am I yesterday’s me?

Near the end of last week’s short course on “Cultivating Mindfulness to cope with Stress” I tossed out the thought that none of us were the same people who’d walked in the room. Think about it. We may appear the same after 2 hours, perhaps feel a bit more relaxed, even a tad enriched, but the body? On the surface, same hands to rest, nose to inhale with, same bum to sit on. Or did something happen below the radar, something not visible to the observer?

We’re in fact biological beings. “From our newborn stage to old age, our bodies are constantly changing. Different types of cells make up different organs of our body, and these cells are continuously regenerating as newer cells replace the old ones. [1] “People can lose about 10,000 neurons every day. By the time you reach 75 years of age, you will have lost 10% of the neurons in your brain. Although we have lost neurons, we do not become “dumber”, but the remaining neurons build new branches of fibers and new synapses between them, in a way that replaces the losses.” [2]

♥

Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh writes [3], “I have a photo of myself when I was a boy of sixteen. Is it a photograph of me? I am not really sure. Who is the boy in the photograph? Is it the same me or is it another person? Look deeply before you reply….  A person is made of body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. All of these have changed since the photograph was taken.”

He might have been looking at this: a boy aged 16 in Huế, Vietnam [4]:

Following his example I retrieved on old photo showing a boy named Peter: a bit younger, around age 7 in Grade 2, in Hildesheim, then-West-Germany, learning to hold a pencil:

“The body of the boy in the photograph is not the same as my body, now that I am in my seventies,” Thich Nhat Hanh continues, “It is just as if I am a completely different person from that boy, but if that boy … did not exists, then I would not exist either.”

Try something? Find a photo of yourself as a child, any photo, and sit with it for a while. Look and listen. Let it speak to you. This was you, then. And who’s looking at the photo now?

To paraphrase Thich Nhat Hanh:

You are a continuation like the rain is a continuation of the cloud.

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[1] www.scienceabc.com/humans/true-body-completely-changes-every-7-years.html.  [2] neurotray.com/how-many-brain-cells-do-you-lose-in-a-day/  [3] (2007). No death, no fear. pages 24-6.[4] plumvillage.org/thich-nhat-hanh/biography/thich-nhat-hanh-full-biography/