"I feel like I'm an old soul."
Have you ever heard someone say that? I bet you have. It's a very common line, one of those hokey things that sounds fairly spiritual, but not Western spiritual, but the more exotic Eastern kind, which still has the feel to many of a kind of secret thing, something you will only find in the misty hills of Shangri-La.
What's it mean? I'm an old soul. If we are to accept the idea of reincarnation, doesn't that mean we are all old souls? Unless there is some process by which new souls are created. Or perhaps it just means, in a hippie kind of way, that the speaker can feel their past lives in some way.
My old zen teacher would have said hogwash, mystical Hindu magical thinking combined with crazy New Age ideas. Many old Zennies I meet are like that—they are kind of cranky. haha no that's not right—they are just honest, saying it like it is, feeling no need to hide behind polite language.
The Buddha taught us that we don't have souls. No Atman here, trailing from life to life. Hindu stuff. But... something of us does continue. Try squaring that circle!
What does Zen teach? It teaches slap don't worry about such things and go stare at the wall. 😉 Less grumpy teachers make suggestions, however, and meditation brings additional insight. Here is one of those suggestions. It is far from the only one, but may give you something to think about.
We are like the ocean. At times some of us wash up to this shore, some of us to that shore, and some of us chill out far out of sight of land for long stretches of time.
If you scoop a cupful of water, what is it in that cup? Pour the water back into the ocean and scoop again. What is in that cup? Is it the same water as before? Different water? How can you tell? Your new cup of water may contain a small bit of the water it had before ("old" water) along with much "new" water.
New water... old water... it is both old and new. It is a new configuration of old and new water that has never existed before and never will again.
Does that old water retain any memories from its previous stay in the cup? Maybe. Perhaps these memories combine with the memories the "new" water has to influence an entirely new personality that is both the same and different from what came before. One that might be able to access those memories, but probably won't be able to, but might one day grow and try to be profound, calling itself "old water".
Whoa, man. That's, like, deep.
How many cups have thus been drawn since The Beginning? Now there's a question!
Title graphic made using this image which is in the public domain.
 | David LaSpina is an American photographer lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time. More? |
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