by Kelly Branan
The World We Think We See
I’d like to begin with an old Buddhist story. Perhaps you’ve heard it before.
Several blind men were asked to describe an elephant.
One reached out and touched its leg.
“The elephant,” he said confidently, “is like a tree.”
Another grasped the trunk.
“No,” he replied. “It’s like a great snake.”
A third held the elephant’s ear.
“You’re both mistaken,” he insisted. “An elephant is like a large fan.”
Another felt its side.
“It’s obviously a wall.”
Another its tail.
“It’s a rope.”
So, which of them was right?
Each person was sincere.
Each was convinced they were right.
And each was describing only a small part of something much larger than themselves.
The tragedy wasn’t that they were wrong.
The tragedy was that each mistook their limited experience for the whole truth.
The fact is, this story isn’t about elephants at all.
It’s about us.
Every one of us is touching a different part of life.
We each have our own experiences.
Our own joys.
Our own wounds.
Our own fears.
Our own memories.
From those experiences we begin constructing a story about how the world works.
And before long, we stop seeing our understanding as a perspective.
We begin believing it is the perspective.
That, I think, is where much of our suffering begins.
Perhaps none of us ever sees the whole elephant. But maybe awakening begins when we stop insisting that the part we’re touching is the whole truth.
We Live Inside Stories
Human beings are remarkable storytellers. Christopher has often said that we modern humans should be called “Homo-Naratus”.
In fact, I sometimes think that storytelling is our mind’s full-time job.
From the moment we wake up, our minds are busy explaining, interpreting, judging, comparing, remembering, predicting, and worrying.
Everything that happens to us is immediately woven into a story.
Now, I’m not saying that reality isn’t real.
Pain is real.
Joy is real.
Loss is real.
Love is real.
What I’m suggesting is that we rarely experience these things without wrapping them in layers of interpretation.
There is the event.
Then there is the story.
Often, it is the story that hurts the most.
The Buddha recognized this more than twenty-five hundred years ago.
He taught that our suffering does not arise merely from circumstances, but from the ways craving, aversion, and ignorance shape our relationship with those circumstances.
Another way of saying that might be this:
We suffer because we mistake our stories for reality.
The Pattern Through Which We See
The author Stephen R. Covey wrote something that has stayed with me for years:
“We think we see the world as it is, when in fact we see the world as we are.”1
Whether or not Covey intended it, this sounds remarkably Buddhist.
He taught that each of us sees the world through what psychologists and philosophers call a paradigm.
The word comes from the Greek paradeigma, meaning a pattern, a model, or an example.
A paradigm is the window through which we perceive reality.
None of us approaches the world as a blank slate.
Everything we have experienced has shaped the lens through which we see.
Our upbringing.
Our disappointments.
Our successes.
Our fears.
Our relationships.
Our culture.
Our losses.
Even our favorite stories from childhood.
Imagine two people standing together watching rain fall.
One is a farmer whose crops have been drying out for weeks.
The other has planned an outdoor wedding.
The rain is exactly the same.
The experience is completely different.
The rain isn’t any different.
But their paradigms of the rain sure are.
So often we believe our interpretation is simply “the truth.”
But perhaps it is only one story among many possible stories, like parts of an elephant.
Filling in the Gaps
There is a word from mathematics called interpolation.
Interpolation means estimating what lies between two known points.
Our minds are constantly interpolating.
We know point A.
We know point B.
Everything in between is assumption.
The trouble is that assumption, to us, feels remarkably like certainty.
We don’t say,
“I wonder if they’re upset.”
Instead we say,
“They’re upset.”
We don’t say,
“I don’t actually know.”
We say,
“This is what’s going on.”
And before long, we begin reacting not to reality, but to our own assumptions.
Exercise
Let’s do an experiment. When I say the word “boss”, what comes to mind?
What about:
- Money
- Love
- Worthy
- Addiction
- Church
- Food
- Failure
- Breakup
Interesting… I only said one word. The rest of the story came from you.
Now, we can add inflection, volume, facial expression, location. Each adds context that changes the story. We can build an entire universe in our mind with just one word that sets it all off.
The Small Stories
When we think about suffering, we often think about life’s biggest moments.
Death.
Illness.
Divorce.
Financial hardship.
Certainly these bring great pain.
But I suspect that much of our daily suffering comes from much smaller stories.
My coworker didn’t smile when I passed them.
The neighbor didn’t wave.
Someone interrupted us during a conversation.
Our loved one took a long time to respond to our text.
Each event lasts only a moment.
But our storyteller gets to work.
“They’re upset with me.”
“They don’t appreciate me.”
“I must have done something wrong.”
“They always do this.”
Notice how quickly the story grows.
One late text becomes a troubled marriage.
One unanswered email becomes a failing career.
