our-yoga

"When I believed that my existence was such a further fact, I seemed imprisoned in myself. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others."

Derek Parfit

Who or what am I? Is there even an "I" in the first place? If there is no "I", how should I live my life? The philosopher Derek Parfit has spent his entire life and career asking and trying to answer these questions.

To get a sense of what Parfit is up to, consider this rather fantastical thought experiment. Suppose a crazy scientist were to begin replacing your cells, one by one, with those of Bruce Lee at the age of thirty (We should also suppose, further, that the scientist has somehow managed to preserve Bruce Lee's body in perfect condition all these years. And really, it doesn't have to be Bruce Lee. Just pick your favorite dead celebrity.).

At the beginning of this cell-replacement procedure, the person who is receiving the cells would clearly be you. After all, you minus one or two of your own cells, and plus one or two cells from Bruce Lee would still be you (I would think). At the end of the procedure, the person who emerges would clearly be Bruce Lee. But is Bruce Lee minus one of his cells (and plus one of yours) still Bruce Lee? What about Bruce Lee minus, say, a hundred of his cells, and plus a hundred of yours? The question here is: At what point during the procedure do you cease to be you and become Bruce Lee? It seems very difficult, if not impossible, to try to pinpoint when exactly in the procedure this change of identity occurs.

Many philosophers throughout history have wrestled with problems of this kind, trying not very successfully to pinpoint the moment of identity change at various points in the procedure. Parfit, however, draws an interesting conclusion from this thought experiment: Perhaps the very fact that we cannot pinpoint any particular moment means that there is really no such thing as personal identity in the first place. There is really no Bruce Lee, and no you! Personal identity is, at most, a convenient fiction that we employ to get through our everyday lives. In our everyday lives, we say that this particular bundle of physical parts and properties and psychological characteristics is you. And that bundle of physical facts and properties and psychological characteristics who "died" in 1973 after the filming of Enter the Dragon is Bruce Lee. But when we try to pinpoint where one bundle ends and another bundle begins, as we did in the thought experiment above, we get stumped. Which suggests, according to Parfit, that there is really no such thing as a distinct person or self called Bruce Lee, or a distinct person or self called [insert your name here].


If there is no enduring further fact that we can point to and identify as our "self", over and above the multitude of physical and psychological facts and properties that we commonly associate with "you", what implications would this have for how we should go about living our lives?

Parfit, for one, finds the discovery that there is no further fact of self or personal identity to be a very liberating one. If there is really no self, then there is also really no such things as "my" life or "my" possessions, beyond their utility as convenient fictions to facilitate everyday life. Perhaps more importantly, the prospect of death will probably be less frightening if there is no "self" or "I" that actually dies. Parfit sees it this way:

"My death will break the more direct relations between my present experience and future experiences, but it will not break various other relations."

Even if there is no "I", various other relations will still persist between "I" and others after my death. People will (hopefully) remember me. They may also be influenced by my writings or thoughts (including, perhaps, those that are found on this blog ;-)), and conduct their lives and take actions in accordance with such influences. In this way, the "I" that never really existed in the first place will, paradoxically, continue to live on via other people's memories, thoughts and actions. Parfit concludes:

"This is all there is to the fact that there will be no one living who will be me. Now that I have seen this, my death seems to me less bad." 

Very interesting, don't you think? I find Parfit's views very fascinating and intriguing, and his arguments very compelling. But there is a part of me that is reluctant to accept the idea that there is really no "I". Well, I don't know. I guess I'm going to take the weekend to mull over all this a little more :-)

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Did full primary this morning, Sunday being my rest day. I'm starting to notice a subtle difference in my energy on days when I do primary and days when I do second only. On days when I do full primary, like today, I feel that my energy level is more subdued: This doesn't mean that I have less energy, it's just more... well, subdued: I generally feel more like sitting still and observing the world than participating too much in it. Whereas on days when I do second only, my energy seems to be of a more outgoing nature: I feel like moving more quickly, I feel like being more in the world. I suppose the closest yoga terms to describe this difference would be the difference between apana (downward-flowing energy) versus prana (upward-flowing energy). Which kind of makes sense, because it is generally held that forward bends are more apanic and "cooling" in nature, whereas backbends are more pranic and "stimulating" in nature. And second series, as many of you probably know, has many backbends. Do any of you out there who do second notice this difference in energy, or is it just me?

I have been on a bit of a kungfu movie binge over the last couple of days. Watched a kungfu movie last night. And today, during breaks from grading papers, I also watched a few classic Bruce Lee movies on Youtube.

What are kungfu movies doing on a yoga blog? You may ask. Well, according to the official history of the Shaolin Temple, much of Chinese kungfu is supposed to have originated from yoga (for more details, see this post).

But really, who needs an excuse to watch kungfu movies? They're fun to watch (at least, I think they are; you may disagree), and they make you (at any rate, they make me) want to get off your ass and kick some ass! The perfect remedy to too much apana :-) And you also get some very memorable lines from kungfu movies. One of my all-time favorites is "Boards don't hit back." Here's the scene in Enter the Dragon where it came from:

   

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