Identity: Lost, Found and Lost Again

The day is clear and with the crispness of early winter in South Australia. Honeyeaters hawk for insects outside my window, supplementing the meagre supply of nectar at this time of year. Across the valley, well-wooded slopes of blue-green eucalypt rise gently to a low mountain range - quite unlike the bare hills of my birthplace in a South Wales coal valley.

I left Wales at a tender age, only just outgrown 'Wind in the Willows' and the magical world of hedgerows and deep woods. Migration is a harsh sentence for a young heart. It can break the continuity of a child's psychological and social development and impair the formation of identity with, and within, the cultural, community and physical landscapes. Separation from the old familiar world, compounded by a childhood resistance to the imposed one, can result in a confused self and a divided sense of belonging.

With such a background, what else but 'who am I' would be the koan of my life? When I began to follow the Buddha Dharma as an adult, the promise of an answer to my 'self' questions was a key attraction. Unwittingly I was adding another set of values, modes of expression and spiritual aspirations to my patchwork quilt of identity and further estranged myself from both my old and new countries.

So it was with considerable excitation that I became aware last year of the activities at the Maenllwyd. Idly sifting through a book stall, I had found a copy of 'Retreat' by Roger Housden(1) and the photograph inside of Master Sheng Yen and Dr. John Crook leading practitioners around a muddy field. I immediately searched the internet and found the site of the Western Chan Fellowship and more images of Buddhist practise in Wales. After many months, an international book search service found me a copy of 'Catching a Feather on a Fan'(2). and also 'Dharma Drum'(3) (neither of which were available in Australia).

These images and words have breathed life into my stale practice. I feel I have discovered a 'family' I never knew. A new dimension to the meaning of 'Sangha' is emerging - which was always a difficult area in my relatively isolated practice. I am beginning to see the possibility of moving beyond the need for labels. Notions about birthplace and nation state allegiance are just that: notions which bind me if I depend upon them to define and understand who I really am. The Wales in my head does not exist other than as self-centred thoughts drawn from a memory of distorted childhood perceptions!

If I may quote from a relevant part of 'Catching a Feather on a Fan', pages 40 and 41:

"When we are young, we have to develop our sense of personal identity in order to take on the world. In fact without having a grasp of your personal identity, of who you are in the usual everyday sense, it would not be possible to train in Buddhism... Yet wisdom comes from going beyond the elementary constructions of identity, from investigating who this is that walks, talks, argues and quarrels... A major step in this progression is the discovery of the undivided mind, one in which the splits produced by discrimination are healed."

I am a long way from realising an undivided mind. In fact these recent events have triggered a state of delicious confusion and an eager curiosity to see where they will lead. Thankfully I am sobered by the practical wisdom of Master Sheng Yen and know that this is just another turn in the road that will go on forever - towards a place I have never left and the self nature I always was.

References

1. Retreat - Time Apart for Silence and Solitude by Roger Housden, Labyrinth Books, published by Thorsons, London 1995. ISBN 185538-490-6. Some of the photos in this book are incorrectly titled; John is not, in fact, in this picture.
2. Element Books. 1991. ISBN 1-85230-194-5.
3. Dharma Drum Publications. 1996. ISBN 0-9609854-8-4.