One awkward conversation becomes evidence that no one likes us.
The event lasted seconds.
The story may last years.
We often spend far more time living in our interpretation than we ever spend living in reality.
The Buddha’s Two Arrows
The Buddha illustrated this beautifully with the teaching of the Two Arrows.
The first arrow is unavoidable.
We lose people we love.
We grow older.
Our bodies become ill.
Plans fall apart.
This is simply part of being human.
But then comes the second arrow.
“This shouldn’t have happened.”
“My life is ruined.”
“I’ll never recover.”
“Why me?”
The first arrow is life.
The second arrow is the story we build around life.
We cannot always avoid pain.
But perhaps we can begin noticing the stories that transform pain into prolonged suffering.
And perhaps that noticing is the beginning of wisdom.
Learning to See Again
At this point you might be thinking,
“If my mind is constantly telling stories, how do I stop?”
It’s a reasonable question.
But perhaps it isn’t the right question.
The goal of Buddhist practice isn’t to become someone who never has thoughts. It isn’t to become a person who never creates stories. As long as we are human beings, the mind will continue to do what minds do. Just like our pancreas produces insulin, our minds compare, they remember, they anticipate, they imagine. It’s just what they do.
The question is not whether stories arise.
The question is whether we have to believe them all.
One of the greatest gifts the Dharma offers us is a little space between the story and ourselves.
In that space, something beautiful becomes possible.
Curiosity.
Compassion.
Freedom.
Beginner’s Mind
There is a beloved teaching in Zen Buddhism called Beginner’s Mind.
Shunryu Suzuki Roshi opened his classic book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind with a sentence that has inspired countless practitioners:
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.”2
What a wonderful reminder.
The more convinced we become that we know exactly what is happening, the less we are actually able to see.
Have you ever noticed how children explore the world?
They don’t begin with conclusions.
They begin with wonder.
Everything is new.
Everything is interesting.
Everything invites another question.
Somewhere along the way, many of us lose that curiosity.
Instead of asking,
“I wonder what’s happening?”
we decide,
“I already know what is happening.”
And once we think we know, we stop exploring.
We stop listening.
We stop learning.
Beginner’s Mind doesn’t mean pretending we know nothing.
It means being willing to let go of certainty.
It means approaching this moment fresh, without demanding that it fit yesterday’s story.
Seeing Clearly
Dōgen Zenji expressed this beautifully when he wrote:
“To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by the ten thousand things.”3
I love that progression.
Study the self.
Forget the self.
Be awakened by reality itself.
Notice that Dōgen doesn’t tell us to improve the self.
He doesn’t tell us to perfect the self.
He invites us to loosen our grip on the self that is constantly narrating experience, like seeing the forest instead of just the trees.
When our stories become quieter, reality has room to speak.
Perhaps awakening isn’t discovering new answers.
Perhaps awakening is becoming less attached to the answers we already have.
The Story About Ourselves
Perhaps the deepest story we tell isn’t about other people.
It’s about ourselves.
“I’m the capable one.”
“I’m the failure.”
“I’m the peacemaker.”
“I’m the victim.”
“I’m the successful one.”
“I’m the anxious one.”
“I’m the person who never gets it right.”
Over time these stories become our identity.
We stop saying,
“I made a mistake.”
Instead we feel,
“I am a mistake.”
We stop saying,
“I feel anxious today.”
Instead we say,
“I am an anxious person.”
The story hardens.
It becomes who we think we are.
But Buddhism gently asks,
Who is this “I” that you’re defending?
Who is this person you’ve spent so much energy trying to protect?
Bombu Nature
One of the words that has meant more and more to me over the years is the Japanese word used by Shinran to describe us: bombu.
It is often translated as “ordinary foolish being.”
At first, that sounds discouraging.
Who wants to be called foolish?
But Shinran wasn’t insulting us.
He was describing us honestly.
A bombu is someone whose life is shaped by blind passions.
Someone who sees the world through self-centered eyes.
Someone who sincerely wants to do good, and yet repeatedly becomes trapped by fear, pride, anger, greed, jealousy, and attachment.
In other words…
Us.
Shinran did not place himself above anyone else.
In one of his best-known passages he wrote:
“As for me, Shinran, I do not have even a single disciple.”4
That statement has always moved me.
He wasn’t creating a hierarchy.
He wasn’t claiming spiritual superiority.
He walked alongside everyone else as another foolish being embraced by boundless compassion.
Elsewhere, Shinran wrote words that continue to humble generations of followers:
“I know nothing at all of good and evil.”4
He’s not saying morality doesn’t matter.
He’s acknowledging the limits of his own self-centered perspective.
How often do we believe we fully understand our own motives?
Or someone else’s?
Shinran’s honesty is startling.
