Misperceptions of Being Separate

There is a fundamental discrepancy between Western and Eastern perceptions of the way in which each of us exists, relative to the rest of the universe. While those of us in the West tend to view ourselves as individual entities that stand apart from creation, people in the East see themselves submerged into a unitary whole. While we in the West are comfortable with our unique separateness, those in the East take comfort in feeling connected to it all. While we prize our distinctiveness, they value their community.

This sense of distinctness and independence is strong within us Westerners. We absorb it from our culture and come to accept it as a given. The concept permeates our social and political lives. We come to see ourselves as distinctive and different individuals. We are oriented toward personal goals of success and achievement. We seek equality in personal relationships, or, alternatively, to be in a superior position in hierarchical relationships.

In contrast, people in the East do not like to stand out from the crowd. Rather than seeking personal accomplishments they value harmonious social relations. For example, there is no word for “individualism” in Chinese; the closest the language comes is the term for “selfishness.”

This significant difference between Western and Eastern perspectives is largely responsible for how a Westerner struggles with Eastern religious perspectives that describe a oneness to everything. Buddhism expresses our Western feelings of separateness from the universe as an illusion. Some in the West might talk about being “one with it all,” but that often comes from a limited, new-age interpretation.

I became a student of Buddhism a few decades ago, and have benefited from bringing meditation and mindfulness into my life, but I still struggle with understanding how I may let go of my Western image of being separate from it all. It's just too ingrained within me. It’s too easy to convince myself that I may intellectually comprehend my unity with it all, but deep in my gut I can't help but feel separate... often even isolated.

A recent idea came to me in meditation, that may help me feel more a part of it all, but it may well take a while for me to own the concept. All of my perceptions of myself or the world—my very understanding of existence—culminate in electrical signals in my brain. When I view a tree, photons enter my eye, impinge upon receptors on my retina, which send electrical impulses to my brain.  My total perception of the tree is that set of signals.

Similarly, sound wave vibrations are funneled into my ear canal, tickle three little bones in my middle ear, which induce vibrations on my cochlea, which then get transformed into other kinds of electrical signals in the brain. It's the same with my other three senses—taste, touch, and smell. All of them create certain specific electrical signals in my brain. Thus my view of the world is in reality nothing more than a complex field of neuronal impulses in my cerebral matter. It's literally all in my head.

So, am I really separate from that bird I hear singing outside? I know its song is “out there,” but my perception of it ultimately culminates in those electrical signals in my brain. That's all I really know about the bird. Even if I see what seems to be a separate feathered being perched out on that limb, that sense of vision ends up as yet another set of electrical signals. I own those signals. In a sense, that bird is now inside me... is a part of me. Is this fundamentally any different from a tingle I feel in my toe—a sensation that ends up as just another set of neuronal impulses? All I can know of either my toe or the bird's call is how my brain interprets those signals. Aren't they all a part of me? Am I not a part of it all?