Author Description

The Greased Pig – Catching Hold of the Self is a collection of essays on the vagaries and epiphanies of meditation practice in the West. The arresting image of a greased pig—typically chased (but rarely caught) by children and cowboys alike at the county fair—is meant to convey both the laughter and enervation involved in trying to catch such a slippery creature. The pig, of course—a very smart being despite its love of muck & mire—is one of the central archetypal animals of the Three Poisons in Buddhist iconography, and represents delusion (despite its apparent intelligence). The little piggie can appear quite cute, or ugly, depending on your view. Hence, perhaps an apt image of this ornery self we keep chasing in the West. As a loose collection of essays, the book’s intent is more akin to painting portraits of the vanishing-self than it is a lawyer’s itemization of suspect-number-one’s whereabouts, when the crime of refusing-to-disappear occurred. As such, I like to utilize the word assay, as opposed to essay, in a similar manner to the poet Jane Hirshfield: where exploration of a theme, rather than building an argument, is the intent. Or as some have called it, the lyrical essay, rather than the philosophical argument. As with the Zen formulation of form & emptiness, the ephemeral self in its many protean disguises is ever moving between these poles—and flaunting itself, flagrantly, even as it keeps disappearing. Unless a lobotomy is your goal, or the concentrative absorption of the Hindu fakirs who always had more trouble living in society than outside it, then making peace with the self, rather than trying to escape, ignore, or amputate it, is the better path. To be a friend to the self, rather than its surgeon.