Writing a book has taught me about many things—ego prominently among them.
Over an almost 60-year professional career, I had come to think of myself as good at writing, editing, and managing publications—that is, a person with certain skills. As I completed my book manuscript, I began to take on another role—a person who has written a book and is shifting into the business side of publishing it. That involved two labels: author and independent publisher.
Labels, though, are fictions. Here’s Shin Buddhist priest Haya Akegarasu, expressing this truth in his characteristically blunt style:
Religion—where does such a thing exist?
Philosophy—I never heard of it.
Art—where is it?
Ethics—does it exist?
These are concepts that exist within the people who talk about them… Some people make up their own concepts and then play with them… They go on talking about religion, philosophy, art, and ethics, which don't exist, and so they convince people that ministers, philosophers, artists, and moralists exist--but actually these aren't real either…
Among tricksters we find: Minister, Philosopher, Artist, Moralist. But among real human beings, there are no such people…
There are people who sing. There are people who write. There are people who think. There are people who live. But what's the matter with that? Among people, there is something they want to manifest. Some people sing it, some write it, some think it, some live it. But whatever it is that is manifested in different ways, it's the same thing. How useless it is to categorize human beings or their deeds. Let's live only as living human beings, alive and lively!
The author label is particularly dangerous for the person being labeled. It’s a built-in mousetrap set by the ego. As I became an author—a label I had dreamed of since an eighth-grade teacher told me I could write—I reveled in the word. In Buddhist language, the demon Mara was pulling me away from awareness and toward egotism. In the language of neuroscience, just thinking about being an author released more endorphins.
This is where years of awareness and nature-of-mind meditation are helping me. I haven’t reached the point of being fully aware every moment of every day, but I have glimpses of what I am allowing my yada-yada-bada-bada mind to get away with. That’s why I decided to write this blog post. I’m sharing my awareness in real time.
As I’ve written, the misbehaving conceptual mind is like my pet dog. If it has been well trained, turning my attention to what it’s doing gets it to stop. It doesn’t need to stop reminding me that I fit the common description of being an author, but it needs to remind me at the same time that’s not who or what I am.
As a matter of fact, in a course I’m currently taking with spiritual teacher Andrew Holecek, he asked us to spend a week considering the question:
Who am I?
I have no answer to that question. I realized it’s the epitome of a Zen koan—a question that can’t be answered logically and leads to more profound meditation and contemplation. I could contemplate it for the rest of my life without answering it—and maybe that’s for the best.
The question of whether I’m a person is confusing enough, as discussed in the post linked to below. Exactly who that person is—if it does exist—exceeds any pay grade I can reach in the human realm.
Whatever I am is not defined by being an author, but I’ll continue to use the label because it feels pretty good for a while and is much better for marketing purposes than:
A collection of ever-changing aggregates that recently wrote and is in the process of publishing a book.
But I’ll remember that “author” is not what I am.
Talking about being an author doing pre-publication marketing for The New Middle Way, consider visiting my new website. If you scroll to the bottom of any page, you can join the email list for my coming newsletter.
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