He recognized that even our best intentions are often mixed with self-interest.
Even our most generous actions can contain a desire for recognition.
Even our spiritual practice can become another story about becoming a better person.
The Nembutsu Interrupts the Story
People sometimes ask,
“Does reciting the Nembutsu make suffering disappear?”
No.
At least, not in my experience.
The stories still arise.
The fears still appear.
The mind still writes.
But something changes.
The Nembutsu gently interrupts the narration.
For a moment, I stop trying to explain everything.
For a moment, I stop trying to defend myself.
For a moment, I remember that I don’t have to carry the whole world on my shoulders.
I remember that before I ever knew how to say “Namu Amida Butsu,” immeasurable compassion already knew me.
Before I ever tried to become a better Buddhist…
Before I ever understood the teachings…
Before I ever questioned my own stories…
I was already embraced.
Not because I had earned it.
Not because I had become wise.
Simply because compassion is boundless.
And perhaps that is the most liberating story of all.
Or maybe it isn’t a story.
Maybe it is the reality that has been quietly waiting beneath all the stories I have spent my life telling.
The remarkable thing is that once we begin to trust that compassion, something else begins to happen.
We become less invested in defending our own version of reality.
We become more patient.
More curious.
More forgiving.
Not because we have perfected ourselves.
But because we no longer need our stories to save us.
The storyteller can finally rest.
The Story Is Not the Enemy
Sometimes people hear a talk like this and conclude that stories are bad.
I don’t think that’s true.
Stories help us make meaning.
Stories connect generations.
The Buddha taught through stories.
Shinran used stories.
Our own lives are stories.
The problem is not that we tell stories.
The problem is forgetting that they are stories.
The problem comes when we mistake our interpretation for reality itself.
When we become convinced that our perspective is the only possible one.
When we cling so tightly to our version of events that compassion can no longer enter.
Perhaps awakening isn’t about having no story.
Perhaps awakening is learning to hold every story with open hands.
The Great Compassion
If our minds are constantly creating stories…
If our hearts continue returning to fear…
If we cannot free ourselves simply by trying harder…
Then where is our hope?
Shinran’s answer is profound.
Not in ourselves alone.
But in the immeasurable compassion symbolized by Amida Buddha.
One of Shinran’s most beloved reflections says:
“When I deeply consider the Vow of Amida, which arose from five kalpas of profound thought, I realize that it was entirely for me alone.”4
Shinran didn’t mean that he was somehow special.
He is speaking as every one of us.
The Vow is for me.
For this foolish person.
For this anxious person.
For this storyteller.
Not after I finally become wise enough.
Now.
Exactly as I am.
That realization changes everything.
Because if I am already embraced by immeasurable compassion, I no longer need to spend my life proving that my story is the right one.
The Compassion That Never Leaves
There is one final story that the ego loves to tell.
It whispers,
“You are alone.”
“You have to figure this out yourself.”
“If you don’t fix yourself, no one will.”
For many years, I believed that story.
Perhaps you have too.
But our practice gently offers another way of seeing.
Before I knew how to seek compassion…
Compassion was already seeking me.
Before I ever uttered the nembutsu…
The Vow had already embraced me.
Before I ever recognized my foolishness…
Infinite Wisdom already knew me completely.
And loved me anyway.
That is not a story I created.
That is a reality I continue learning to trust.
Every time I say,
Namu Amida Butsu,
I hear something different than I did years ago.
I used to think I was calling out to Amida.
Now I sometimes wonder if it is Amida calling out to me.
Calling me home from the endless stories I tell myself.
Calling me home from fear.
Calling me home from certainty.
Calling me home from the exhausting task of trying to save myself.
Calling me back to gratitude.
Closing
The Pure Land path does not promise that we will stop being ordinary foolish beings.
It promises something even more wonderful.
That ordinary foolish beings are never outside the embrace of boundless wisdom and compassion.
That is why we gather.
That is why we listen to the Dharma.
That is why we say the nembutsu.
Not because we have finished the journey.
But because we have discovered that we never walk it alone.
May we become a little gentler with the stories we tell.
May we become a little more curious about the stories others carry.
May we remember that every person we meet has a life we cannot fully see.
And may we entrust ourselves, again and again, to the boundless compassion that has never let us go.
Namu Amida Butsu
References
- Covey, S.R. (1989) The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. Free Press, United States.
- Suzuki, S. (1970). Zen mind, beginner’s mind. Weatherhill.
- Dōgen. (2000). Actualizing the fundamental point (Genjōkōan). In K. Tanahashi (Ed.), Moon in a dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dōgen (pp. 70–73). North Point Press.
- Yuien. (1997). Tannishō: A record in lament of divergences (D. T. Suzuki, Trans.). Shambhala.
Everyday Nembutsu 