By Kimmy Dojinyo Sensei
Hi, welcome, and thank you for being here with us in community.
Today, I want to share how much I have been thinking about myself—specifically, my delusion of self. This Dharma Talk idea first came about during a Zoom meeting several years back, shortly after the COVID lockdowns, when a large majority of us began working and meeting remotely—like being on our own faraway island.
It was during one of the many Zoom meetings that I noticed how much I was staring at the view of myself instead of listening to the person speaking or looking at what was being shared on the screen. I found this especially curious, as I don’t consider myself to be very concerned with how I look; in fact, it is often quite the opposite. Sometimes, I completely forget to look in the mirror before I leave the house. Yet, every time I joined an online meeting or morning meditation, I felt like Narcissus, stuck to my own reflection.
Then one day, I noticed the option called “hide self-view.” I began to wonder how this applies to the Dharma.
In his book Everyday Suchness, Rev. Gyomay Kubose writes, “The self is very much emphasized in our modern life. Self is very important because it is a unit of our social structure and therefore the base of all things.” He goes on to write, “However, when we stop and think what self is, we get a very different picture of self. There is no self, really, without the other. Self is a relative thing, and the real self is in the selflessness state.”
This selflessness state is also called anatman, or non-self.
Rev. Gyomay teaches about self-power and other-power practices used in many schools of Pure Land and Zen Buddhism. Self-power denotes those based on the effort and intention directed by the self—i.e., the human self as practitioner—and other-power denotes those deriving from the power of Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and other deities; i.e., a power other than human.
Other Power
Shin Buddhist priest Mark Uno explains it well in his Lion’s Roar article on self-power. He says that self-power is “human intention,” and other-power is “based on the cosmic power of the dharmakaya, or the emptiness-oneness as the spontaneous expression of cosmic truth beyond human intention.”
He writes that the psychological view of self is one mind, one body. In Mahayana Buddhism, it is understood that all beings are ultimately self-expressions of the dharmakaya—the interdependent co-origination. Meaning, while we are beings in finite form adhering to a conventionally shared reality, dharmakaya is the “self of emptiness”—one with the cosmos, outside of thought, form, or ideas.
I would like to share a poem I have heard here at Sangha from Rev. Akegarasu (Rev. Gyomay’s spiritual leader):
“My thought is thought. It is never myself. I had thought that my thought is myself, but now I’m aware I made a terrible mistake. My experience is experience. It is never myself. I had thought that experience is myself, but now I’m aware I made a terrible mistake. My feelings are feelings; they are never myself. I had thought that my feelings are myself, but now I’m aware I made a terrible mistake. My will is will. It is never myself. I had thought that my will is myself, but now I’m aware I made a terrible mistake. My wishes are wishes; they are never myself. I had thought that my wishes are myself, but now I’m aware I made a terrible mistake. My deeds are deeds; they are never myself. I had thought that my deeds are myself, but now I’m aware I made a terrible mistake.
But then who am I? Yes, it is true that through thought, experience, feeling, will, wish, and deed I manifest myself—but also I manifest myself when I break out of all of these. I am not such a limited, conceptualized self as to exist apart from others! I alone am the most noble: I embrace the cosmos. What an indescribable, subtle existence I am! I cannot, in speaking or writing, put down who I am. I always touch this indescribable self, always follow this indescribable self. Truth is here.”
For me, stepping into other-power can be really challenging. I come from an atheist/agnostic background where anything but self-power was highly discouraged. The first place I learned about finding other-power was in Alcoholics Anonymous. Steps 1–3 are about surrendering to powerlessness and admitting that life has become unmanageable, coming to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity, and then making the decision to turn our will over to that higher power.
For me, these steps can apply to anyone who is suffering. In fact, the alcoholism and addiction were merely side effects of my real disease—the disease of disconnection.
Ego
One of my favorite excerpts from Beatrice Suzuki’s book on Mahayana Buddhism talks about how much suffering can come from our limited beliefs around self-power. She writes, “Misery arises from desiring things which are beyond one’s reach. This world of multiplicities is a world of change, of constant becoming; it meets defeat, and defeat is pain. Desire presupposes an ego-soul, and this ego is the creator of a dualistic world. An ego proclaims itself by negating itself. The ego is now confronted with the non-ego, which is self-elimination… The ego hates to be destroyed, and it dreads suicidal proceedings of any kind. Misery is the inevitable outcome. Caught in this dilemma, the only course of escape is to find a higher standpoint where there is no dilemma.”
Rev. Gyomay simplifies these same ideas when he says, “When self is lost, there is other-power. When the self is lost, there is true self.”
But what does all this mean? I often find myself asking why self-power—or ego—is part of our human experience.
