Losing the Self: Notes from Padrón

An Untitled Meditation Trail Dispatch No. 5 from the Camino de Santiago

bridge from Arcade to Ponte Sampaio

Sometimes I find myself saying thank you, after an outstandingly pleasant section of going, to some part of that going. I'm not always sure which part it is exactly, that I'm thanking. Sure, sometimes there was an exceptionally wise tree or stunning waterfall, but sometimes it was just an area in space that felt perfectly right. It reminds me that at any scale of perception other than our own objects suddenly aren't so separate. If you zoom in or zoom out, what once were individual trees become either an endless stream of particles, making up this soup of solid, liquid, gas, or a forest—one forest that is awake, capable, sentient. This is what I have started to learn here, that cannot be shared across consciousnesses, but that I hope we will continue to learn, by living it. 

People often refer to pilgrimage as an opportunity to “find yourself.” I have been told several times some things along the line of “I hope you uncover more of your true self.” But ironically, the more time that I have dedicated to mindfulness and gratitude, the less of myself I have found. In fact, I believe that the moments in my life when I have come closest to enlightenment are those when I have lost completely any definition of what “self” is or means, or what separation exists between it and the universe. Tich Nhat Hanh, in his commentaries on the Diamond Sutra, phrases this beautifully: 

“Since nothing is permanent and what we normally call a self is made entirely of non-self elements, there is really no such entity as a self. Our concept of self arises when we have concepts about things that are not-self. Using the sword of conceptualization to cut reality into pieces, we call one part “I” and the rest “not I.”’

Thich Nhat Hanh, commentary on the Diamond Sutra.

I want to stress that, at least for me, this was never a realization. It is not something you either know or do not know; it is a lasting attempt, with fluctuating amounts of success, to abandon the dichotomies that cloud the true relationships between things, an attempt which extends even beyond the self and not-self. Illusory dualities between life and death, person and non-person, sentient and inanimate, all, over time, can be seen through. So, on your journey, I wish you never find yourself ;)

After one of these boundless ‘thank you’s to a stretch of forested path that I had in solitude after Padron (a late section of the trail where large crowds are supposedly unavoidable), I saw a paper sign strung to a leaning, mossed over tree. Those who have been reading my letters know that one of my joys here has been to translate these Spanish proverbs into English and see how they sound. This one said 

“All the things that hurt, also made you move forward.”

I thought a moment about this truth in pain and motion. How so many people I know proclaim that all life is suffering, but aren't sure what they mean in saying it. I asked the leaning, mossed over tree if it agreed. If the things that had hurt it had forced it to grow taller. The tree couldn't decide, I don't think, but it appreciated me asking.

There will only be a few miles to go tomorrow before all the beautiful faces from across my trip converge in Santiago. I will be happy to see them again, though I wish I could be joined also by a few of the friendly trees, cats and dogs, bees in flowers, market oranges, and painted stones that I had become acquainted to. I guess I do understand that this is not their journey, or that it is theirs just for me to make it to evening Mass as an extension of them, or maybe I really don't understand very much of any of it. But I probably won't see them again, so I suppose that's what these kinds of words and photos are for.

-Payton

Previous: The Written Word: Notes from Redondela

Editor's outro

Payton is walking the Camino de Santiago for three weeks in exchange for trail dispatches. New entries appear every Tuesday and Friday. If his reflections resonate with you, you may want to explore our nature-informed practice training, where we teach clinicians to bring this kind of slow attention into their therapeutic work.