Who Are You?

I had a dream in which someone imperiously asked, "Who are you?" He was not satisfied with the ordinary answers: I am a man, a father, a husband, a nurse, an alcoholic, a son, a brother. "But WHO are you?" he kept insisting (and, of course, being a dream, I felt compelled to answer). More out of frustration than conviction, I finally said, "I don't know!" This seemed to finally satisfy him.

But it didn't satisfy me. I know this is a question that has been kicked around for centuries by all of the greatest minds to think about such things. Kierkegaard, Aristotle, Freud, Descartes (Cogito ergo sum: I think, therefore I am) have all struggled with this and none have come up with answers that are viscerally satisfying, even when they are intellectually sating.

Descartes

So, who am I? It seems to me that we exist as if we were scattered pieces of identity that we coalesce around a temporary sense of self that is no more real than a story we tell ourselves. In my mind this is a very literal vision, far-flung fragments of consciousness floating in a vast void. When I have need of an identity, I pull toward me (with the gravitation of a heavenly body) the pieces that will best serve me for this moment in time, only to release them back into the void when they cease to have utility.

But in this model, there must still be a central consciousness which chooses to draw the fragments together, some controlling sensibility that makes all this work worthwhile. What is this core of being?

I think it would come as little surprise to most of us that we live different lives and are different people depending on our circumstances. I know that I am regarded quite differently at work than I am at home and quite differently with my birth family than with my wife. I am not sure the Reid of work would even recognize the Reid my mother knows. I'm not even certain they would like each other much (though each would no doubt appreciate the other's sense of humor). Yet, to me there is a seeming continuity of my being from one moment to the next.

Of course, this could just all be philosophical twaddle, just a mental twiddling of my thumbs, but for one thing. This desire to make of ourselves a solid, substantial, lasting being is the very source of the suffering in our lives. And it is this suffering that stands in the way of our freedom. Mathematically speaking, then (if A=B and B=C, then A=C), it is the "selfing" in which we engage that imprisons us in modes of being inimical to our best interests, to our release from the bondage of Self.

What did the man in the dream want from me? I'm not sure I know, but his satisfaction with my final answer suggests to me that perhaps he was asking me to recognize not just that I did not know the answer but that it was unknowable. The Buddha would suggest that the answer (and the seeking of the answer) is useless and harmful, much the same as needing to know the nature of combustion before acknowledging you are on fire.

You are on fire.