9
WHAT IS I?
Reflections from Buddhism and
psychotherapy
Hayao Kawai
We ordinarily use the word ‘I’ as if what it designates were completely self-evident.
The Japanese and the English usages and their meanings of the word do differ
somewhat, but in both languages, ‘I’ is used without much reflection, without seeing
that it is a complex matter. Yet, if you start thinking about I, the more you think, the
more you find its existence becoming incomprehensible. I heard the following
Buddhist story in my childhood, unforgettably.
A certain traveler happened to stay overnight in a lonely hut. In the middle of the
night, a goblin came in, lugging a corpse. Almost immediately another goblin came
and argued that the corpse was his. They couldn’t agree at all and finally asked the
traveler for his judgment. ‘It belongs to the first goblin,’ he suggested. Exploding with
anger, the second goblin ripped out the traveler’s arm. Seeing that, the first one pulled
an arm off the corpse and put it onto the traveler’s body. The second goblin,
infuriated, jerked another arm off the traveler. Again it was replaced with the corpse’s
other arm by the first goblin. They kept this up for awhile, and by the time the bodies
of the traveler and the corpse had gotten completely exchanged, the two goblins were
finally exhausted. So they stopped fighting and ate half the corpse each. With that,
they left. The shocked traveler, seeing that what apparently had been his body had
been eaten by the goblins, became confused as to whether the one now alive was really
himself or not.
To my young mind, this was quite an awesome and at the same time humorous
story, so I never let myself forget it. However, I could only remember this much of
it, and not the conclusion, no matter how hard I tried. Eventually, I had to find a
person who still owned the book, and I was able to read it. According to that book,
the conclusion is as follows:
Being terribly upset, the traveler went to talk with a monk. ‘Not having your body,
that’s nothing new,’ the monk commented. ‘The I of a human being is a composite
of various elements. It’s only temporarily formed into one thing. Foolish people,
captured by this I, suffer a great deal. Once you know what real I is, your suffering
will disappear at once’ (Takakura 1929:161–5).
With words of such deep significance even when I read it now, no wonder this
ending didn’t stick in a child’s mind. Whether or not you agree with this Buddhist
conclusion, you still will sense how difficult it is to grasp and to understand what this
existence, this I, is.