Chapter 27:

Buddhism has a problem with me.

Or I have a problem with Buddhism. The directionality of the problem is itself a philosophical question that the class has not addressed yet but that I've been sitting with for forty minutes while the lesson happens at the front of the room and my interior happens in here —

The teacher is explaining the Four Noble Truths.

I know the Four Noble Truths.

I've read ahead. I read ahead for every class, this is just a fact about me, not a performance of diligence, just the specific compulsion of a person who needs to know the terrain before he enters it, who needs the map before the territory, who does not do well with arriving at things unprepared —

The First Noble Truth: Dukkha. Suffering. The unsatisfactoriness of existence. The specific quality of a life that contains things that hurt and things that end and things that never quite resolve into the permanent satisfaction you were hoping they would —

I find this credible.

The Second Noble Truth: Samudaya. The origin of suffering. Which is tanha — craving, clinging, the specific attachment to things being a certain way, to the self being a certain thing, to the story you've told about yourself and the world being the accurate and final story —

I find this credible also.

The Third Noble Truth: Nirodha. The cessation of suffering. The possibility of release from the clinging.

I find this aspirationally credible.

The Fourth Noble Truth: Magga. The path. The Eightfold Path. Right understanding, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration —

Right speech.

I think about the I don't know her.

I think about the I ran into a wall.

I think about the I told you I wouldn't lie.

Moving on.

---

Anatta.

The teacher arrives at anatta and this is where Buddhism and I have our problem.

Anatta means no-self. Not no self as in you don't exist — the Buddha was not making a claim about non-existence, I want to be precise about this, the distinction matters — but no fixed self. No permanent unchanging self. What we call the self is not a thing but a process. Not a noun but a verb. A collection of conditions arising and passing, constantly changing, never the same from one moment to the next —

The self is not fixed.

The self is not the accumulated verdict of everything you've done.

The self is —

I look at the board.

The teacher has written: You are not the same person you were five years ago.

I look at this sentence.

I look at it for a long time.

The self is not fixed.

Which would mean — and I want to follow this logically, I want to give it the fair hearing that a philosophical position deserves before I reject it, I'm not going to reject it because it's uncomfortable, I'm going to reject it because it's structurally —

Which would mean that the eleven-year-old in the photo in the shoebox in the far left corner under the bed is not — is not the fixed point I've been measuring everything against. Would mean that I am not him in any permanent sense. Would mean the distance between who I was and who I am is not just movement — just displacement — but something more substantial, something that the framework of a fixed self can't account for because the framework itself is the error —

I am not the same person I was five years ago.

The teacher wrote that.

I'm looking at it.

If the self is a process then the monster is a process. Not a fixed identity I was born into or arrived at or earned through specific acts. Just — a condition that arose. That could pass. That is not the permanent truth of what I am but just the current arising, the present configuration of conditions that includes the guilt and the east stairwell and the mirror and the long way around —

And the conditions are changing.

The pencil is in my bag.

Kana said same time Monday.

Fine for me, good maybe said out loud to another person without the background process intercepting it first.

The conditions are —

I disagree with anatta.

My disagreement is as follows: the no-fixed-self position, while philosophically sophisticated, fails to account for the continuity of moral responsibility. If the self is not fixed, if I am not the same person who forged Lia's handwriting and turned Ben's secret into a punchline and made Sarah feel small for three consecutive years — if that person is just a past arising and I am a different present arising — then the moral weight of what was done becomes unanchored, becomes something that happened but doesn't have a continuous subject to remain accountable for the happening —

And I need the accountability.

I need the fixed self.

I need to be the same person so that the owing means something.

The teacher continues.

I write my disagreement in the margin in small handwriting.

I write it and then I look at what I've written and I think about Ms. Reyes saying you use self-awareness as an ornament and I think about the verdict in the mirror and I think about —

I need the fixed self.

Whether that need is wisdom or just the comfort of a familiar verdict is a question I'm putting in the box with the photo and the far left corner and everything else I'm not examining today.

---

O-soji.

The bell.

The specific reorganization of a classroom at the end of the final period — bags being packed but differently from usual, the toban groups assembling, the teacher distributing equipment, the specific ceremony of a school that has decided cleaning is not a separate activity but part of the day itself, part of what being in the building means —

I'm in the group assigned to the pathway leading to the gym and the equipment sheds.

I receive my broom.

The broom is a standard broom. Nothing remarkable about it. Just a broom. Just the instrument for the task.

I go outside.

---

The pathway.

Dead leaves. Twigs. The specific debris of a week of autumn existing in the vicinity of trees that have no investment in keeping their contents off the school pathway — they just release things, just let things go, just the impermanence of leaves doing what leaves do which is live and then detach and then accumulate in pathways for people with brooms —

I start at the far end.

This is the correct method. You work from the far end toward the collection point. You don't scatter things backward over ground you've already cleared. You move in one direction with intention, covering the ground systematically, not missing sections, not rushing —

The others in my toban group are less systematic.

I note this.

I don't comment on it.

The leaves are dry today — the grey sky hasn't produced rain yet, has been threatening it since Tuesday without following through, which means the leaves move cleanly when the broom finds them, don't clump or stick, just — gather, just accumulate at the broom's edge and move where the broom directs them —

The equipment shed.

I'm near the equipment shed.

The gap between it and the outer wall of the gym.

The not-a-place.

I sweep the pathway in front of it.

I don't look at the gap.

I sweep.

The leaves.

The twigs.

