Being Nobody
When I began serious reading in spiritual texts, decades ago, I was struck by a passage in I Am That, a book of talks by the renowned teacher from the Hindu tradition, Nisargadatta. Nisargadatta had said, “Your true being is entirely unself-conscious, completely free from all self-identification. . . .” “To be, you must be nobody. To think yourself to be something, or somebody, is death and hell.”[1]
I was well acquainted with the discomfort of feeling that I was “somebody.” Feeling that I was “somebody,” I also felt vulnerable and defensive. To feel that I was “nobody” had a great appeal to me.
I reasoned that to eliminate the “somebody” feeling and to move to “nobody,” I needed to find a setting that would bring my “somebody” traits to the fore so that I could try to drop them. I chose a black dance hall and bar, the largest in the city of Houston where I was then, called The Red Rooster.
On my first visit, I found that, except for the band leader, I was the only white person there among at least 150 black patrons. In this setting, the self-identifications and pretensions of “somebody” beset me mightily. I dropped them as I spotted them, and rather soon, I was sitting in the bar as “nobody.”
“Nobody” had its advantages. Patrons readily started up conversations with me, and I with them. I felt open, comfortable, and at ease. Returning to The Red Rooster on a subsequent day, I met my future wife there.
Also, with my experience of eliminating “somebody,” later I could more easily spot other aspects of ego and, in my view anyway, move closer to the purpose of zazen, which is to eliminate ego in daily functioning. Chogyam Trungpa underscores this, saying, “. . .The main point of any spiritual practice is to step out of the bureaucracy of ego.”[2] Also see “No You” on this website.
Footnotes
- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That, The Acorn Press, Durham, 1973, p. 371.
- Chogyam Trungpa,
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, Boston and London, 2002, p. 15.