Breath-Centered Consciousness
The Way of Equanimity
The Self-Centered Mind (Chapter 3)
(See the first two chapters of BCC here.)
SELF-CENTEREDNESS ISN’T SIMPLY THE THOUGHT OF SELF, but the holding of that thought at the anchor-point of the mind. It’s a way that the whole mind organizes itself. In the self-centered organization of the mind, every sensation, thought, and emotion becomes self-centered. This means every object of attention that we experience at the foreground focus of the mind is also experienced at the self-focus in the background in a personal way.
At the foreground focus of the mind, I may notice a new cashier has opened another line at the supermarket. At the same time, I may experience a sense of urgency at the self-focus about getting to the front of that line before others. I may also experience a concern at the self-focus that I must not appear, in rushing to get ahead of others, to be impolite or inconsiderate. So at the self-focus in this situation, I have two levels of concern: I’m concerned about getting what I need to be comfortable, and I’m concerned that others won’t think badly of me.
At the foreground focus in another situation, I may notice the competence and skill of a coworker while experiencing anxiety at the self-focus about the quality of my own work. Again, I have two levels of concern at the self-focus: I’m concerned about keeping my job and perhaps getting a promotion, and I’m concerned that I don’t appear to be envious and greedy. So I skillfully conceal my worry and envy when I smile and congratulate my coworker on what a good job she’s doing.
We can see from the examples that self-centeredness involves two levels of concern, which we can state again in general terms this way:
I’m concerned on one level of the self-focus about FEELING good (that is, about my personal safety, comfort, convenience, and pleasure);
I’m concerned at another level of the self-focus about BEING good (that is, about the kind of person I am–responsible or irresponsible, competent or incompetent, likeable or unlikable, and so on).
We can refer to these two levels of concern together as selfish concerns.
Self-centeredness is a way the whole mind organizes itself around our selfish concerns, so that we experience everything from the perspective of those concerns.
The selfish concerns we hold at the anchor-point of the mind influence the movement of attention at the foreground focus of consciousness. In the state of self-centeredness, I’m not likely to notice something unless I believe it may affect me personally in some way. How it may affect me could range from a serious threat to my safety or self-esteem to nothing more than an opportunity to experience something pleasant or amusing.
Something that may affect self-esteem has a high probability of attracting the attention of the self-centered mind. In self-centered consciousness, we are continually evaluating ourselves as well as others in a critical and judgmental way. We often see ourselves and others in terms of intrinsic worth–whether we are inherently good or not good in some way. We may be concerned about being right or wrong, desirable or undesirable, attractive or unattractive, or any of numerous other opposed qualities. But we can think of all such concerns as variations of our concern about being good or not good.
You may remember from Chapter 1 that the Buddha’s great insight while sitting in meditation under the Bodhi tree was the interrelatedness of all things. Things don’t exist as separate individual things. They exist only in relation to other things. Reality is relationship. Yet our concern about being good or not good is based on the idea that we exist as separate beings, with intrinsic characteristics that make us what we are.
An obsessive concern about whether things are inherently good or bad in some way is the most conspicuous characteristic of the self-centered mind. The concepts of good and bad can be useful for describing the ways we relate to each other — the ways we bring joy and happiness to each other and the ways we bring pain and suffering. But they become delusional ideas when we believe they represent inherent qualities that make us what we are.
