The Search for Oneself, Part 1: Am I the Body?

A lot of people go for a walk or run to decompress, to blow off steam, to regroup. I’ve been doing that of late as well, but with a twist: Instead of spending the time looking at that which stresses me, I’m redirecting the gaze at that which is experiencing the stress.

After all, if humans have been stressing out for thousands of years and nothing in that formula has really changed (our drinking water being tainted by historically high rates of antidepressants is a clue), maybe we’ve been focusing our energies on the wrong half of that equation. Maybe the stressee is the problem rather than the stressors. (To look within is, of course, the oft-given and oft-ignored advice of the sages. But what do they know?)

The question, then, is who or what am I? Generally speaking, when we refer to I there usually are two entities involved: the body and the mind. For example, as I type these words I am aware that my left knee has been aching today. If I immediately revisit that statement (or any statement I make throughout the course of a day), what I see is: “I” am typing that “I” am aware that “my” left knee aches. That’s a whole lot of “me” going on.

Clearly, I think of this body as me or, at the very least, a key component of me. All of us think this way and we take such thinking for granted. But should we?

As I jogged down a lonely road the other day, the question arose, again and again: Am I the body? Cognitively speaking, it’s pretty easy to see that the body and “I” have nothing in common. My legs and arms churn forward, my heart beats, lungs respire, cells divide, organs process, hair and nails grow, the five senses and brain work to create a sense of the physical world around me, and a gazillion other things take place. And all of it is done with nary a command from “me.” I am blissfully unaware, free instead to obsess about my thoughts.

Similarly, just a few days ago a woman swerved into my lane, forcing me onto the shoulder at 45mph. By the time “I” realized what had happened and voiced a few choice profanities in the direction of the offending driver, my car was back in its proper lane, disaster averted. It occurred to me that “I” hadn’t really come upon the scene until the action was more or less over. The impending collision was recognized, the car swerved to the shoulder, the horn honked, the car swerved back into the lane, and then “I” arrived on the scene to curse and pant furiously at what almost happened. The body had done it all spontaneously without my knowledge or help.

Any of us can see this. We can mull over such things in our mind. But such cognitive exercises are not the same as truly “seeing/knowing” the truth. What I have discovered is that if I look long enough and hard enough, if I inquire again and again, such glimpses of the “Truth” do on occasion occur and on one particular jog that’s just what happened. Running down the road on a particularly hot day, the first of many beads of sweat appeared on my forehead. As it began its journey down my face, I “saw” with incredible clarity that here was this body automatically recognizing the heat and putting into operation its cooling processes.

I was not needed by the body. Not at all. Ever. I saw that I was merely a guest in this loaner body.

Or was “I”? The question now being, “If I have nothing to do with the body then I must be located in the mind. Who else is thinking these thoughts? Who else is inquiring about such things?”