You Can’t Be Yourself by Yourself
Photo by Nicolai Berntsen
Without you, I cannot be me. Then who am I, fundamentally?
In this talk Zuisei reflects on identity and interdependence, showing how none of us can “be ourselves by ourselves”—none of us exist independently of one another.
Why do we often hold each other and ourselves to a familiar, fixed idea of who we are instead of striving to see the ever-changing, fluid truth that is reality? How do we help each other be who we are, fully?
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard. See below for transcript.
Transcript
Transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
It's very good to see you. Let me begin with a story. In 1409, in Florence, there lived a carpenter by the name of Manetto. His friends also called him El Grasso, or the fat one. Manetto specialized in carving ebony and had a shop near one of the big piazzas in Florence. He lived and worked very close to Filippo Brunelleschi’s house. Brunelleschi, some of you may know, was the engineer and architect behind the Duomo, the famous Cathedral in Florence, Santa Maria del Fiore. The dome, if I remember correctly, was the widest one in Europe at the time. It's massive. He built it in 1409 and nothing like it had been built since antiquity. He had to come up with the engineering, equipment, mathematics, and physics to create this magnificent dome. He was also a sculptor, painter, and apparently, from the stories, an unusual, somewhat irascible, guy. He could really get into tiffs with other artists. He also had a bit of an attitude.
Manetto was Brunelleschi’s friend by all accounts. At one point, Manetto didn't go to one of Brunelleschi's gatherings. Brunelleschi was very offended by this snub and decided he was going to take revenge. He convinced a group of his friends to help him create this scenario, this dream, this fantasy in which Manetto turned into somebody else—another famous Florentine called Matteo. One day, in the evening as Manetto was getting ready to close his shop, Brunelleschi ran ahead to Manetto's house, picked the lock, went in, locked the door, and barred it. Then he waited.
When Manetto got home, he tried to open the door and couldn't. He rattled the door, and then from inside came his own voice telling him to go away. “Whoever you are, just go away.” Apparently being good at impersonations was another one of Brunelleschi’s gifts. In fact, Manetto was so convinced that it was his own self who was telling him to go away, that he became completely puzzled.
He very meekly walked away to the piazza nearby. There he ran into one of his friends, who immediately greeted him as Matteo. Manetto was like, “No, no, it's me, Manetto, what are you talking about?” But his friend kept talking to him as if he were Matteo. Then, some officers come by and also address him as Matteo. They actually grab Manetto and take him to jail, saying, “We finally caught up with you and all the debts you have from gamblling. So, you're coming with us.”
They throw him in jail, and every single one of the prisoners addresses him as Matteo. They're slagging him off for all the gambling that he's been doing. Manetto keeps saying, “You have the wrong person. My name is Manetto.” But everybody just ignores him and continues to treat him as Matteo. He doesn't sleep a wink. He keeps thinking, this is a mistake, sooner or later they're going to realize they have the wrong person, and I'll be able to go home.
In the morning, Matteo's two real brothers come to the jail and identify Manetto as their brother, Matteo. They say, “Again, we have to get you out of jail.” Reluctantly, they pay the bail and get him out. They say, “Why do you keep getting into trouble? You have to stop gambling.” By this point Manetto's head is spinning. He starts thinking, maybe I am Matteo. Everybody else says that I am Matteo, so maybe something happened.
The brothers take him to Matteo's house on the other side of Florence. The whole day they treat him as if he were Matteo. Other friends come by and everybody's treating him as Matteo. So, Manetto goes to bed that night thinking, something happened that I don't understand, and maybe I really did turn it to this other person. He goes to sleep. Brunelleschi comes back, gives Manetto a sleeping potion, and knocks him cold. Brunelleschi and his friends carry Manetto back to his shop on the other side of Florence. They put him on his bed, the opposite way, with his feet on the pillow and his head on the other end. Then they rearrange all the tools in his shop.
Manetto wakes up, and soon after Matteo's two brothers come by. But this time they address him as Manetto. They say, "Last night, something happened to our brother, and he insisted that he had turned into another person." Manetto is just staring at them. Next, the real Matteo comes by and confirms the story saying, “Last night I had a dream that I turned into a carpenter. All my tools were in disarray, so I spent quite a bit of time in my dream arranging them.” Manetto looks at his tools and sees every single one is in a different place. This confirms in Manetto's mind that he did, actually, at least for a little while, become Matteo. Who knows how?
