The Watcher
Years ago when I was reading a good deal of Buddhist commentary, one of the works most helpful to me was the collection of Chogyam Trungpa’s talks in Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. In these talks, Trungpa speaks frequently of the “watcher.”
The “watcher” is a self-protective activity of the ego or personal self. It can operate when with others, as when one watches himself or herself when dancing in a dance hall; or simply with oneself, when one is aware of an “I” reacting to this or that and wondering whether it is proper to react like that.
All of us are familiar with the watcher. We wonder how our appearance or behavior is going to be received by others. We put a shirt or blouse on when someone comes to the door. We don’t express our views openly to everyone. We keep our behavior within acceptable bounds, watching ourselves so that no one disapproves.
Chogyam Trungpa says that “checking oneself” or watching oneself, is “an unnecessary kind of self-observance”[1]. A zazen practitioner can cast the watcher aside rather easily. The action is similar to dropping thinking when meditating. The rewards of dropping the watcher are considerable. The watcher removes a person from life. We are fully in life only when we are not watching ourselves. Drop the watcher, and what ensues is a more spontaneous, spacious, and expansive life.
Footnotes
- Chogyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, Shambhala, Boston and London, 2002, p. 21.