Part 2

Going On Being; Buddhism and the Way of Change
by Mark Epstein, M.D.

(Page 2 of 2)

Somebody vs. Nobody

I love this story because it connects me to something fundamentally true about my own process of self-discovery. I had the sense very early of feeling lost and cut off from myself. This feeling motivated my spiritual and psychological search, but it also had the potential to make me feel terrible about myself. In my discovery of Buddhism, I found a method of cutting through the self-estrangement that so bothered me. I found a new way to look at myself.

In the 1970s, there was a saying in Buddhist circles, "You have to be somebody before you can be nobody." This was a popular statement because of how clearly it summed up a very obvious phenomenon. Many of the people who were drawn to Buddhism were attracted by the ideas of "no-self" and "emptiness" that are central to the Buddha's psychology. But these are difficult concepts to understand; in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, for example, monks often study the scriptures that explain them for years and years before even meditating. In the West, people who were suffering from alienation or from spiritual and psychological distress often mistook the Buddhist descriptions for an affirmation of their psychological emptiness. "You have to be somebody before you can be nobody," was a way of telling them that their psychological work of raising self-esteem or creating an integrated or cohesive self had to precede efforts at seeing through the ego. In many cases, this was indeed sound advice; but the categorization of people into the two categories of "somebody" and "nobody" created another set of misunderstandings.

When the Buddha taught his middle path, he had the temerity to suggest that both "somebody" and "nobody" were mistakes, that the true vision of who and what we are involves looking without resorting to the instinct of intrinsic reality. "Somebody" was the equivalent of clinging to being, while "nobody" was the same as clinging to nonbeing. In either case, the mind's need for certainty was shortchanging reality. The correct view, the Buddha perceived, lies somewhere in between. The self-centered attitude is as much of a problem as the self-abnegating one. We can be proud or empty; in either case the problem lies in our sense of self-certainty.

Rather than blaming my upbringing, or other people, or instincts beyond my control, this view offered an approach that taught me to work first and foremost with my own reactions to things. When I thought I was somebody I reacted one way, and when I thought I was nobody I reacted another. In either case I was obscuring my own awareness. Removing these obstacles opened me to myself - not as something or nothing, but as a unique, singular, and relational process. I learned to live more in the moment - not putting up a false front and not focusing only on what was expected of me, but in touch with a more spontaneous, creative, and responsive self. As Nasruddin indicated, I was indeed searching for something. Learning to look, instead of react, turned out to be the key.

Meditation was the vehicle that opened me up to myself, but psychotherapy, in the right hands, has similar potential. It was actually through my own therapy and my own studies of Western psychoanalytic thought that I began to understand what meditation made possible. As compelling as the language of Buddhism was for me, I needed to figure things out in Western concepts as well. Psychotherapy came after meditation in my life, but it reinforced what meditation had shown me. Change did not come from trying to get rid of my problems or from going into them more deeply. It came from accepting what was true about myself and working from there. In exposing me to my chronic ways of reacting, psychotherapy showed me where my blind spots were. It sometimes took the interaction with another person to reveal them to me, but the results were similar to what I had glimpsed from sitting on the cushion: As I learned to question my own identifications, I came to be able to live more fully in the moment, and I felt closer to who I really was.

Copyright © 2002 by Mark Epstein.

About the Author

Dr. Mark Epstein is a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City who lectures frequently about the value of Buddhist meditation for psychotherapy. His previous books include Thoughts Without a Thinker, Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart, and Going on Being. He is a contributing editor to Tricycle: The Buddhist Review and has written many articles for Yoga Journal and O: The Oprah Magazine.