I think a lot about the nature of identity. One of my personal preoccupations is growth, but it is worth taking the time to ask “growth for what? To what?” Successfully dieting, as an example, while no doubt beneficial to the body and ego, is most important in the habit of mind it implies.
My tendency is to think of behavioral rigidity as leading necessarily to perceptual blind spots. At the same time, though, if there is no consistency, there is no form. You have no personality at all, no traits, no attributes.
Logically, true inconsistency would involve both moments of discipline and moments of laxity, moments of cruelty, and moments of profound compassion, all disbursed randomly, and without reference either to principle or antecedant. This condition is not really realizable in practice–except perhaps in conditions of insanity–but does represent a limit condition.
What happens, practically, is that we are built like fiberglass poles, or trees. The rigid are never fully rigid, just as even the tallest, oldest trees still sway in the wind a bit.
Our task–what I see as our proper task–is navigating this world as happily as possible. In my imagination, I see us facing a trackless ocean, and needing to navigate it in one direction, and not another, indefinitely. We need a boat, and a means of propulsion, and most importantly, a way of maintaining course absent clear landmarks.
And perhaps, this is just the first leg of the journey. Perhaps on the next we have to cover a trackless desert. What works in one time and place will not work in another. We must be flexible.
Logically, the antipode to the rigid old oak is not the young sapling, but rather wind, or even the void itself. Even air has form, doesn’t it, now that I think about it. It is composed of molecules of nitrogen, oxygen, CO2, water vapor and other gases.
Personalities are structures that serve needed purposes. The personality of a soldier is not necessarily the best for nurturing small babies, or for tending sheep. The task, it seems to me, is to treat personality as a structure WE build, for specific purposes, and which can then be dissolved when no longer needed. What is left when there is no personality? That which the Buddha sought, and for which no name is acceptable, other than to call it a desirable condition, while realizing that desire itself is a function of personality.
I am meandering around a bit, but please bear with me (or not). The Buddha taught that everything about us is best thought of as empty (which is different than saying it IS empty), and composed of parts he called “dharmas”, little atomic bits that, to the point, can be severed, one from the other, and recompiled in new forms.
To be endlessly skillful in adaptation, it is necessary to start with a blank slate, and build what is needed, as needed, then dissolve it when its usefulness has passed. To do this, detachment of the sort cultivated by Buddhists is necessary.
One example I have long been fond of is the Tibetan Buddhist practice of making temporary art, usually sand mandalas, or images made in butter. They create the work, then dip the sand in moving water, or use the butter in food. It is there for a time, in a form for a time, then it is gone. The material is still there, but the information has moved on.
Few wandering and perhaps incoherent thoughts. This is my rambling blog.