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This rings true to me, psychologically, and while I don't know the full context of this quote by the wonderful Mr. Eckhart, in Buddhism, what is described here would probably be seen as part of the Twelve Nidānas of dependent origination (Pratītyasamutpāda) -- how suffering arises by "fabrication" based on fundamental ignorance. For a Buddhist, the key here is looking into the *process," that is: "the wish to experience something" -- and then entering into -- self-identifying -- with what arises from that desire to "experience." And getting endlessly lost in experience after experience without real awareness of what's going on and that one is lost in an endless fractal of cascading causes and effects. In becoming "self," ironically, one loses self in self-replicating processes that have little if any presence or real awareness.
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As a practicing Buddhist, I can tell you this "loss of self in projective selfing" is not an easy problem to solve in terms of an actual practice. Is there an answer to this conundrum -- which could also be called the "desire for becoming" -- that is truly liberating and not murderous, world-denying, or identity-annihilating?
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I am still working all this out in practice, but part of the solution seems to be developing the skill to more and more become conscious, alert, and aware, when the hungry, grasping desire to experience arises. And further, seeing how that unexamined, mindless desire -- "thrown out before" the soul, to use Eckhart's turn of phrase -- is mere fabrication, with no "there there," no real substance, a pseudo "I." With practice of mindfulness and attention, one can see how the impetus to "experience" is simply the impersonal restless hunger, agitation of the "monkey mind" just wanting, wanting, wanting -- wanting the next "banana," the next branch it is swinging to in order to grasp it -- and yet, never satisfied when it grasps (embodies) its fabrication. The irony is that while all this "monkey business" is going on, genuine presence and genuine being quietly await our discovery! (And out of that genuine being, genuine doing arises naturally and is bright joy and freedom of manifestation)
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With some measure of quiet mind, which formal meditation practice can greatly develop, one is able to stop this mindless self-projection process and simply *observe* it, without getting lost in one's own self-fabrication. With the stopping, with the quiet, one rests, and begins to get in touch with what some Zen teachers call the True Self (an ironic term for a system that also speaks of anatta -- not self!)...but, that just means being -- just what it is -- the "this" which shows up in the quiet, alert, bright observant mind. And then, as I said, actions arises not from hunger, not from needfulness, not from grasping at things, but out of a natural sense of what is right, good, proper, and skillful.
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When this awakening happens, when the mind grows bright and sensitive to what is, you know without a doubt you are on the right track. Then whatever action is taken - - as its natural, appropriateness is revealed -- is far more skillful and has far less suffering because one is not so attached to attaining "results" and mere "experience. Then, instead of an endless, unsatisfiable desire to experience, experience, experience, one begins to simply be, wherein being and doing are simply different ways of describing one thing. And that one thing is the freedom of the liberated mind.
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Essay: Steven Goodheart
♡♡♡
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