Identity and Buddhism

I have been thinking recently about the Buddhist teachings on the Factors of Awakening and the fetters, particularly the recurring problem of attachment and clinging.

When we hear the word clinging, it is easy to think first about material things.

The latest iPhone. A bigger television. A better house. A new car.

Then there are the things we crave that cannot be put in a cupboard or parked outside: another holiday, a different job, perhaps even a different relationship.

Buddhism has been examining this tendency for more than two thousand years. We want something, acquire it, enjoy it and then discover that satisfaction doesn’t last quite as long as we expected.

But there are subtler forms of clinging.

I may cling to my health and fitness. I may cling to particular relationships. I may cling to routines, opinions, memories and expectations about how my life should unfold.

Recently, however, another possibility has been occupying my thoughts.

Can I cling to my identity?

The identities we carry

Modern life provides us with an extraordinary number of ways of describing ourselves.

We may identify ourselves through nationality, politics, education, profession, social status, gender, generation, religion or any number of communities and causes.

There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these identities. They can help us understand ourselves, communicate with others and find communities in which we belong.

The difficulty begins when a useful description quietly becomes something more solid:

This is what I am.

And perhaps more dangerously:

This is what I must continue to be.

From a Buddhist perspective, that deserves investigation.

When a label becomes “me”

One of the most challenging Buddhist teachings is anattā, usually translated as not-self or non-self.

I have increasingly found not-self the more helpful expression.

The Buddha’s teaching does not require me to walk around insisting that I don’t exist. Clearly there is a person writing these words and another person reading them.

Instead, Buddhism invites us to investigate the things we normally identify as:

This is mine.
This I am.
This is myself.

The Five Aggregates provide a particularly useful framework. Body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness are all changing.

So where exactly is the permanent identity?

My profession may describe something I have done, but is it me?

My nationality tells you something about where I belong, but is it me?

My political opinions may matter greatly to me, but are they me?

Even the label Buddhist deserves the same examination.

Buddhism would become rather peculiar if the teaching of non-self simply resulted in my constructing a stronger identity around being a Buddhist.

Identity can be useful without becoming permanent

Perhaps the problem is not identity itself.

It is clinging to identity.

I can use a label without imagining that the label describes some permanent essence within me.

This reminds me of something I have recently been exploring through the Heart and Diamond Sutras. Conventional descriptions are useful. Difficulties arise when we mistake our descriptions for independently existing realities.

I can therefore say:

I am a Buddhist.

Perfectly useful.

But if I begin constructing a fixed idea of myself around that description — defending it, comparing it with others and feeling threatened whenever someone questions it — perhaps the label has stopped being useful and become another object of attachment.

The same possibility exists with many of the identities we carry.

What happens when identity is challenged?

This may provide a useful test.

Notice what happens when somebody challenges one of your strongly held identities or opinions.

Does the body tighten?

Does irritation arise?

Do you immediately begin constructing an argument?

Does disagreement with an opinion somehow feel like an attack upon you?

I recognise some of this in myself.

And that is where meditation becomes useful.

Not because meditation magically removes our identities, but because it may give us enough space to observe what happens when one of them is threatened.

Instead of immediately defending:

“This is who I am.”

perhaps we can become curious:

“Why am I holding this so tightly?”

That is a very different response.

A spiritual response to identity

I don’t think the answer is to abolish identity.

Nor would I suggest that every modern psychological difficulty can be explained by attachment to identity. Human wellbeing is far more complicated than that, and serious mental-health difficulties may require professional support.

But I do wonder whether Buddhist practice has something useful to contribute to the modern conversation.

Mindfulness can help us notice the identities we construct.

Contemplation can help us investigate them.

Insight may eventually allow us to see that they are changing, conditioned and therefore not something we need to grasp quite so tightly.

Perhaps the question is not:

Who am I?

Perhaps occasionally we might ask:

What am I clinging to when I answer that question?

Holding identity lightly

I am not proposing that we become people without history, relationships, values or commitments.

Quite the opposite.

We can care deeply without turning everything we care about into a permanent definition of ourselves.

We can hold political opinions without becoming our politics.

We can value our profession without becoming our job.

We can belong to a tradition without imagining that its label contains the whole of us.

We can even practise Buddhism without clinging to being a Buddhist.

Perhaps this is another expression of the Middle Way.

Not rejecting identity.

Not becoming imprisoned by it.

Simply recognising that the identities we carry are useful, changing descriptions of a life that is itself continually changing.

And then asking the question Buddhism repeatedly seems to place before us:

Can I hold this a little more lightly?

Come and see more 👉Meditation and Five Aggregates