befuddled musings of a western amateur regarding the thought of Eastern masters

my yin and i had dinner with a friend's place yesterday. she served this bizarre, cold soup that was comprised of avocado and grapefruit, and i found myself dipping my spoon back into the small blue bowl three times. it went something like this:

dip;

mind says, interesting;

mouth goes, "ugh!"

dip;

mind says, interesting;

mouth goes, "ugh!"

dip;

mind says, interesting;

mouth goes, "ugh!"

but this is beside the point.

the point is that what became clearer (?) to me during the course of our conversation was the relationships between the approaches of Vedant and Buddhism.

in Vedant, everything and everyone and every moment is self.
it's all "self, self, self" until the cows come home.

(upside)

this is a useful way of framing things whenever one feels put upon, hurt, or wronged. it takes one out of the headspace of victimhood and redeposits her back into the One, allowing her to see that she is still whole and that nothing important can ever be lost or broken.

(flipside)

"self, self, self"

can easily become

"me, me, me"

- or worse -

"mine, mine, mine."

in Buddhism, there is:

no self,
no i,
no me.

(sunny side)

it's easier to focus
on others because:

without a "me,"

there is nothing

- emotional, intellectual, physical, or otherwise -

to be obtained
from anyone.

(backside)

the lack of self could lead to (especially for me)
the descent into nihilism (pun not intended for a change).


this idea of no self has a resonance that i'm only just beginning to explore. it helps to untangle some of the subtle egoistic knots i've tied myself into recently by projecting conceptual frameworks onto the atman.

there may not be a damn atman for all i know, and i'm committed to unraveling myself until either it - or nothing - remains.