Boundaries

From Buddhism Plain and Simple by Steve Hagen

If you're like most people, you think of yourself as having been born. But if you look at this notion carefully, you'll see that you have no immediate experience of having come into existence at all. Trace it back. Follow your memory. Do you remember coming into existence?

Of course you didn't begin at birth -- but when did you begin? At conception? When, exactly does conception take place? When the sperm first finds the egg?

But what about that sperm and egg? When did they begin? With your parents? And when did they begin? And their parents before them?

The truth is that you can't find "coming into being" as an event in actual experience. Everything involves what came before in its identity. It's dependent on earlier conditions which, in turn, are dependent on earlier conditions still, and so on as far back as we can trace or imagine. In other words, there's something very odd and contradictory and unsettling about this concept of "coming into being."

This book changed my life several years ago when I first read it. I started reading it on a roadtrip with Adam and was only a few chapters in when I dislocated my left knee for the second time, one or two games after returning from months of rehab from doing it the first time. Without the lessons of this book - without having learned to see the world in a different way - I would have been crushed.

I cannot recommend this book to others strongly enough. It is not about becoming a Buddhist (I am not one) - it is about seeing the world differently. It is about having a healthy mind. Read it and don't worry about the friggin cow on page 28 - most of us cannot see it. If not seeing the cow stops you from reading the book, you REALLY need to read the damn book.