Gretchen Sensei has often reminded me that the definition of ego in the dictionary is simply the “sense of self.” Eckhart Tolle says ego is the “sense of self that arises when the mind is completely unobserved.” He teaches that this stage is necessary to go through, explaining that there was a pre-egoic stage when humans lived in relative happiness compared to the egoic state—in such oneness with nature that they didn’t even know it.
For the growth of consciousness, we have to go through the egoic stage—form identity development. The ego has its purpose; Tolle teaches that humans can’t become awakened without going through the ego.
It’s the classic hero’s journey that we talk about: Siddhartha, The Alchemist, Star Wars, The Wizard of Oz, and so on—the protagonist leaves home, ventures into the great unknown, overcomes many adversities, and returns home transformed, finding it not the same home as before.
Tolle says, “We have to lose our sense of oneness in order to regain it at a more conscious level—our connection to source.”
Source can mean anything you want: Amida Buddha, God, Nature, or the Universe. For me, I often use the word “center” synonymously with source. We come from the center and then expand outward and away, which can cause great suffering—only to remember that we are the center, and we return to that space completely different than when we left.
A dear friend once said, “When I find myself distant from source, who moved?”
Think about the word remember as if we have been “dis-membered”—dismembered from our knowledge of Oneness, under the illusion that everything is separate. To re-member is to realize our wholeness again—our interdependent co-origination, dharmakaya.
Non-Self
When I am feeling “dis-membered” by the illusion of self, I find that I am tightly bound by the Three Cravings in Buddhism:
- The craving for desires of the senses
- The craving for existence
- The craving for non-existence
It is important to clarify that practicing other-power does not mean we are attempting to not exist by some complete negation of self. As Christopher Sensei teaches, “Non-self is not no-self.”
Returning again to the understanding that self is part of our social structure and is imperative to the development of one’s consciousness—it is okay to acknowledge that we have a sense of self and even that we have identified with the stories of ourselves. It is when we cling to the idea of a permanent and independent “I” that suffering occurs—because clinging lies at the root of suffering.
This is why other-power is not a doctrine of no-self, but a non-self strategy for shedding suffering by letting go of our stories:
Stories of who we are, or are not, or who we think we should be.
Stories of how others have told us to be—or even who we want to be.
When I was young, maybe around twelve years old, and first heard the word “selflessness,” I recall creating a story of being the martyr—the one who sacrifices themselves for others. I told myself I was so selfless because I kept my self-esteem really, really low. Many years later, a therapist pointed out to me that whether I have high self-esteem or low self-esteem, it is still very much focused on the self.
The story I held about my own “selflessness” changed. Selflessness is not a sacrifice—it is an offering. An offering of grace and compassion to all beings. And guess what? We are all beings. This is an all-inclusive deal.
Oneness
I would like to share the following from Rev. Koyo Kubose’s book Bright Dawn: “Individual human beings are like waves in the vast ocean. The ocean represents eternal, infinite truth. Truth is reality—the way things are.”
He goes on to describe the nature or reality of waves, saying, “Each wave is unique, yet all waves consist of water. Each wave that rises up from the ocean will also return to the ocean. A wave is not a piece of plastic or some static, unchanging object. A wave has its own particular shape, but this shape is a constantly changing flow of water. Due to certain conditions such as wind or water currents, a wave is ‘born.’ It lives its life flowing along the ocean’s surface. When a wave ‘dies,’ it does not go into a calm, heaven-like harbor where a lot of waves are bobbing around. When a wave ‘dies,’ it goes back to the ocean from where it originally came. Actually, to talk of coming and going is misleading, because at no time does the wave ever separate from the ocean.”
He continues, “Nothing exists as a completely separate, unchanging entity. Everything exists as a dynamic, constantly changing process. This also holds for human beings, and is the Buddhist teaching of anatman, or selflessness. This is the ‘non-self’ as an unchanging entity. To express this truth is to say that there is no birth and no death as such, but rather only one eternal change. A finite human being is never separate from the infinite.”
Hiding self-view in everyday Buddhism means not clinging to some vision of myself that isn’t real. When I am not focused on my own fixed view, I can see a bigger picture. We are not disconnected from each other—even when we are working remotely or literally on a faraway, desolate island.
This is why we practice deep listening when we are in community. Just as we talk about at the beginning of our practice, our minds will stray and wander, but then we bring back our intention and attention. This is how I step out of self-power and into other-power every Sunday when we are here together.
Conclusion
I would like to conclude today with one of the quotes Christopher often shares from Zen Master Dōgen: “To learn Buddhism is to know oneself; to know oneself is to forget oneself.”
Over the next week, I invite each of you to notice how often you are caught in a “self-view” mode and reflect—pun intended—on how you can shift out of this perspective by practicing other-power.
Namu Amida Butsu
Kimmy Dojinyo
Everyday Nembutsu 