Being Nobody
by Ajahn Sumedho
How many of you feel you have a mission in life to perform? It’s something you’ve got to do and some kind of important task that’s been assigned to you by God or fate or something. People frequently get caught up in that view of being somebody who has a mission. Who can be just with the way things are, so that it is just the body that grows up, gets old and dies, breathes and is conscious? We can practise, live within the moral precepts, do good, respond to the needs and experiences of life with mindfulness and wisdom – but there’s nobody that has to do anything. There’s nobody with a mission, nobody special, we’re not making a person or a saint or an avatar or a tulku or a messiah or Maitreya. Even if you think: ‘I’m just a nobody’ even being a nobody is somebody in this life, isn’t it., You can be just as proud of being nobody as of being somebody and just as deluded attached to being nobody. But whatever you happen to believe, that you’re a nobody or a somebody or you have a mission or you’re a nuisance and a burden to the world or however you might view yourself, then the knowing is there to see the cessation of such a view.
Views arise and cease, don’t they? ‘I’m somebody, an important person who has a mission in life’: that arises and ceases in the mind. Notice the ending of being somebody important or being nobody or whatever – it all ceases, doesn’t it? Everything that arises, ceases so there’s a non-grasping of the view of being somebody with a mission or of being nobody. There’s the end of that whole mass of suffering – of having to develop something, become somebody, change something, set everything right, get rid of all your defilements or save the world. Even the best ideals, the best thoughts can be seen as dhammas that arise and cease in the mind.
Now, you might think that this is a barren philosophy of life because there’s a lot more heart and feeling in being somebody who’s going to save all sentient beings. People with self-sacrifice who have missions and help others and have something important to do are an inspiration. But when you notice that as dhamma, you are looking at the limitations of inspirations and the cessation of it. Then there is the dhamma of those aspirations and actions rather than somebody who has to become something or has to do something. The whole illusion is relinquished and what remains is purity of mind. Then the response to experience comes from wisdom and purity rather than from personal conviction and mission with its sense of self and other, and all the complications that come from that whole pattern of delusion.
Can you trust that? Can you trust in just letting everything go and cease and not being anybody and not having any mission, not having to becomes anything? Can you really trust in that or do you find it frightening, barren or depressing? Maybe you really want inspiration. ‘Tell me everything is all right; tell me you really love me; what I’m doing is right and Buddhism is not just a selfish religion where you get enlightened for your own sake; tell me that Buddhism is here to save all sentient beings. Is that what you’re going to do, Venerable Sumedho? Are you really Mahayana or Hinayana?’
What I’m pointing to is what inspiration is as an experience. Idealism: not trying to dismiss it or to judge it in any way but to reflect on it, to know what that is in the mind and how easily we can be deluded by our own ideas and high-minded views. And to see how insensitive, cruel and unkind we can be by the attachment we have to views about being kind and sensitive. This is where it is a real investigation into Dhamma.
I remember in my own experience, I always had the view that I was somebody special in some way; I used to think, ‘Well I must be a special person. Way back when I was a child I was fascinated by Asia and as soon as I could, I studied Chinese at the university, so surely I must have been a reincarnation of somebody who was connected to the Orient.’
But consider this as a reflection: no matter how many signs of being special or previous lives you can remember or voices from God or messages from the Cosmos, whatever – not to deny that or say that those things aren’t real – but they’re impermanent. They’re anicca, dukkha, anatta. We’re reflecting on them as they really are – what arises ceases: a message from God is something that comes and ceases in your mind, doesn’t it? God isn’t always talking to you continuously unless you want to consider the silence the voice of God. Then it doesn’t really say anything does it? We can call it anything – we can call it the voice of God or the divine or the ringing of the cosmos or blood in your ear drums. But whatever it is, it can be used for mindfulness and reflection – that’s what I’m pointing to, how to use these things without making them into something.
Then the missions we have are responses, not to experience, that we have in our lives – they’re not personal anymore, it’s no longer me, Sumedho Bhikkhu, with a mission as if I’m specially chosen from above, more so than any of you. It’s not that any more. That whole manner of thinking and perceiving is relinquished. And whether or not I do save the world and thousands of beings or help the poor in the slums of Calcutta or help to cure all lepers and do all kinds of good works – it’s not from the delusion of being a person, it’s a natural response from wisdom.
This I trust; this is what saddha is – a faith in the Buddha’s word. Saddha: it’s a real trust and confidence in Dhamma; in just waiting and being nobody and not becoming anything, but being able to just wait and to respond. And if there’s nothing much to respond to, it’s just waiting – coffee cup, watching the rain, the sunset, getting old, witnessing the ageing process, the comings and goings in the monastery – the ordinations and the disrobing, the inspirations and the depressions, the highs and the lows, inside the mind, outside in the world. And there is the response because we have vigour and intelligence and talent, then life asking us to respond to it in some skilful and compassionate way, which we are very willing and able to do. We like to help people. I wouldn’t mind going to a Buddhist leper colony – I’d be glad to – or working in the shanty towns of Calcutta or wherever, I’d have no objections; those kinds of things are rather appealing to my sense of liability!
But it’s not a mission, it’s not me having to do anything; it’s trusting in the Dhamma. Then the response to life is clear and of benefit because it’s not coming from me as a person and the delusions of ignorance conditioning mental formations. And one observes the restlessness, the compulsiveness, the obsessiveness of the mind and lets it cease. We let it go and it ceases.
