Re: Introducing: Your Self

Man! when I tried to introduce "self" my head spins multidimesionally! ;/
I guess this is why we have to limit self by identifying it as a form of awareness that one can observe through a process of self analysis or relection. Or as some conglomerate of memories and thoughts and projections that we have to give structure to in order to understand. Or maybe the self is like the "God" concept something that is just unknowable. Perhaps we are images of the unknowable ourselves. So is it possible to project incompleteness? or to "Not" know self? or is it that we project only a tiny bit of self dependent on what others "selves" also project? kind of a universal thing. How could an image of the "All that Is" be any less than complete otherwise?.

I Am reminde of this discourse between a master and student:

Master, according to Zen, what is the Self?"
The Master briefly looks up from his tea and says, "I do not know." Then he quietly continues sipping.

Note for self:
Maybe the knowledge of self is in being humble enough to not pretend to know something as universal and infinite as the self. Maybe the self is fundamentally unknowable, enigmatic even. Maybe "NOT" knowing is true knowledge in that "NOT" knowing causes one to have no attachment and then the knowledge is that you know "NOT". and one can know that with certainty! I certainly do!

I like this one:

A well known Zen master realized his greatest teaching as this: Buddha is your own self, your own nature. So impressed by this profound idea, a monk decided to leave the monastery and retreat to the wilderness to meditate on this insight. There he spent 20 years alone probing the great teaching. One day he met another monk who was traveling through the forest. Quickly the hermit monk learned that the traveler also had studied under the very same Zen master. "Please, tell me what you know of the master's greatest teaching," he asked the traveler. The traveler's eyes lit up, "Ah, yes the master has been very clear about this.
He says that his greatest teaching is this:
Buddha is "NOT" your own self."

A.

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