Identity

Current physical models of the universe specify that there is no "center", that there is no uniquely privileged place which we can call a "zero point" from which to measure distances or locations. All positions are purely relative to one another. Yet we each experience the universe from a single and genuinely unique location, in our brain and through our senses. From our standpoint, each of us is at the unique center of the universe; our experience of being individual and unique is one which is shared by every other sentient creature. In fact, it is the ONLY thing we all absolutely have in common: our experience of a unique awareness located in a particular place and time.

Buddhist thought points out that the experience of personal identity or uniqueness is illusory, in that we share our experience of uniqueness with everyone who has ever lived. Yet the illusion is inescapable. Here we are, looking out through our own eyes and thinking our own thoughts, separately from the experience of everyone else who has ever lived. We find ourselves thinking, "why is my experience of myself right here, right now, behind these particular eyes, and not some other place or time or self?" What places "me" here and now? Even recognizing that the self is as illusory as the uniqueness of a candle flame doesn't escape the fact that I experience myself here and now. Even those who are able to transcend the illusion of selfhood are still located in time and space, here and now.

It's easy to see that the "self" is illusory. It is apparently stable, yet it is obvious that it changes from second to second. Most of us would hardly recognize the self we were 20 years ago, or the one we may become in another 20. Awareness drifts from moment to moment like smoke. Our awareness begins in childhood, suspends every night in sleep, and ends in death, and that's all the universe we can ever experience. In fact, it is our awareness of being located in time and space, here and now, that gives strength to the illusion of a constant identity. We look out through our own eyes, not someone elses; we think our own thoughts and have our own memories, not someone else's. Because of that apparent unique location, we identify the one who looks and is aware as a constant "self", an identity.

The conflict between experience and reality cannot end. We feel unique; we know we are not. We think others are different from us; we know they are not. We pretend our experience is unique; we know it is not. We experience ourselves as at the center of the universe, the zero point; we know we are not and it is not. But the question remains: what is it that is at the center of our awareness and behind our eyes? It looks and feels unique but it isn't. What is it?