Who Is a Being?

Are you a being? Why do you feel you are one? You have likes and dislikes. You have a personality. You live the way you want to. Your behaviour feels like your own; your thoughts feel like your own. You have a mind and an intelligence. But why exactly does that make you "a being"?

Everyone else has the same claim — a body of their own, thoughts and wishes of their own. No two people, anywhere in the world, share an identical mind, intelligence, likes, dislikes, behaviour and memory. So none of us really has the standing to declare another person "a being" on the basis of some shared checklist. What exactly would that judgement be based on — being alive? But do we even know for certain whether "being alive" means the same thing from one creature to the next?

Look at a forest: countless trees, no two alike, each one different from the tree next to it. That diversity is simply a feature of nature. It doesn't make the forest "a being" in the way we imagine ourselves to be. So are you really so different from the rest of nature?

There Is No Fixed Standard for "Being"

There is no reliable yardstick for what makes something — or someone — a being, and no one has the authority to measure another being by it. Cause and effect operates within you; karma operates within you. If you die, do you take rebirth? Think of a fruit falling from a tree: if the conditions are right, the seed inside sprouts, grows, and eventually produces fruit of its own. We move through existence in exactly that way. Is the person who was "born" from that process the same person who exists now? Not quite the same — and not entirely different either.

Among beings, you are actually a rare kind of being — precisely because you are trying to understand things that most beings never think to question, noticing things that don't normally occur to a being, reflecting on things a being wouldn't usually reflect on. You are, in effect, trying to undo the very cause-and-effect chain that keeps a being a being. A being whose mind has developed is called a human being. A being whose wisdom (buddhi) has developed further is called a bodhisattva. Someone whose wisdom is completely fulfilled is called a Buddha. A Buddha is no longer "a being" — though a human being still is. Even someone cultivating wisdom still carries traces of being-like tendencies. You are someone moving beyond the realm of beings, beyond the human realm, toward Buddhahood. Buddhas and arahants are never called "beings." So even though you may have some claim to call yourself a being, you have no claim to call someone else one. All beings, in a sense, exist within you — but you cannot see them from the outside. You are the only one positioned to examine whether you, yourself, are a being.

If you are born as a being and die as a being, nothing has really been gained from the life. But even though you are born as a being, as you gradually come to see the true nature of this world, you can move beyond the realm of being.

Three Things to Understand

There are three things to understand in order to move beyond being-hood. Your mind lives on craving (tanha); failing that, it lives on friction or conflict; failing that, it lives on desire (raga). Even while Prince Siddhartha was still a bodhisattva-in-training — and certainly once he became the Buddha — he saw craving, friction and desire dancing openly in the world. These three are natural tendencies at work in the world. Anyone who doesn't understand these three remains a being. Anyone who does understand them has moved beyond being-hood.

When craving is present, the mind is dragged toward one thing after another. Craving cannot be eliminated — it is a law of the universe. A flower blooms on a tree because of this same law: pollination happens, fruit forms, the tree's continuity is served. Nature and all beings run on this. What you can do is give craving a worthy aim — not built on "what I want," but built on wishing well for the world and for all beings. Purifying the aim is the only thing within your power. Even a bodhisattva's craving helped carry them toward supreme enlightenment. The wish that carries a being across samsara is itself a form of craving — a supremely pure aim. Build an aim for your own life too. Behind every aim, craving is the one pushing from behind. Once you give craving a direction, it drives toward that end on its own. This can be applied to worldly life or to the path just as easily — but don't let yourself become identical with that tendency. Don't become craving itself. Use it. Put it to work. Anchor the mind on a worthy aim.

Use friction wisely too. Let yourself be someone who resists what is unwholesome — poor states of mind, poor actions, unsuitable environments, unsuitable company. Reject unwholesome things. Put friction to good use.

When you sit somewhere for a long time, you want a comfortable posture. Living itself calls for comfort — the eye, ear, nose, tongue and body all want ease. Use these comforts with full awareness, not blindly.

This body and mind are always asking for something. There is no end to giving them things.

Building a Worthy Life

Build an aim for your life. Become someone who resists the unwholesome, while holding your need for comfort with awareness. Do that, and you are no longer merely "a being," nor merely "a human being" — you become part of the noble community (sangha). You become someone of genuine wisdom.