Grief, Impermanence & the Illusion of Who We Were
The Ghosts of Our Former Selves
Once upon a time, there was a girl in her twenties, with red curly hair that had a life of its own. She used to attend many Buddhist festivals with wide blue-eyed glee. Camping in torrential rains or burning suns. Helping out in the busy cafe, serving coffee and cakes to those like herself, smiling high on the blessings of Buddhas’ teachings being put into practice. Slipping out of the temple for a quick nicotine fix in between meditation sessions down the smoking alley, discovering new conversations and ways of being on every bench overlooking scenery that burst with bountiful beauty. Her soul seeped in Buddhas’ blessings, Dharma teachings and Sanghas wisdom burst with joy, no matter how physically demanding the camping, volunteering and peopling seemed to be.
That version of me no longer exists. My short hair is mostly coloured pink. I barely leave the house, let alone run around the world attending Buddhist festivals. The energy required to help out voluntarily at the cafes has been drunk and refills are not available. Camping would be a challenge too far for my broken body. Even finding suitable food for one with so many allergies and intolerances makes travelling more of a chore nowadays. Not smoking any more makes life easier though so high five for that lasting positive change.
You might think that reminiscing about the ghosts of my past with such rose-tinted glasses does one no good. To a degree, you would be right. Grief washed over me like an unexpected wave multiple times as I spent a weekend walking around the Buddhist centre for the first time in five years.
A ghost of a young girl learning about prostrations and offerings in the temple from a Nun who does not seem to have aged a day (they don’t advertise the timelessness that shaving one’s head seems to give you, but it works!). Another ghost as we drive past the local curry house of nights spent with good friends. Yet another of meaningful conversations on the bench by the lake with an emanation long since passed away tinged my eyes with tears. Friends reminded me of times I helped or amused them in the past, glad to relive those ghosts with me once again. I could go on. So many ghosts greeted me.
Yet in the temple, I was so soothingly reminded that the ‘I’ that I normally see does not exist1. This version of me, lying here in my bed recovering from the weekend’s exertions is definitely different from the excitable version of me eagerly hugging old friends. This forty-something version of me is so different from all the younger ghosts appearing in my mind.
Attachment to the previously healthy, younger, ghosts caused the grief to be a painful reminder of what I had lost. Rivers of tears have flooded me over the past 18 months for this exact reason. But why?
In reality, I am changing moment by moment, both physically and mentally. Science has found our whole skeleton changes every 10 years, muscles and gut cells can last as long as 5 years, whilst others in our colon change every few days2. Millions of red blood cells are made and die every second3. The ageing and sickness processes affecting my fellow Sangha were highly visible to me. I am not immune to it and know they would have seen the same in me.
Mindfulness shows the rapidly changing thought bubbles that appear to my mind, before popping into history. Within a few minutes, our mind can transform from angry to happy, sad to joyful, hateful to loving. This transformation is often dependent on our external conditions. A phone call brings bad news. A movie makes us laugh with joy and then cry with sadness. A family member annoys us one day, then fills our hearts with love another. Meditation shows us we can choose to change our mind in a moment; we do not have to be subject to the external world’s whimsical appearances.
My sense of self is not based on a solid, never-changing body and mind. It is based on an ever-changing continuum that changes moment by moment. Why am I attached to previous transitory versions of myself? Those versions dissolve away, not years, months, or days ago, but every moment.
So powerful and life-changing.
Whilst I cannot choose to have the body of a healthy 20-year-old again physically, I can choose mentally to be happy at any moment. I know this, yet I am not always happy.
As a young girl who unknowingly repressed my emotions, the idea I could be happy at any moment unwittingly reinforced my repression. Keep the anger and hatred down so far it never bubbles up. Stamp on it if it appears. Ignore it. Choose love, joy and happiness. I must not feel anything. All negative emotions are bad. I feel such compassion for that tight, tormented version of me.
Today's version of me feels everything. All the anger, hatred, pride, and jealousy bubble up as do love, joy, kindness and compassion. I would not choose to be the repressed younger version of me even if I could be. How could I have learnt that emotions are okay to feel? How could I have learnt how transitory they are if I did not allow them to surface? How could I have learnt to transform my emotions if I did not feel them? Yes, the emotions are so hard to feel, so hard not to express in savaging ways, so hard full stop. But now I feel emotions after years of meditation practice, therapy and life experience. I can finally learn how to work with them honestly whilst seeing their transitory nature and the emptiness of their existence.
