This week's article will conclude last week's contemplations on running, truth, eternity, perfection and landscape.
Last week, we finished off with a look at the runners' ego- or lack thereof. This week, we'll explore that runners' self a little further. In the Phaedo, Plato said that to practice philosophy is to practice dying. He was not talking literally but he meant the death of our grasping and illusionary selves, our ego, which, with its wants, desires, self-serving fantasies and illusions prevents us from seeing things as they are.
The Grasping Ego
Just as I distanced myself enough from my runner's-ego to see a more realistic world of running beyond times and races, Plato believed that distancing, or purifying, ourselves from the wants and desires of the corrupt ego would bring us closer to truth and perfection. And Plato is not alone in aiming for this distancing, or death, of the ego- though death might be a bit too strong a word. Experiencing an absence of a "self" is also of crucial importance to the Buddhist, Zen and otherwise. Buddhism sees our tendency to grasp, hold onto and build our sense of self as one of the main sources of suffering. My former tendency to focus on quantitative results, for example, became a source of suffering.
Stuck on the idea that I had to run a marathon in a certain time to uphold the image of my "self" as a "good" runner (I am a good runner, I can run a 3.30 marathon and so on) inevitably led to suffering of that very same self. As time unkindly and irrevocably slowed my time, the idea of my self-as-runner was shattered (I am no longer a good runner, I am a runner with embarrassing times...). It is a vulnerable self indeed. Many Buddhist meditation practices aim therefore, among other things, to achieve a distancing from this self. Zen practitioners aim to see that all suffering starts with our pervasive concern with self. And it seems to me that solitary, long distance running can be similarly a practice of "dying," of erasing the desiring and wanting self as both Plato and Zen envision (dying, thus, in the metaphorical sense though some runners might relate to it in more literal ways.) The experience expressed by Mike: "The earth and I are at one" rests on the death of the self. It dissolved into its surroundings. Listen again to Dutch marathoner Klaartje:
When I run, I come away from myself. I am taking things in, I am present, but my mind is empty, and there are no thoughts. When I run with headphones for example, the music and the rhythm of my feet together, make me feel as if I was part of the music. I seem to disappear into the music.
And once more to Dutch runner Hans:
When I run by myself on trails I often find myself observing things without judging, without forming an opinion. I think that my body's movement has something to do with this. The simplicity of focusing only on my breath and steps helps me to empty my mind so that I can really take in what is around me.
The Empty Runners' Mind
The landscape becomes central in the running experiences of Klaartje and Hans, more so than the self. Hans describes his running experiences as a process during which the self distances itself to allow him to be fully present in the phenomenal world- the world we know through our senses. And this is what Zen proposes: not, as Plato would have it, to disengage the mind from the physical world but rather to enable the mind to be fully present in it. Contrary to Plato, Zen does not see the ever-changing physical world of becoming and degeneration as untrue. Instead, to the Zen-follower, what you see, what you taste, what you feel, what you smell, is truth, just the way it is. And the mind is not something that can rise above this world, as Plato would have it. In Zen philosophy, the mind is pretty much the same as everything else in this world- impermanent and subject to change. But a reflecting, open, mind, which lives from one moment to the next, can mirror the world as it is. Zen does not aim for a truth beyond this existence, but rather aims at seeing things as they are, fully present in the world with a clear, still mind.
The empty mind described by runners like Hans, Klaartje, and Mike is not a way of understanding things. It is not a "tool" or an absence of something else. Rather, it is a state of receptivity (Ray Grigg, 1994) a state we can really only experience but not, as Plato would have it, understand. Indeed, words and thoughts also disappear in this state of receptivity (Ray Grigg.) In Klaartje's words: "my mind is empty, and there are no thoughts." From this empty and receptive space, runners can learn to see the world with a kind of disinterest, with selflessness. This disinterest and openness applies to the immediate surroundings of the runner, but it also enables some runners to be present in other situations with the self as part of, rather than as the center of, this presence.
Hans continues for example:
Yeah, it is as if I empty myself during running. Experiencing this empty mind also helps me to see my day-to-day situations with more distance, and this is very helpful to me. Come to think of it, running for me is almost a practice in being.
Dutch runner Klaartje also describes how her long-distance and marathon runs shaped her 'self' in new and different ways. She says:
When I train for a marathon, or when I have just completed a marathon, I tend to see life in terms of long distance running. It simplifies life. The driving force for all that I do becomes gentle persistence. Whether it pertains to running, work or other areas in my life, I approach the things I have chosen to do with one thought only: "This is what I am going to do." And that is the only thought I have about it. To give up does not enter my mind. Instead, I persist, with thoughtfulness and with persuasion.
What sustains this perseverance in the face of the serious doubts most of us suffer during long-distance or marathon running?
"Questions. I just run along with questions and a not knowing state of mind."
Running as a Practice of Living
The truth experienced by runners is not achieved through mathematical equations or by abandoning the physical realm as Plato suggested. Instead, runners achieve glimpses of the "flying perfect" by doing the very opposite, by immersing themselves completely in the physical realm. As they plunge into the phenomenal world, their ego disappears, together with its wants and desires, and so, Plato might say, they practice a kind of death, namely that of the ego. As a result, they achieve moments while running, moments of insight and truth. Solitary runners like Klaartje, Hans, and Mike all experience these moments of insight while running- moments during which they are able to observe the physical realm just as it is rather than as they generally see it, colored and distorted by the ego. They experience truth in a heightened focus on each instant of life. And for some runners this experience carries over to their daily life, where the absence of ego and an empty mind enables them to make decisions with detachment and to pursue resolutions with gentle persistence.
The flying perfection of runners is a living truth, belonging neither to death nor to a reality beyond this one. Absorbed in the here and now of the sensuous and the physical, lone long-distance runners can achieve the kind of receptivity that allows them to be fully present to whatever life brings them at that moment. Running is, as Hans expressed it, a practice of being. Indeed, lone distance runners might be seen as a kind of Zen philosopher. And Ralph Waldo Emerson's "flying Perfect" might not be so unattainable after all. We might find it when we practice philosophy in the way it is understood in Ancient Eastern traditions: as a practice of finding truth in each instant. Western philosophy was once an exercise in living the present instant (Pierre Hadot, 1995), but Western philosophers have long since replaced this focus on the value of each moment of life with a Platonic focus on and fascination with death and transcendence. Philosophers (and everyone else for that matter) are well advised to forget transcendence, forget practices of dying and forget realities beyond! Put on your earthly running shoes and go for a long and solitary run. You might discover a practice not of dying but of being and life itself. While you're at it, you might sense complete presence in your sensuous world, from moment to moment. You might even catch a glimpse of perfection.
References
David A. Reidy (1998). False Pleasures and Plato's Philebus. The Journal of Value Inquiry 32: 343-356.
Kluwer Academic Publishers. Available online at http://web.utk.edu/~dreidy/philebusarticle.pdf
John M. Cooper (Ed.). (1997). Plato. Complete Works. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing
Company.
Pierre Hadot. (1995). Philosophy as a Way of Life. Oxford: Blackwell.
Ray Grigg. (1994). The Toa of Zen. Boston: Alva Press.
Ralph Waldo Emerson. (1909). Essays and English Traits. New York : P.F. Collier.
