Categories - Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything - page 25

Chapter 2, Categories
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself ,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
- Walt Whitman
Sitting on the floor, legs crossed, eyes closed, I watch my breath. As the air flows in and out, the
unity of mind, body, and environment is clear. I dwell in the moment, calmed by concentration,
inviting mindfulness. I'm aware all formations are impermanent, more sandbar than substance,
and that the essence of life is dukkha, suffering, unsatisfactoriness. Inhale, exhale, the “I” fades
into anattā, there is no self. The mind is at peace and open to insight, wisdom, nibbanā. In, out, a
glimpse into the process of perception, a sense of interbeing, breathing towards an understand-
ing deeper than words. And then my alarm interrupts the practice. My fifteen minutes are up.
It's time to get back to work. This topic won't write itself.
So, what's Buddhism doing in a chapter about classification and its consequences? Well, for
starters, Siddhārtha Gautama, the person who became known as the Buddha, was an informa-
tion architect. Living in India, two and a half thousand years ago, he rejected the rigid hierarchy
of the caste system - the fourfold division of persons into brahmins, rulers and warriors, farmers
and traders, and servants - and embraced universalism, believing enlightenment is open to all. xx
Then, he shaped several new taxonomies, including the three marks of existence, the four noble
truths, the five hindrances, and the noble eightfold path. Of course, the deepest, most difficult
ontology Buddha taught is anattā, non-self.
This notion there's no self - that while we're more stable than a tornado or a sandbar, we belong
in the same category - is counterintuitive and disturbing, particularly to those of us in individu-
alistic Western cultures. Self as process not substance is outside our model of the system. So
while we may try samatha, calming through mindful breathing, we're less at ease with vipas-
sanā, which aims for “the permanent and radical transformation of your entire sensory and cog-
nitive experience.” xxi Consider this explanation of its benefits.
You search for that thing you call “me” but what you find is a physical body and how you have identi-
fied yourself with that bag of skin and bones. You search further, and you find all manner of mental phe-
nomena, such as emotions, thought patterns, and opinions, and see how you identify the sense of your-
self with each of them. You watch yourself becoming possessive, protective, and defensive over these pi-
tiful things, and you see how crazy that is. You rummage furiously among these various items, con-
stantly searching for yourself - physical matter, bodily sensations, and emotions - it all keeps whirling
round and round as you root through it, peering into every nook and cranny, endlessly hunting for “me.”
You find nothing. In all that collection of mental hardware in this endless stream of ever-shifting experi-
ence, all you can find is innumerable impersonal processes that have been caused and conditioned by