Per­sonal self respon­si­bil­ity is often con­fused with egotism.

When we say, “You are com­pletely respon­si­ble for your expe­ri­ence,” we do not mean “It’s all about me.”

“It’s all about me” is actu­ally a form of ‘dis-ease.’

Many are the peo­ple who think that the world isn’t treat­ing them right. I hear this one espe­cially as I coun­sel cou­ples. There they sit, bale­fully glar­ing at each other, vainly hop­ing I’ll declare a win­ner. Each rat­tles off a litany of what the other is doing wrong. Some­times, one or the other will tell me, with great right­eous­ness, “Every­one knows that rela­tion­ships should be easy. When you find the right per­son, (s)he will meet all your needs, with­out ask­ing, and every­thing will be perfect.”

This is egotism.

Ego­tism is not the same as self-responsibility.

My belief is that there is no rea­son to expect any­one to put me first. It doesn’t mat­ter that my par­ents seemed to dote on me as an infant (hint: they had to or I’d have died… same for you…) or told me I was spe­cial and impor­tant and could be or do any­thing (also true, and I remind you of that list of funny Zen-ish quotes from last week: )

05. Always remem­ber that you’re unique.
Just like every­one else.

See the Zen in this? It’s a para­dox. Every per­son who ever lived is unique —even to the level of fin­ger­prints. And each per­son is spe­cial.

How­ever, so is every­one else, equally to you. This emphat­i­cally lev­els the play­ing field.

Self-responsibility, then, is to walk a path.

Here’s another para­dox: There are many paths through life, and there is only one path that leads to enlight­en­ment. The con­fu­sion arises in think­ing that the true or func­tional path is the prop­erty of one reli­gion or another.

Dumb paths that get us nowhere involve any attempt to be spe­cial in the eyes of oth­ers.

The wise path, the one path, in all cases, is drop­ping the ego.

What does this mean?

It is the foursquare recog­ni­tion that, as no one and noth­ing (no thing), I nonethe­less guide myself along a path that leads toward awareness.

A Help­ful Haiku

(Mat­suo Basho (1644–1694), known as Basho, was a Zen monk who trav­elled across Japan dur­ing the Toku­gawa era, teach­ing and writ­ing more than a thou­sand haiku. Read more here:

This road –
No one is on it.
The autumn evening.

–or–

No one
walks along this path
this autumn evening.

The dumb path is this: some­one (me! me! me) walks along the path.

The wise path: no one walks this path, as the path is walked. There is no walker. There is walking.

Get it?

So, what’s up with the cow? (see intro box, above)

I just read that one this morn­ing, (it’s Koan # 38) and I liked it. As an image, con­sider a cow that has climbed through a win­dow. Seem­ingly through to the other side, the tail remains lodged firmly in the window.

Why?

Prac­ti­cally speak­ing, you and I are in this world until we are not. Yet, until we die, we remain ‘attached,’ at some level, to our human­ity, and to our iden­tity. We can get all the way through the win­dow, except for ‘that which catches us.’ The ‘tail that catches us’ is our ‘embod­ied–ness.’ Thus, we can get far along the path, but drop­ping the ego com­pletely requires death — ceas­ing to be ‘in and of the body.’

So far as I can tell, no one has pulled off this trick while living.

In other words, you can­not ‘get it,’ but you can, moment by moment, be ‘get­ting it.‘

Thus, one has a choice. You can con­tinue to beat up on your­self for what you do not ‘get,’ or you can con­tinue to walk the path.

Beat­ing up, giv­ing up, blam­ing, wait­ing for res­cue, all of these are ‘faulty paths’ that lead nowhere. Walk­ing, while rec­og­niz­ing the ‘stuck tail,’ is the road to enlightenment.

Per­sonal self-responsibility might then be seen as the will­ing­ness to walk, no mat­ter what seems to be hap­pen­ing around you or to you. The dis­ci­pline is to ask, “What of this is mine, and what of this is out of my con­trol? (Hint: any­thing out­side of ‘you,’ is, by def­i­n­i­tion, out of your control.)

What is my ‘tail’ caught on? What am I dis­tract­ing myself with?

It’s tempt­ing to waste your life try­ing to make oth­ers respon­si­ble — for your hap­pi­ness, for your wealth, for what you know, for your feel­ings. It’s tempt­ing to demand that oth­ers and ‘the world’ treat you as you want to be treated. What you might be notic­ing is that this is not work­ing, never works, and (you’ll have to trust me on this part) never will work.

Demand­ing the impos­si­ble is the erro­neous path.

Wis­dom is free­ing your­self from expec­ta­tion. Again and again.

An expec­ta­tion is a demand for future com­pli­ance, and mostly does not work. When it does, it’s a fluke. Bas­ing your life on flukes is dumb.

Instead, com­mit to a path that leads nowhere, walked by no one. The path to nowhere is walked in the now-here, (because there is no des­ti­na­tion, only the walk, until, para­dox­i­cally, you reach the des­ti­na­tion for all of us — death.)

This wis­dom path is walked with atten­tion to every detail, every inter­pre­ta­tion, all with the recog­ni­tion that no one is walk­ing, no one is inter­pret­ing. Think­ing that there is a you in all of this, is your ‘stuck tail’ — your ego iden­ti­fy­ing with the role of inter­preter, walker.

I know. What the heck is he talk­ing about?

Con­sider the expres­sion “Chop wood, carry water.” My intent with this blog is to give you tools to let go of your present way of see­ing and being. Noth­ing changes in the ‘real’ world. There is still wood to chop, water to carry. So what changes?

Your focus, atti­tude and com­mit­ment. Instead of mind­less­ness, grip­ing, com­plain­ing, you do what you do by bring­ing your atten­tion to right now, and being there and there alone. You chop wood, carry water, with total, mind­ful attention.

( If you watch kids play, you see a child’s ver­sion of this — total focus on the game at hand, so that there is no play and player. There is just playing.)

And then, as your ego pops up, smile and think, “caught tail.” Let go, give your­self a shake, and go back to play­ing — being.

Or, keep pre­tend­ing that any­one cares, and that res­cue is at hand. 95% of the pop­u­la­tion buys into that delusion.

Drop me a line if this delu­sion works out for you, eh?

I sus­pect that no one will reply…