As far as we know, until Manetto died, he never knew the true story. I don't think Brunelleschi ever copped to it. I was thinking about this because a few weeks ago. I was going to give a talk about identity and no-self, and I came across the quote "You can't be yourself by yourself." And it reminded me of this story.
We know this. We've been talking about this for quite some time. Who we are is completely intertwined with who everybody else is. This story, as far-fetched as it may seem, is what we are doing all the time. Brunelleschi did have to convince quite a number of people. But in a subtle way, this is what we're doing all the time. We have agreed to function in this dream together. We have silently made a pact, an agreement, to abide by certain rules. The main one being that when I wake up in the morning, I'm still me and you're still you. I can call you by your name. This all seems so obvious and incontrovertible that we never really question it. But this prank, this game, really brings home the fact that without you, I cannot in fact, be me. That who I am is shaped by you. Remember, from our study sessions on Zen Master Thich Naht Hahn’s book, Understanding Our Mind, that I am the fruit of all the seeds of every experience that I've ever had, everything I've heard, everything I've seen, everything I've thought, everything I've done, and those [seeds] also involve everything that you've heard, seen, and thought. If one thing was slightly different, I might have turned out to be a completely different being. If you really think about it, this is a mostly harmonious, tightly-knit net. It's actually kind of a miracle that I am here, as me, and that you are there, as you.
[...] We are also larger and more fluid than that. We run into snags in those moments when we expect one another to be a more narrow definition of who we really are. We take this game and set it down in stone because it's easier for me to think that I know who you are. Because that means that I know who I am in relation to you. That [knowing] gives me a sense of security, a sense of safety. Because I practice, I also know that the reality is much more—I was going to say complicated, but it's not that it's complicated. It's just much more rich, much more vast, definitely much more fluid.
Every day, you're choosing, mostly unconsciously, to treat me a certain way based on what you think you already know about me. You've learned to expect certain things from the way I look to the way I talk, to the way I act, to the way I think. Largely, I confirm those assumptions. So, if I appeared before you today with my hair in a pink mohawk, then I think most of you would wonder what's going on. What's happening with Zuisei? Even if I acted in exactly the same ways otherwise, there would already be a break in the pattern that we are agreeing to form together. There would be a breach-of-contract on my part.
Teenagers and other people do this all the time. It's the opposite of pinning their identity in a place, in a situation, in a set of behaviors. Some people find a kind of security in breaking up and exploding those barriers—the pushing against. But when you look closely, it's still a contract. There is still something saying, yes, here I am, I may be quite different from you and tomorrow and the day after I will be different again, but I know who I am.
The question I would ask is, is that true? Do I really know who I am? Can I even begin to presume that I know who you are? If I don't know, then what does that mean about where I can stand? What can I rely on? What can I trust? I think a culture, a society, does need this net. It needs the web to hold itself together enough so that we can interact with one another. At the same time, it's never fixed. You see what happens, the fear and anger that comes up when an individual, or especially when a group, begins to redefine their notions of identity. I think about Generation Z and Generation Alpha behind them. [They] are demanding that they not be pinned down. That we not pin them down with I'm this or that, which means I'm not this or that. I think about the way the term Whitewas created and the hundreds of years of repercussions of this one act, which of course, wasn't just one act.
If we look closely and are willing to not assume and to be a little less secure, for the sake of being free, then we know that reality is much more blurred, and much more amorphous, and fluid. [Reality] doesn't actually yield so easily to categorization—only our images do.
It's a little ironic, we want familiarity from one another. We crave that, right? It gives us a sense of ease and comfort with one another. At the same time, we don't want to be bored. We don't want to know everything about the other person. So how do we hold both? How do I trust that you will be—maybe I don't need to? Maybe it's not a matter of knowing who you are, so that I can make room for everything and everyone that you can and want to be. Maybe it is a matter of being completely present with you in each moment. I've shared with you before what my mother said to me when I was 13, "You can do anything you want. If you think it's right. Even if I disagree with you." I mean, who says that to their 13 year old. I think she knew that I'm too—[Zuisei laughs] I tend to follow rules, let's put it that way. I think she knew when she said that that I wasn't just going to do something crazy. She made me feel, very early on, that I was completely empowered to decide my own life, that I didn't have to choose for her sake, that I wasn't a reflection of her. I think how rare that is in a parent. She had other troubles. She certainly wasn't perfect, but she did give me that very early on.
