What am I?

I will try to engage in a Cartesian-styled process of doubt in order to try and uncover what I am speaking about when I say "I" or "me". Descartes made some very provocative inquiries in his Meditations on First Philosophy, however I don't believe he went far enough. When I ask "What am I?", I can feasibly begin with Descartes' "I am a thinking thing" and from there, ask the question "What is it that is thinking?". The statement "I am a thinking thing" is in itself only a thought being presently entertained by the thing that thinks it, presumably me, and cannot be settled on as a definitive answer to the question "What am I?". To understand what I am, I must move past the idea that I am a thinking thing to uncover what it is that is thinking right now. However, I discover a problem here, that is that any answer to the question "What is thinking right now?" or better put perhaps "What is asking this question?", will in itself only be another thought entertained by that which thinks and asks. So I must here ask this: Is an agent a separate entity apart from its action? Is a thinking thing existent apart from its act of thinking? Presumably we would agree that a thing that moves is separate from its motion, that there is the thing, and then there is its motion. But if we take a car, for example, and it is moving, where could we locate its motion as being separate from the car itself? When the car is moving, it is in no way a different object than when it is motionless; so what is its motion? How can we feasibly argue that its motion is distinct from it? But there must be something we can point to that explains the effect motion has on an object, thus proving that motion is indeed a distinct entity. All that we can say here is that there is a change in location. Besides this, motion has no other effect on an object, from the observable viewpoint. And if we point to a moving object at any given moment in time during its motion, as if we were to pause a video of a moving ball, we only see that the ball is in a different place, and that there is nothing present to be called "motion". The confusion encountered here is akin to the question of whether or not a thinking thing can be said to be separate from its thinking. And yet, to say that I am a thinking thing only would be inaccurate, for it is fair to say that I am an eating and drinking thing, a sleeping and walking thing. To say these activities are of the body only and that the Self is distinct from the body is pure speculation, and cannot be shown to be true. However, for now we will operate with the Cartesian foundation of the Self as a thinking thing. Is the thing that thinks separate from its thoughts? I can only answer yes to this question if I can somehow uncover that the thing that thinks is not a thought. Until then, no satisfying answer will ever be given.

I've started writing poetry again:


Beneath the far-flung, endless roof of space,
A single hymn is turning in the void,
A chanting coming from another place
Where ancient infant fears are all destroyed.
Arise, you armies of the twilight moon
And carry home the hopeless and afraid
Who all through Life have prayed that Death come soon;
Now lay them ‘neath the Great Tree lest they fade.
Give unto them the Living Water true,
Glowing in the silver shade of night;
Speak unto them the Word that will renew ---
Immortal flower, blossom in the light.

Pointless.. no one reading anyway

The moment I begin to write, I lose the words.. as if they're right at my fingertips and then suddenly they scurry off like mice that want not to be seen. I believe there is a true Home for all of us, whether or not it is the same for each. I am not sure what makes me believe this.. there is a part of me, so hidden and secret that at times I think I am making it up, that really truly feels the truth of this... that there is a Home. Not A home, but THE Home, before my body, before my life, before mistakes, before friends and enemies, before romance, before despair and sadness, even before happiness. I know somewhere in me that there is a Home, a Home that maybe is nothing more than a new and truer way of Being, a new a truer way of seeing and understanding my role as a human being.. my role as a lover and a boy and a man and a son and a friend. But maybe it is none of this.. there is nothing substantial to tell me the truth in this world. There is nothing around me that I can grab hold of and say "See! This is what I mean!", for when I begin to do this, it comes out all wrong, it comes out nonsense, or it comes out in a way that has been done before. God, help me. Isn't that Home? Why have we been taught to fragment and divide and go further into the mind's recesses? Further into the endless branching and sprouting of idea and opinion and position and personality and right/wrong blah blah blah? Is it so hard to see that there is a Light that is illuminating all of this? A Light that makes all things possible and all things knowable? Am I insane? NO! Thousands of years of wisdom and practice and worship and prayer and meditation and reflection and contemplation, all for what? All to be abandoned as fruitless by this generation? In fact, reading over this, it struck me that it is simply absurd to think that I can point to this Light, as it is the Light that illuminates even my pointing! This is what the Zen masters have been saying for hundreds of years, and before them the Advaita Vedanta teachers who said Thou art That! But no one cares. This is stupid.