The Mystery of Being Human

Two questions:

Who are you?

Who am I?

Some personal reflections…

Are we our body?

Are we our faces?

Are we our voice?

Are we our thoughts?

Are we our feelings or emotions?

Are we our actions?

Are we our personalities?

Are we our name?

Are we our position?

Are we our language?

Are we our faith or belief?

Are we animals?

Are we spiritual beings?

Are we here for a purpose?

Is there an answer?

I find that these are a few of the many questions that I am growing aware of as I practice contemplative Buddhist meditation. There are so many aspects of who we are that we may be forced to define as distinct concepts as if they had an existence of their own.
Yet, a profound meditation on the nature of being forces me to consider that perhaps who I am is neither one or more of the characteristics we often define ourselves with. Our bodies, minds and voices to an extent determine our outer and physical appearance. Our inner being is expressed through a multitude of ways which include those we were born with and others we acquire through social contact. However, we are not our emotions. We are not our voice. We are not our states of mind. We are neither our name or our religion.

Yet, we often choose to belief the illusion that the reality that we express through communication is, in fact, reality itself.

With all the good intentions, some take extreme views to explain the human condition. On one hand, there are those who view reality only in terms of physical objects. There exist nothing beyond what science can measure. On the other hand, there are those who insist that the physical or material reality - although present - isn’t really what makes us humans. I recall some citing a saying to the effect that, it claims, we are spiritual beings trapped in human bodies.

Inasmuch as these accounts contain part of the truth about being, both views seem to hold a limited view of being. For what is a human being? As long as we are alive on this planet, we remain physical beings. At the same time, we are capable to extend our awareness beyond ourselves. We can think. But, contrary to Descartes, we are not who we are because we think. Rather, being is primary to thinking.

Indeed, who we are arises out of aa complex relation between our internal and external realities which give rise to a sense of being. In this respect, we are all of the things that we choose to be but who we are, ultimately, transcends all else. We are beyond concepts.


Once again, I return to being? What does it mean to be me? Who are we really? I believe that we can only find an answer if we stop asking and start listening. For, in silence and with a sincere desire to know, we may find that what we conceive or perceive are but a mystery.

Yes, we may reduce consciousness to a biological process involving interaction between neurones in the brain. We may even deny that there is any reality beyond matter. But, if who we are is an illusion which, in some ways, it is. Then who is asking the question to begin with?

Who is the ‘I’ that is doing the asking?

Who is asking ‘who am I’?

I am!

Now what?

The Experience

I am at a point where it's appropriate to tok about the experience that prompted me to reassess my life and reexamine reality. While there are other events in my life shaping my outlook and which, inevitably, affected my interpretation of events, I will limit myself to this one.

When I was in hospital for treatment, I needed to spend a few weeks as an in-patient. I shared a room with four men - all in their old age. I'm mo stranger to being in hospital but it's never a happy occasion. Worse still, it was the holiday season and you sense a change of mood as people celebrated Christmas and the New Year. And there I was in my room, partly bored and partly frustrated, as I was stuck inside. It didn't help to see that my room 'mates' didn't stay for long as they were either transferred or sent home.

During the last days of my stay, an elderly patient was brought in from intensive care. He was still in a bad state and was obviously pain and discomfort as he spent hours on end shrieking, screaming and swearing. Nights were particularly difficult as I would be awakened by hellish shriek follow by more terrifying shouts and more cursing. To this day, I feel an uneasy feeling when I recall that night. By the morning, the man seemed to have quieted down and little commotion was to be heard from his bed.

In the afternoon, the alarm belles sounded after a nurse checked on him. I was preparing for a nap I think when the nurse rushed for assistant and a defibrillator was brought in a desperate attempt to resuscitate the mam. The man was certified dead. However, the man had probably been dead for some time already. And I and the two other men who shared his room hadn't noticed. Indeed, we were relieved that we were having a quiet afternoon after a hard night kept awake by incessant and unsettling, cries. Cries, it would turn out, where of a dying man.

I was always aware of the possibility of death, but I was never so close to death as I was on that day. Never did I imagine how silently the hand of death could strike. I was shaken after I realized that a man had died and I was none the wiser. That life could end so unremarkably. That all of a sudden, a life ended after a futile struggle, yes, but still... Even if you know that life has to end, you cling to the delusion that you'll live forever. And that only natural but at the point when you are displaced of your usual routine, you cannot help but search for answers.

We want some kind of explanation, a hope and a purpose to our lives. We find comfort in religion, science, art or any way that justifies our existence. Otherwise, we can attempt to escape from death by forgetting or else live our lives indulging in self-pity and melancholy. Either way, we are avoiding to deal with an everyday reality - even if, in our clinical world, death tends to happen behind closed doors and masked by euphemistic phrases.

There... I told you! My experience. Nothing out of the ordinary. But yet, for that man, and for all those who came before and since who died,
It's a unique and singular event. It is unrepeatable in this life and what follows death is a matter of faith and speculation. But even when we claim that there's nothin after death, we are afraid and perhaps more if we don't believe in a reality beyond.

I've been here before. I thought I was satisfied with my life. But being a silent witness to a man's last hours. Being so indifferent to a dying man, until it was finished. To die alone like that. Perhaps riddled with anger and regret. But who am I to judge? And, what about my life, where was it leading me to?

It's here that I turned my attention inwards and reached within for an answer...