This past weekend, I saw something interesting to the extent that it showed me how quick I can be to put myself in the broom closet that I've talked about. When there's this vast, open field in front of me how willing I am to lock myself in the closet. Especially, when I feel that that's what will keep me safe. So, I was traveling a little bit and was in a couple of new settings. Both were very beautiful, but I had a very strong reaction to one of them. It's hard to explain exactly why. It was just one of those things. It was not a good fit. I couldn't get comfortable. I kept saying out loud or in my mind, you can't do that. Meaning that's against the rules. I very often had no idea what the rules were. At a certain point I saw so clearly that I actually do this a lot. That voice in my mind—no, you can't do that, that's not allowed. I say that [to myself] to feel contained, to feel held, especially in a situation where I feel out of sorts. I recognize how constraining it is, and how much I don't allow myself to do out of that fear, out of that insecurity, out of that need for security.
I don't actually do it just when I'm in new situations. This is something I learned very early on, that you follow the rules because that gives a sense of order. There is a reason. Because I grew up in a very chaotic environment in some ways, I had to create order for myself. Then that gets a little warped, and I turn to it, automatically, in moments when I'm not in any danger. I don't need to, but that's where I go. We all do this. We all have our particular ways of coping when we feel unsure, too exposed, out of sorts, or just not quite sure of who I am in this situation.
Kafka’s novel, Metamorphosis, (of course I have no way of knowing what he was thinking) is one of the saddest stories I've read. I don't know if you've read it recently, but it's just so sad. I think it captures so well the sense of alienation of being in this body and world and not being able to fit in. All the many things that we do externally and internally to get around that feeling. What practice calls for is settling into that very fear and sense of not knowing where I stand. That sense of not really knowing who I am in this situation. If I can just hold that uncertainty, maybe there's a new aspect of me that will have a chance to come up, to come out.
At a certain point, if we are paying attention, we do notice the limitations. We realize that the broom closet gives us shelter. It does give us a sense of protection, absolutely. But it's also so tight and kind of dark and musty. After a while we know every corner of it. There's not much else to discover. I don't know what brought each of you to practice that first time. I don't know if you know consciously, but I'd love to hear if you do. What was the impetus? Was it a voice that said, is this it? Is this life? Is this all there is to it? Was it a generalized or a pervasive sense of unease? Was it just straight out pain? What made you trust that there had to be another way? Like our bricklayer, you get to the last brick, you have no idea what will happen with the next step. You could very definitely drown, but something tells you to trust. And then, you step anyway. And maybe it ends up not being this Zen specifically. Maybe it's just a step to something else. Or maybe it is this. Maybe it is this profound way of looking at your mind, looking at your body, looking at what this self is, and recognizing that I truly can't be myself, without you. I also can't be more than myself without you. Do you know what I mean? I can't actually, even with all the zazen, and even with all the practice, I can't break through my own shell without you. That is why Sangha—community—is so important. Crucial.
So, in one way, what we are constantly working with is how do I be myself fully? How do I let you be yourself fully? How do we not obstruct each other in the process? How do we allow for our whole-beingness? How do we encourage one another into our full-beingness? To me, that really is the mark of a true friendship. I say friendship in a very wide and deep way. Those people in your life that really do accept you fully as you are and who also nudge you. There's more. There's more here. Can you see that?
Let me end here with a poem by my favorite poet, Wislawa Szymborska. It's called “Among the Multitudes.”
AMONG THE MULTITUDES
I am who I am.
A coincidence no less unthinkable
than any other.
I could have different
ancestors, after all.
I could have fluttered
from another nest
or crawled bescaled
from another tree.
Nature’s wardrobe
holds a fair
supply of costumes:
Spider, seagull, field mouse.
Each fits perfectly right off
and is dutifully worn
into shreds.
I didn’t get a choice either,
but I can’t complain.
I could have been someone
much less separate.
Someone from an anthill, shoal, or buzzing swarm,
an inch of landscape ruffled by the wind.
Someone much less fortunate,
bred for my fur
or Christmas dinner,
something swimming under a square of glass.
A tree rooted to the ground
as the fire draws near.
A grass blade trampled by a stampede
of incomprehensible events.
A shady type whose darkness dazzled some.
What if I’d prompted only fear,
loathing,
or pity?
If I’d been born
in the wrong tribe
with all roads closed before me?
Fate has been kind
to me thus far.
I might never have been given
the memory of happy moments.
My yen for comparison
might have been taken away.
I might have been myself minus amazement,
that is,
someone completely different.
Explore further
01 : Interrelationship by Thich Nhat Hanh
02 : Metamorphosis by Kafka
03 : Among The Multitudes by Wislawa Szymborska