The Buddhist concept of emptiness is often mistaken for nothingness. For there to be the emptiness of something though it has to exist in the first place. Now, my emotions exist. They are embodied, visceral and real. Now, I can start to perceive their true nature. For that, I thank my past versions of me so much. They created the causes for this to happen. Thank you to the younger versions of myself for all the hard work you did going to so many Buddhist festivals, enduring the rain and the pains. Thank you for enduring the various traumas and travesties life threw at you. Thank you for persevering.
The ghosts of Elly past existed, yet they are also empty of inherent existence. They were transitory and ever-changing. Our minds see everything through filters of culture and personal experiences. My memory is now shrouded in brain fog. I forget words, conversations and actions so easily now. It is hard to remember everything is mere name. I get lost in storms and impute so much desire and despair on appearances. It is no wonder I feel capsized and close to drowning most of the time.
Reminding me I am not my body, nor what we think of as our mind is all well and good. But who am I if not that? The answer is my ‘continuously residing mind’ also known as ‘the very subtle mind’. This is what travels from life to life. If we identify with that, rather than our current form we can let go of the attachment we have to it and happily move on to the next life when the time comes. Seeing our body like a hotel room we stay at on vacation. We enjoy the luxury but do not get so attached as know it is only temporary. Personally, I feel like complaining to the hotel rooms manager as the one they gave me is not fit for purpose!
Some of my Dharma friends naturally believe in past and future lives. I never really believed to be honest. It didn’t seem that important despite a majority of the teachings focusing on how our behaviours in this life affect future ones. More interested in making this life better, I took from the teachings what I could apply right now. Since my near-death experience frightened the hell out of me last year and left me with a tonne of existential dread I have become more invested in the possibility of next lives. They really are only a failed breath away. The meditation ‘I may die today’ finally became a reality. I am curious as to how I can identify myself as an object I cannot see, hear or feel. There are no X-rays or MRI scans of the continuously residing mind to grasp hold of. The logic taught makes sense to me and I can experience it in meditation I am reliably informed. My skills are not that highly developed though so I doubt that is likely to happen to me in this lifetime.
I am left with faith in the teachings of Buddha. In my 20-plus years of practising dharma, all the Dharma has turned out to be true so far. Why not take that leap of faith and believe in all the teachings that rely on Buddhas’ experience and knowledge? Am I so proud as to believe in my naturally flawed human perceptions rather than enlightened beings’ perfect ones? Pride comes before a fall is a common phrase. So I am left working on dissolving my pride away with humility. I do not wish to fall any more, it has become too painful for this mortal body to deal with.
I have been writing this post for a few weeks. I wanted to give myself time to contemplate what I experienced. I have heard all these teachings many times before and even taught them to others. Yet every time I hear them, they reveal some new wisdom that I had not grasped before. I am starting to appreciate what good fortune I had in coming across these teachings so many years ago. I do not know how I would have survived the past 19 months without them. I hope that my musings here on Substack about how I interpret the Dharma and practically apply it to my life helps in some way to relieve the suffering of ageing, sickness and death we all go through. If you are interested in attending classes to learn more about Dharma and meditation click here.
Teachings this weekend were from Mirror of Dharma by Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso Rinpoche.
Grieving ghosts of yourself is such a poetic way of writing what I have gone through. Past and future imagined selves. Lovely to read you today 💚
I can relate to so many aspects of all you share in such different ways. I remember all the times I felt like a shadow of my former self. My then partner couldn’t handle me saying such words so I felt silenced. Yet it’s how I truly felt and connecting to how I truly feel, what is true for me and being able to express how I feel has been my gateway to health improvement.
I also didn’t believe in past lives. I kept open to it because my health was my priority no matter what and that meant no more shutting down. This year has been a big one for past life healing for me. Healing is (on the whole) much more gentle for me this year than the brutal times of the many past. Voicing my past life healing in here left me with a big vulnerability hangover. I thought I’d see a lot of unsubscribes. But I also realised if I’m not truthful about what got me here, then I’m not serving anyone.
And now I’m too tired to remember what else I wanted to say 😆 so I’ll leave it there. Missing you and all your wisdom at healing through writing 💜
Oh, that’s it! Your last bit about Buddhism holding you in the last 19 months. I simply don’t know how I would have got through the pandemic without all the deep healing I’d done in the year or 2 before. It felt like all that practice was my training for the endurance of losing my income again for a second time and pretty much on my own the entire first lockdown. I ramped up all my practices and received healing to my brain multiple times. I went into a massive relapse for the second lockdown. But I hear so many stories of others not being able to recover from a virus or a relapse (I later got Covid at the end of a second relapse and dark night of the soul plus depression) and I thank my lucky stars for the difference I believe this made💙