The Advantages of Many Selves

We talk a lot about the committee of the mind, all the many different “you’s” inside there. When you realize you have to train them all, it gets kind of discouraging sometimes. There seem to be so many of them. But it’s good to see that they’re also our opportunity. If there were just one you, and the one you was really unskillful, what would you do? You’d have to depend on somebody else, some outside power. And if you were really bad, you wouldn’t be willing to give in to that outside power. You’d be hopeless.

You have to realize all the different identities you have inside there are strategies that seemed to work for one thing or another. You may have had limited success with some of them, but you’ve got to have some good ones, too. After all, you are a human being. If you didn’t have some good strategies in your repertoire, you wouldn’t have made it this far. And the fact that you have many identities inside there means that when you can see that you’re in a bad identity, you can pull yourself out using another identity.

So we’re trying to develop the identity of a meditator. I don’t know how many times you hear it said that you shouldn’t have a sense of you doing the path, and that if you get rid of your sense of you, then there’d be no suffering. Impermanence and inconstancy would hold no dangers, because there’d be nothing there that you’d identify with, so things could change any way they wanted to and you wouldn’t be affected.

But you can’t just decide to put yourself in that state or deny that you have a self. You actually have many selves and you have to sort them out. Train those many selves to sort one another out. Develop some of the ones that are already skillful and make them stronger, more skillful.

After all, there’s part of you that does think in terms of long-term happiness. This is called a healthy ego function: anticipation. There are dangers, but you can prepare for them. You’ve been doing that, so ferret out the identities in there that can think in those terms.

Then there are the strategies in there that see how your happiness is going to have to depend on the happiness of others, or at least it’s going to have to depend on not harming others—you’ve learned that lesson, sometimes, too. It may not have been thoroughly learned, but there’s somebody there in your mind that remembers that lesson. Try to find it. Bring it out, especially when you’re feeling discouraged in the practice. Realize that if you don’t do something to train yourself, you’re going to be a weight on other people, and that’s going to make you feel bad about yourself. So try to find the altruistic you in there.

There’s the you in there that knows how to say No to yourself, the one that deals with what’s called suppression, not repression. Repression is when you deny that you’ve got unskillful habits. Suppression is when you admit you have them, but you can learn how to say No to them.

Of course, part of saying No is finding an alternative pleasure. That’s called sublimation. Like being with the breath: Sometimes sitting here meditating, trying to get the mind calm, is not all that satisfying. It’s not going the way you want it. Well, think of other things you can do that would be satisfying.

This is why the training is a full training. It’s not just a sitting-with-your-eyes-closed training. It’s training in generosity, training in virtue, training in goodwill. Work on those. You already have those seeds inside you.

This is a large part of what conviction means. When the Buddha gained awakening, it wasn’t just news about him. It’s news about us as well. We read about him in his last lifetime, and he seems amazing, almost superhuman. But you have to remember that he started out like we are. He had his defilements, but he was able to take the skillful identities he had inside, the skillful desires, the skillful strategies he’d already mastered, and develop them. So when he was able to find the end of suffering, it wasn’t just news about him. It was news about the capability of human action, the possibilities of human action. You’re a human being. You’ve got your good habits. You may have some identities in there that have some pretty bad habits, but there are the good ones. Find them. Strengthen them.

And finally, have a sense of humor about all this. Learn to step back. This is a large part of what the training is: stepping back, pulling out of an identity that’s unskillful, using an identity that’s more skillful. This is why it’s good to have so many “you’s” in there. When they tell you to have no sense of you as you practice, they’re totally depriving you of many, many skillful means. You’re supposed to sit and wait for wisdom to come up, welling up from within you? It’s actually coming from one of the denied selves you’ve already developed. Rather than denying it, bring it out. Use it. When they say that wisdom acts through you, whose wisdom? It’s the wisdom of some of your old identities. Sometimes you can trust it; sometimes you can’t. You’ve got to test it. Rather than denying it, realize you’ve got many identities and you can use them to step back; and one of the clearest ways of stepping back is seeing something as being ironic, something incongruous inside your own mind, and seeing that it’s humorous. When you can laugh at it, that weakens the incongruous, it weakens the unskillful parts of the mind.

So you’ve got some good potentials. When they say the mind is capable of anything, it is capable of anything, but your particular mind has your particular capabilities, your particular habits, your particular ruts. Your particular habits can be good or bad. Find the good ones. Bring them out.

You ultimately will get to a point where you don’t need a sense of self, but you don’t let go of your sense of self or sense of selves until you don’t need them anymore.

The you that seems to be a real problem right now, that’s only one of you. There are many in there. There’s the you that wanted to meditate, the you that wanted to train the mind, the you that already has some good habits. Rely on those. Build on your strengths to compensate for your weaknesses. Build on the wisdom of the strategies that have really worked well in the past to educate the strategies that haven’t worked so well. Open up the conversation inside.

If you deny a sense of self, that closes down the conversation. Nobody gets a chance to speak out clearly. But if you’re clear about the fact that there are many minds in here, many “you’s” in here, you can start sorting through them. It seems like there’s an awful lot. Well, it’s finite, the number you’ve developed.

As you get used to encouraging some of the more skillful ones, that then becomes more and more habitual. The skillful ones get stronger. They can educate the unskillful ones. The ones that are totally hopeless you can put out to pasture. But otherwise, take advantage of the fact that there are lots of “you’s” in there, lots of strategies that you’ve developed in the past. Ferret out the good ones and apply them to the Dhamma.

That’s how you take advantage of this multiple personality you’ve got. You may have the drawbacks in seeming to have too many different people in there, but the big advantage is that one of your inner selves can look at another inner self and see, “Okay, this is unskillful. I can pull out.” That’s where this multiplicity is a real advantage.