The Avatar I Called Jacob

For most of my life, I never questioned it. I was Jacob. My thoughts, my experiences, my feelings — that was me.

Then meditation started doing something I didn't ask it to do.

In this episode I'm talking about self — or more precisely, the growing suspicion that the self you've spent your whole life protecting might not be what you think it is. I share the moment this cracked open for me mid-delivery, crying alone in a car, and trace the thread through Buddhism, early Christianity, the language we use every day, and what years of daily Zazen practice have quietly done to my sense of who I am.

This is not a lecture. It's an open thread.

Closing with readings from Thomas Merton and Ramana Maharshi.

Transcript

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Jacob 0:01

I remember I was driving and I was doing deliveries. And I had this moment. It was a couple of months into really seeking or trying to figure out, you know, what this world is all about. What am I? Who am I? What do I believe? What do I not believe? Meditation had taken a real front and center to my life. And the more that I started practicing looking at my thoughts and not identifying with them, I had this crisis of identity. I thought, well, if I am not my thoughts, who am I? And I started crying. And it was just so weird. It was like I had this avatar my whole life. Jacob. I'm Jacob. Who else would I be? All my thoughts, all my experiences, that was me. That is me. And now I'm realizing it's not. That there is no self. And it it made me emotional. I started to weep. But I I really it was an emotional moment for me.

The Research Spiral

Jacob 1:58

And I remember as I started learning about uh Eastern traditions, in particular Buddhism, that speaks of no self. And I started to get worried. The way that I understood it from a Westerner's perspective was that well, if there's no self, then do I even exist? What happens to me after I die? Is there any experience that I will ever know or will be known since there is no I, right? Does all experience extinguish after death? And the way that I heard Nirvana describe to me as the blowing out of desire, it made it sound like annihilation. And I started to worry, so I started to frantically do research. What do Buddhists believe about life after death? Well, obviously they come from the Hindu tradition, or they came out of the Hindu tradition. That was like the sort of backdrop in their culture and society at the time, that we all had a soul or a self, which they call the Atman, which they say is directly identical to the Brahman or Parabrahman, which is the ultimate reality, encompassing everything essentially. So out of that tradition, the Buddha made a profound statement that there in fact was no self. So I started thinking to myself, if if there is no Jacob, then what happens to me when I die, when this body dies? And I started doing research and research, and then you'll hear that Buddhists do not believe in annihilation, which is great. I thought to myself, well, if there's no if they don't believe in annihilation, that means they they don't believe that it's just you know darkness after death, and I don't have to worry. But then I realized they don't also don't believe in eternalism. So to a Western mind, that gets very confusing. Don't believe in annihil uh annihilism, and they don't believe in eternalism. Well you can get really into the weeds with theology about self, but what I've come to realize is that not only in the Buddhist tradition, but just the statement itself that there is no self doesn't mean that you don't exist. You don't exist in a sense of a separate small self. But there is existence. Now you can you can say, well that means that you are everything. It's the same way of saying you are everything. And from there, I got real curious. Really curious. I mentioned in the first episode of this entire podcast that I felt like someone doused me in kerosene or something and lit me on fire. I was very passionate about this this subject matter. I had been practicing for months at the time and experiencing non-duality, non-self, and I also wanted to understand it intellectually, because in all these traditions they tell you to go beyond concepts, but also that studying and learning is in itself a form of meditation. And this is where I really started to do some deep dives. And first I just want to say thanks for listening. This is Jacob, uh, your host with Standing Nowhere. And when I started to, is this really Jacob though?