The specific debris of a week —

---

"You're sweeping wrong."

Sky.

I don't look up from the sweeping.

"I'm sweeping correctly," I say.

"You're too systematic," she says. "You're treating it like a grid. Life isn't a grid, Mii-chan."

"Don't call me Mii-chan."

"Mii-chan," she says. She is, I note without looking at her, standing in the section of pathway I'm about to sweep. Just — standing in it. Existing in the exact geometric space that the broom needs to access. "Why are you sweeping like you're defusing something."

"I'm sweeping like it should be swept," I say.

"You're very intense about leaves," she says.

"The leaves need to go somewhere," I say. "The somewhere requires intention."

"Leaves are impermanent," she says. "More will come. You know that right. You sweep these and more fall."

I stop sweeping.

I look at her.

She's looking at the trees above the pathway. Not at me. Just — looking at the trees with the specific quality of someone who has said something casually and is not monitoring what it does when it lands —

Leaves are impermanent.

The philosophy class still running.

The teacher: *You are not the same person you were five years ago.*

My elaborate disagreement with anatta.

The need for the fixed self.

The need for the accountability to have a continuous subject.

Leaves are impermanent.

More will come.

You sweep these and more fall.

I look at the broom.

"Move," I say.

"I'm standing here," she says.

"You're standing in the section I need to sweep."

"Sweep around me."

"That's not how sweeping works."

"It's how life works," she says. "You work around the things that are in the way. You don't wait for them to move. You just —" she gestures vaguely, "— incorporate them into the sweeping."

I look at her.

She's still looking at the trees.

"That's not a philosophy," I say. "That's just a thing you said."

"Most philosophy started as just a thing someone said," she says. "Then people wrote it down and gave it a name and made other people sit in rooms and disagree about it."

I think about anatta.

I think about the margin notes.

I sweep around her.

She watches me sweep around her with the specific expression of someone whose hypothesis has been confirmed.

"See," she says.

"I'm not incorporating you," I say. "I'm removing an obstacle from my path."

"Same thing," she says.

"Categorically different."

"You took philosophy today," she says. It's not a question.

I look at her.

"How do you know that."

"You have the face," she says. "The face you get when something has gotten into your head and is moving things around and you're pretending it isn't. I've been cataloguing your faces. I have —" she pauses, "— several entries."

"You don't have a collection," I say.

"Everyone has a collection," she says. "We just don't all call it that."

I sweep.

The leaves accumulate at the broom's edge.

The equipment shed beside me.

The gap between it and the outer wall.

The not-a-place.

"Buddhism," I say. Because the word is there and the leaves are impermanent and she's standing in my pathway and my elaborate disagreement is still in the margin of my philosophy notebook and —

"Hm," she says.

"The no-fixed-self position," I say. "I disagree with it."

She looks at me now.

Actually looks. The assessment running.

"Why," she says.

"Because if the self isn't fixed," I say, "then accountability becomes —"

"Unanchored," she says.

I look at her.

She shrugs. The specific shrug of someone who has said something accurate and is not making a performance of the accuracy. "If you're not the same person then nobody owes anything. Nothing has to be repaid. Nothing has to be fixed." She looks at the trees again. "That sounds nice actually. Why would you disagree with that."

I sweep.

The leaves go where the broom directs them.

"Because I need the owing to mean something," I say.

The words come out.

I don't authorize them.

They're just — out there, in the Friday afternoon O-soji air, with the dead leaves and the equipment shed and Sky not sweeping anything —

She doesn't say anything for a moment.

Seven seconds.

The longest Sky silence I've recorded.

"You know what I think," she says.

"You're going to tell me regardless," I say.

"I think," she says, "that you can owe something without being permanently the person who created the owing. I think those are different things. I think you've decided they're the same thing because if they're the same thing you have an excuse to stay in the east stairwell."

I sweep.

The leaves accumulate.

She said east stairwell.

She doesn't know about the east stairwell.

She said it anyway.

Some things don't require specific knowledge.

Some things are just — accurate, just the true shape of the thing visible from the outside even without the interior information —

"Move," I say.

She moves.

Two steps to the left.

I sweep the section she was standing in.

The leaves were there the whole time underneath her.

Hidden. Accumulated. Waiting for the broom to find them.

I sweep them.

They go where the broom directs them.

---

The teacher from my toban group passes by.

Ms. Nakamura. History. She has a rag and a bucket and she's been cleaning the outer wall of the gym with the specific efficiency of a person who takes O-soji as seriously as I take sweeping the pathway —

She looks at my section.

Looks at me.

"Good work," she says.

She moves on.

Sky watches her go.

"She complimented your sweeping," Sky says.

"I swept well," I say.

"You swept with intention," Sky says. "There's a difference."

I look at her.

She's looking at the pathway.

At the cleared section. The leaves collected at the far end, the pathway clean, the systematic coverage of the ground complete —

"The leaves are impermanent," I say. "More will fall."

"Yeah," she says. "But the pathway is clear right now."

She puts her hands in her pockets.

Looks at the grey sky.

"Right now is enough," she says. Casually. To no one. To the trees probably. "That's also Buddhism, I think. I'm not sure. I didn't take philosophy."

She walks away.

Down the cleared pathway.

Toward whatever Sky is going toward.

I watch her go.

The leaves at the far end of the pathway.

The equipment shed.

The gap.

The not-a-place.

I look at the broom.

Right now is enough.

I don't examine this.

I collect the leaves.

I finish the O-soji.

Friday is almost done.