I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Thursday Thinker, I share a smart idea or theory.
In a recent dharma talk, Insight Meditation Center teacher Gil Fronsdal discussed how easily we take on the idea of mine, that is, thinking that something is mine when it is really just a thing in the world. Claiming ownership of things like that, whether tangible (this purse is mine) or intangible (this thought about what a poor recent financial decision I made is mine) creates suffering.
As an example:
So, to give you… a simple example of how easy it is to create the idea of mine and then be caught in it and then suffer big time. [Most] people in their meditation career will have this happen to them, where they have to leave the meditation hall, leave the Dharma talk for something, for a couple of minutes. Right? And they leave their cushion there. They were sitting in a chair. And they come back two minutes later, and someone is sitting in my seat. That’s my seat. We didn’t even know we created that, yeah, that’s my seat. I was sitting there. I claimed it. I have a right to it. How could they take my seat? This is an act of violence, of radical disrespect, you know, and thoughtless, careless, probably conceited. They took my seat. Okay. If no one had taken the seat and you’d come back and sat there, that wouldn’t have risen in the mind in such a strong way. This is my seat…. It’s not that important, but we are so capable of glomming on to mine. But is it really yours?
Why is it problematic to say “this is mine,” “that is mine,” mine, mine, mine?
It creates craving and clinging and wanting. It can create bad feelings against people who have what you think is yours or when people have things that you don’t have (you think, those things are not mine! Oh no!)
Fronsdal uses the Buddha’s teachings on not self to guide us away from all this insistence that things in the world are mine:
And so when the Buddha taught this teaching of not self, It was always particular. This is not self. He wasn’t saying there’s no self in some generalized, big philosophical way. He was really concerned about the phenomena of direct experience as it appears. And in that direct experience, you can’t find anything that qualifies to be the self or even qualifies to be mine. when there’s gentle wind brushes against your cheek, is that mine? That’s mine. You know, you don’t take a gentle coolness against your cheek as mine. It’s just a coolness against your cheek. You let it be there. It’s finally wonderful to have a thought arise, and don’t take it as mine.
Choosing to think of thoughts that enter your head as not self and not mine can be a helpful way of detaching from them. This is something you learn to do in meditation. Just sit with your thoughts and feelings as they come and go. Allow them to arise and go away. Don’t give them so much power over you.
I have been using this to help with regrets that I have over past decisions. When a thought arises such as, “I wish I hadn’t sold so much of my (for example) Meta stock in 2022 and I’d be so much better off,” I think “this thought is not mine. This thought is not self.” And I can let go of it a little. I don’t have to hold onto that thought as mine and therefore some commentary on my reality. It’s just a thought that arises and goes away. I don’t have to give it so much power to create clinging and craving.
Here’s another example from my life: my paintings. The paintings I’ve created are mine, right? Well, sort of. What if I didn’t think of them as mine? What if when I thought about them I labeled them not self?
I can say to myself, these paintings are from the universe. These paintings exist. That painting has a lot of cadmium red light on it. This other painting could use some glaze. This third painting needs to be framed. What if I treated my paintings as phenomenological experiences in my life rather than clinging to tightly to them as my creations? As mine? It would probably be easier to share them into the world if I didn’t so tightly hold to the idea that they are mine.
Fronsdal gives a funny example of why sometimes it’s useful to use the word “mine”:
[You] do people a favor sometimes by using the word mine. [For example], a neighbor needs to get to the doctor and their car is not working. And [so you say] hey, you can use my car, … as opposed to, oh, yeah. There’s a car which the state of California has given me the sole rights to use, and I have the paperwork to show it. And it’s up on the street. It’s a gray Toyota. And it’s 10 years old. And this here is a key that will work in it. And I think with rights I’ve been given by state of California, I can allow you to use it. I mean… [it’s] easier to just say, you can use my car.
I think that’s funny, to treat things we own like that, as sort of phenomenological experiential elements of the universe that we don’t own but are just coming into and out of our lives.
I think of my pets: “this dog Bo is not mine” and in a lot of ways he is not. Bo is a dog who has his own life to live and it happens that I am housing him, feeding him, loving him, and caring for him. Is he really mine? In a legal sense he is but in a Buddhist not-self not-mine sense he’s not. He’s just an aspect of my experiences (and I’m an aspect of his).
I’m on a road trip right now and I left my airpods, outside their case, in a hotel room back in Grand Canyon Village. I dropped the case during the night and didn’t realize they had popped out, because the case was closed when I retrieved it from under the bed. I only discovered 350 miles later they weren’t in the case. I didn’t even notice the Find My notification I got from my phone as we drove away from Maswik Lodge.
Those airpods were mine! Dammit! I want them back.
Instead, I tell myself, “those airpods are not mine. Those airpods are not self.” They came into and went out of my life. I experienced their noise-cancelling abilities and good sound, at the gym, on the airplane, in the car. Maybe I’ll experience those exact airpods again someday. I filed a lost item report with Maswik Lodge. I probably won’t ever see them again. I might buy some new ones. Wirecutter says that the budget EarFun Air Pro 4 noise-cancelling earbuds are pretty good.
I like thinking of things in my life, thoughts and airpods and paintings, just as aspects of my experience rather than things I own, things that are mine. I know that if I meditated more I might be better at allowing this coming and going of things.