In Eight Steps to Happiness Geshe-la says "'Self' and 'other' are relative terms, rather like 'this mountain' and 'that mountain ... 'This' and 'that' therefore depend upon our point of reference. This is also true of self and other. By climbing down the mountain of self, it is possible to ascend the mountain of other, and thereby cherish others as much as we presently cherish ourself."

Friday, March 16, 2012

My Body as a Phantom Limb

In previous posts I've mentioned phantom limbs as a concept that helps me understand the emptiness of the body: People who have lost a limb can still experience pain where it used to be. It shows the role of the mind in perceiving a body even though it - and everything else - is essentially in the mind.

At the Western Canada Dharma Celebration in January, Gen-la Dekyong mentioned that our body seems to extend a bit beyond the borders of our skin. It's true - we conceive an area of personal space around our body and can sense it when someone enters that zone. I think of it as being akin to the territorial waters around a country, which it defends along with the land within its borders. Interesting, too, that how far our personal space extends is largely culturally determined - mind again!

Did you know there's a phenomenon that's the opposite of a phantom limb, where you deny having a part of your body that's still intact? A friend has a daughter with a brain injury; when she looks at her arm she says, "That's not my arm."

Today when I was meditating on the emptiness of my body, I was imagining the whole thing as a kind of phantom body. The body I was perceiving was no more real than an amputated arm. I think it also helped with the idea of an absence, to keep me from seeing emptiness as nothingness.

1 comment:

  1. Yes, so helpful, and you put it very well. In self-generation practice, when ordinary appearances of my old body re-appear, I think of them too as a phantom limb.

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