It's Written Into the Language

Jacob 6:20

Joking. But when I started to really dive deep into this concept of no self, I started to notice a lot of coincidences that would pop up. For example, Jesus in the New Testament, he would say things like the words that I speak to you are not from myself, but from the Father who gives them to me. Now Jesus, contextually, he lived in a culture that referred to the mystery as a father. So he's here he is saying, Me, Jesus, I am not saying these words. That's like me if I said to those of you listening, Jacob is not speaking to you right now. That's a profound thing for me to say, even in 2026. But in other areas, he would also say, He who believes in me, referring to himself, Jesus, doesn't believe in me, but him who sent me, or the Father who sent me. So he was constantly making himself transparent and pointing to something else. But these coincidences, I started to notice, also would pop up in common sense, in our common sense language. For example, when you say that was really selfless of you, then you know that someone's complimenting you. You see? So naturally in language, when when someone says you are selfless or without a self, we take it as a compliment, don't we? And I thought to myself, well, it's probably like that because it's a profound truth that we all know that's just written throughout nature, that there is no self. And when we pretend there's a self, all kinds of bad things happen, don't they? For example, on the reverse, if somebody says, you're a very selfish person, just look at that word for a moment, unpack that in your mind. Self-ish. Full of yourself. How about that one? These don't sound good naturally to us, instinctually, spontaneously. So what does that tell you? That's not programming either. They've done studies on infants or children, uh little toddlers who have not been taught very much yet in life, and they've had scientists uh who conducted these experiments on children where they would drop something on the ground. They would it look like they were working on something important, and they would drop something on the ground, pretending they didn't notice it, and the little children would come and grab the item and hand it back to the person. And the scientist would not reward them in any way as to not tamper the results, but they just did a big study on a bunch of kids, and they've found that instinctually human beings love to help other human beings. We're cooperative creatures. You hear a lot of people say that competition is human nature, especially when trying to defend our selfish economic system that we currently live under. Competition is in some way part of our nature, but it is utterly and completely eclipsed by the cooperative nature that we all seem to exhibit. For hundreds of thousands of years, human beings have lived in an economic system that has been dubbed by scientists as primal communism. They use the word primal because primitive is actually incorrect or inaccurate. It makes it sound like we were dumb cavemen or something. I mean, you could make that argument, but they're your relatives, your your history, right? Maybe your relatives were dumb cavemen, but mine were sophisticated primal communists. I'm joking. All of our ancestors lived together communally, cooperatively. We've all heard the phrase it takes a village, which is short for it takes a village to raise a child. We operate together, cooperatively, communally. Now, at a certain point when we learned agriculture, that's when class structure started to arise and people began the process of exploitation, masters and slaves, lords and serfs. And now the most current iteration of exploitation is employer and employee.

The Separate Self in Society

Jacob 11:28

And I'm not going to digress into economics. The point that I wanted to really bring up uh in the short time I have today is this notion of self, because it varies depending on which tradition and background you come, you hail from, but I'm pointing out the intersecting theme among them all. And when we look at the way we run our economy today, it's a very self-ish design. Notice in Buddhism, they say there's no self. Notice in Christianity, they say love thy neighbor as thyself. And Jesus also said on that notion that the other greatest commandment, which is exactly like it, is to love Yahweh, your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. So this emphasis is really about loving others more than yourself. And then in Buddhism, they take it a step further and say, straight up, there is no self. Jesus uh has also said uh in a parable, uh, which I won't give you the full length on here, because I haven't memorized it, but he said, Um, when I was in prison, you visited me, when I was naked, you clothed me, when I was hungry, you fed me. And then the people said, But Jesus, you know, but uh uh the parable was about a king, and the king um the people that visited the king said, Well, when did we visit you in in prison, and when did we clothe you, and when did we feed you? And then uh Jesus finishes the parable by saying, Verily I say unto you, when you did it to the least of these, or the least among you, you did it to me. And this parable really points to the idea that your true self is everyone else, or that quote unquote God or the Father in the Hebrew tradition is in fact all of us. And of course, there are much more on the nose about it in Hinduism, but tying this back to our economic model, if you look at the way private ownership is, because a lot of you hearing me, you can probably tell I'm I'm I'm much more left than most people in politics, which I hope it doesn't turn you off if you're if you consider yourself conservative. I love everyone equally, regardless of your political affiliation. All I want is for the most amount of humans to experience the least amount of suffering. That being said, I do enjoy Marxian um analysis or looking at the world through a Marxian lens because it's uh scientific and it tries to be objective and it tries to have good faith discussions about real-world situations. And tying this again back to our economic situation, the main difference between a communist or a socialist and a capitalist is the idea of self or private ownership. This is not to be confused with your iPhone. That's personal property, right? But a Marxist will say, you know, if uh a business enterprise or uh the means of production are owned by a private individual or a private entity or group of people, this creates a class divide among society, which it does. Because the people that own the business or the means of production, they own it only by um merit of having money or having capital or an idea. And I'm I know I'm oversimplifying this whole thing, but I just wanted to speak briefly about the idea of a separate self from the rest of society or the universe in general. And when we look at this idea of separateness in economics, the idea of owning something privately or separately from others has created massive suffering throughout the world. And I know um when you guys come here, you expect contemplative spiritual content, and that's absolutely what I'm here for. But at the same time, I personally consider it a cop out if we are trying to work on ourselves and wake up and we are averted to looking at reality because as you will remember, the Buddha himself said, and I quote, if there is anything in this world that you desire or that you are averted to, nirvana is impossible. And even that word nirvana, the blowing out of desire, the exhale, the sigh of relief. You may recall on my uh episode about uh temptation, I I talk about how when you get something that you've really desired for a long time, there is a sense of uh enjoyment or elation, but that is misplaced uh given credit to the item itself. It's actually the cessation of the desire for the thing that gives you peace and relief. But we constantly desire things for our separ our separate sense of

