshit. There’s very little one can tell about a person’s mind by watching them for a few minutes on a train. Oh, we can pick up clues, like style or dress and reading material, but we don’t really know. Even when we think we know, we’re usually wrong. We think we're better at it when the person we think we've got figured out is someone close to us, but even there, we consistently fail to get it "right".

What I find interesting to consider, is that while we are experiencing other people’s existence in our daily routine and fitting them in our schemas, they are simultaneously experiencing our presence, drawing their own conclusions about us and filing us away on their own mental shelves.  I would imagine if we could see inside of their heads and read their thoughts, we would be appalled at the inaccurate assumptions. All of the begs the question, if we are all walking around with subjective beliefs about everyone we encounter, and they are doing the same about us, and we’re all wrong about everything, is there any objective “self” at all?  The bigger question is, “is there an objective reality at all?”

What I’ve gathered from Zen practice is that there may be an objective reality, but all the mental pictures, assumptions and habits that we consider to be such a solid part of who we are, isn’t part of it. What we consider the self is an aggregate of habits, perceptions and assumptions that is as transient as a snowflake in springtime. The trick is realizing that at the end of the day, there is no objective difference between you and me. We’re all the same, and we’re all in the same pickle boat floating not so serenely down the river of cause and effect.