Shaping Bonsai Trees
So we have this mystical Eastern wisdom trying to tell us that we should become liberated from our ego. What’s the big deal about ego? Even if we can see that an ego isn’t all that important (or even all that beneficial) to carry around, we still can’t get rid of it! We seem stuck with this persistent sensation that there is a ‘me’ inside this sack of skin, and even if that ‘me’ causes problems, it’s still an undeniable fact that it’s there!
The reason it’s so difficult to get rid of the ego is that it’s not something we can just cast off, like an old pair of shoes. It’s something that’s so much a part of our fabricated world-view that we simply can’t imagine life without it!
The key is not to decide the ego is bad and then seek to get rid of it. This can only lead us in endless circles, because any effort we apply toward casting off the ego will merely reinforce the strength of the ego itself. It’s like trying to empty a bowl of water by pouring more and more water inside.
The key is to see the ego for what it is (or more precisely, for what it isn’t). The best way to do this is through pure Awareness. But since that can be difficult for us to understand sometimes, it doesn’t hurt to use our thinking-minds to try to get to the bottom of it.
One way to do that is to explore the foundation-blocks of the ego. Let’s take a look at just one of them and see what we see.
Mastery
What I mean by ‘mastery’ is that we think of ourselves as having willful influence over our surroundings. In fact, this is the basis of all human effort! The more effectively we can manipulate our environment, the more ‘successful’ we are as individuals and as a species. Our lives are full of efforts toward mastery – mastery over our health, over our finances, and over our ‘selves’. As a species we try to master disease, our environment, and our economies. Even if we abhor the word ‘mastery’, and instead like to think that we, for instance, ‘work with the environment’, we’re still playing the same game. The basic idea is that our intention toward the things in our lives will affect our relationship with them. This is so basic that none of us even examine the idea!
Bonsai Trees
Think of a bonsai tree. It is clear that we have a masterful relationship over the tree. It would grow up just like a regular tree, but since we’ve decided to shape it, it will take on a beautiful, twisted form, and it will never grow too large. From our usual, ego-centric perspective, we are manipulating the tree to make it into something different than if we had left it alone.
But what about from the tree’s perspective? If the tree is capable of thinking, might it not think that it is the master of us? Every so often the human comes and sits down, and the tree makes the human bend its fingers into all sorts of shapes (as we gently push on branches and bend wires). It makes the human’s mind slow down and quiet. It makes the human sit there for a time.
Who Has the Power?
We’ll probably reject the concept of the bonsai having control over us right away, due to the fact that we have this idea of mastery embedded in us. We feel quite sure that we initiate and orchestrate the relationship. We’re certainly not at the mercy of the bonsai tree!
Or are we?
We might say we’re not because it is we who are applying the leverage, so to speak. The tree is bending to our pushes. But in martial arts, we’re often taught that we can ‘master’ a situation best by yielding to force. If someone is pushing against me and I suddenly step backward, is it not I that is initiating the effect? But I’m certainly not pushing back! Is it our fingers bending the bonsai’s limbs, or are the limbs bending our fingers?
Okay. Enough of that tricky talk. The real difference isn’t about who is pushing. It is about who is willing the effect. The tree has no choice in the matter, but we do. After all, we could get up and walk away from the tree at any time! Right?
Maybe. And here we encounter the core of the ego illusion. We feel sure that we make the decisions in our lives. For instance, if I want to wiggle the fingers of my left hand, they wiggle. But where did this ‘decision’ come from? If we spend some time in contemplation, we’ll begin to notice that everything happens spontaneously, and we can’t trace our actions back to any reliable source. All we know is that we ‘made’ a decision. Who decided to make it?
If we look, our ‘will’ seems suspiciously like the ‘will’ of a tree that insists that it decided to wave its branches, when really it is just moving in response to the wind. This article takes a deeper look.
If you decide there is a will, then you need not look any further. But you will have to live with the host of problems the belief in a will creates. If you take the time to look for a will and you can’t find it, what does that mean? The answer to that depends on whether you believe there is not a will, or you actually see it for yourself. The belief gets you into another host of strange problems, but if you can see what ‘will’ really is, none of these questions will be confusing any more.
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