What Practice Actually Does

Jacob 16:59

self. And for me, sitting every morning on a cushion, I have started to really change the dynamic or the relationship between my thoughts and my sense of self. I don't identify with them anymore. And that's really the main core thing with practice, in my opinion, is do you identify with things? If you identify with anything, then you are sort of limited, you become finite. It's okay to have preferences, but ultimately this is the work that we're doing as seekers, as people who practice, as people who want to wake up. Because that is the central theme is waking up. And the Buddha has also been uh quoted to say that when you when you help another individual or show love to another individual, you get a pleasure that he calls otherworldly. Meaning uh I'm sorry, it's a joy that's otherworldly, meaning that you are getting a joy not from a material possession, but from something outside of the material realm. And that reminds me, like I was telling you earlier, how I started noticing all these coincidences in the world uh about the self, like being so uh in our language, oh you're selfless, oh you're selfish. Um when you uh when you help other people, is it a isn't it a weird coincidence that you feel you're best when you're helping others? That's just a natural, spontaneous thing that happens. So this false notion that you are a separate self from everyone else in the universe, um, you can really highlight that that false notion by paying attention to the way you feel when you help others. It's addicting. And it's addicting in the best kind of possible way. And it is the main reason that I started this podcast because I was truly, truly in a very, very, very dark place. You might call it my dark night of the soul, to quote St. John of the Cross. I mean, I was getting to the point where I had I guess you could call it suicidal ideation. I wasn't really thinking about suicide, but I did have visions of um cars taking me out and thinking to myself, it would be easier to not exist than to exist. And once I reached that point, and then I started this process of um really examining myself and feeling better, I just was overwhelmed with this desire to share um, you know, sort of my perspective and my angle on it and my experience on it. And at the same time, interview people who have gone through similar challenges and how they overcame them. And I think what you guys will notice is that when it is uh the focus of my own actions or others that I interview to help other people, there is a great sense of joy. And um I I suppose I just wanted to kind of talk about this a little bit today with the little bit of time I have, but uh I know I'm running out of time. I've got uh really busy week, and you know, I just encourage all of you to really slow down. Uh just take a few moments each day, preferably in the morning, to just pause, to be with your experiences. I always emphasize being with what you're doing because when you do that, your sense of self disappears. And they say in Buddhism that you are you're constantly reincarnating all through the day. Notice as you go through your day when you're not thinking about yourself, your self disappears because it's just an idea, it's just a thought. And then every now and again it comes back. But the more you practice noticing, the more you'll notice when it comes back. You can let it go. You can you can just not take it as serious.

Closing & The Quotes

Jacob 21:26

So I hope that's enough for for this week. Um, one thing that I did uh want to share with you, which is a small quote from uh Thomas, both Thomas Merton and Romana Maharshi on this. And Thomas Merton first, he says that there is an irreducible opposition between the deep, transcendent self that awakens only in contemplation and the superficial external self. Which we commonly identify with the first person singular. We must remember that the superficial I is not our real self. It is our individuality and our empirical self. But it is not truly the hidden and mysterious person in whom we subsist before the eyes of God. And Ramana Maharshi echoes this where he says, the question, who am I, is not really meant to get an answer. The question, who am I, is meant to dissolve the questioner.