Probably the greatest mystery facing human kind is "where am I". Of course we can find the locus of our 'selves' rather easily. For most people, they understand it to be their body. I am quite certain for all people, it *is* thier body, but their are likely some who have a different experience.
But where do you understand "you "to be *in* your body? This is the great mystery which has given rise to, well, nearly every religious and physcological belief system.
It seems clear to me that this event I experience as myself is an elecrochemical event. Something about how neurons and neurotransmitters and other chemistries in my body, and in the untold other organisms that inhabit my body, and a certain extent the events going on in the physical world outside my body, give rise to me.... to my "I". All of these things that give rise to "me" are , as our theories go, physical, concrete things.
In saying this I include energies as a "physical concrete thing". What I mean is, for example, current theories on light have light acting as both a wave and a particle. It is exactly neither and both. There is an electromagnetic field and "perterbations" in that field are experienced as light. The same is true for mass (I'm pretty sure about this, although, honestly I can't walk down the explanation road as well as I can for light). Mass is some sort of interaction in the boson field. Protons and Neutrons are understood to be the interaction of a certain type of three quarks each, and how quarks interact is based on energies, or waves, also in certan fields.
So while we (i.e., the respected, peer reviewed, scientific community working on such thing, of which, I am not a member, but just an observer) understand all phenomina can be explained by particle/field theory - or concrete object/energy theory - noneone I've experienced has used that to explain my sense of "I", or anything I experience.
An external observer can find my neurons, and analyze the soup they are sitting in, and mess with them so that my sense of self is messed with. They can induce me into unconsiousness, they can make me see more blue (e.g., colored glasses). They can blind my eye input and defen my ear input, but they cannot stick a probe into my "I". They cannot point to me amongs all this goo that gives rise to me.
In that sense, and with an analogy that fails on any close examination, I am a spark in my brain, or I am a flame on a candle, but in truth no-one can see the spark of flame glowing in the bed of my neurons, should they happen to open my brain.
So this "I" is a complete mystery.
Every sentient being has it. In fact that is how I would define a sentient being - as a functional biological thingy that has an apparent sense of I (though I am not at all certain what the test could be for this, and whether there are organisms that have it but can't express it). I think sentient beings must needs be complex - that is to say what we percieve as independently function organisms with complex nervous systems. Casually, I would say plants are not sentient, but I am less certain about bugs and such.
Where is this I? It burns in, from, by body, but where can the flame be seen. Where does the spark exist? Maybe I is the the collected and constrained perturbations in all the fields of the mater that makes up my body. Maybe I exist in unique field that is only perturbed when other fields are arranged just so.
Yes, sounds like crazy talk, but lets back up again to the electron, for example. Most 'lay' people concieve of the electron as a thingy. A tiny tiny particle with a charge (what ever a charge is, don't ask them). But detailed analysis reveals that electrons are neither little particles nor 'waves of energy' but rather some sort of disturbance in what is call the electro-magnetic field. Oft repeated experiments can show electrons behaving as particles, and electrons behaving as waves of energy, and no-one yet has developed an robust explanation of why. Or rather, how the two characteristics of "particle" and "wave" can be explained by a theory of what the single electron thingy is.
It is from an interaction of electrons and protons and neutrons - all wierd thingies in their own right, that I am built. They are the candle and wick. They are the electrodes. I am the flame. I am the spark. But nobody can find me.
So, how is this related to buddhism? Well I think that Buddhism, more than any other school of though, has been devoted to understanding what this spark is. How is it dependent on physical realities. What makes it burn 'content' or 'suffering'. A huge portion of Buddhism is devoted to more derivative content such as psychology, but a fair portion focuses on what is the fundamental reality of I.
And from among the many Buddhist sects, I think Soto tries to demonstrate the flame. That, for me, is the beauty of Shikantaza (roughly "just sitting"). It is in this just sitting, very still, for a fair period of time, we can experience the flame of I, the spark of I. We can see I flickering and dancing in the candle of the body.
Many things can perturb the flame of I, cause it to flicker and sputter, but zazen, and studying the implications of the eight fold path can help us attain and maintain, help us realize, a more stable flame. A flame not blown by .... well the analogy does break down for me. I don't want to force it too much because I don't exactly think 'I' is a flame. But it is like a flame, burning in a place that no one can directly see. Burning in the wax of the body.
Peek a boo.... I think I see you.
