Unmasking the True Self

Unmasking the True Self: A Holiday from Self-Consciousness

by Peter Coyote, author of The Lone Ranger and Tonto Meet Buddha: Masks, Meditation, and Improvised Play to Induce Liberated States

The organizing principle of my work as a Buddhist teacher and an instructor in my mask workshops is personal transformation. While I cherish the utility and transcendental power of mask work, it’s important to reiterate that, compared with consistent meditation practice and the implications of Buddha’s understanding, mask experiences resemble the temporary gas flares of psychedelics more than the geologic vistas of enduring terrain. Taking psychedelics or wearing masks definitely alters perspectives, temporarily suppresses the ego, and engenders the liberation accompanying that suppression. They offer the novel shock of perceiving anew a world one had previously considered known and fixed. But such experiences also have a shadow.

Compared with the obdurate weight of our habits, one night’s expanded mind experience will eventually be reburied beneath the repetitive weight of our normal attachments and habits. If you make your own way to the “Grand Canyon”—the transcendental experience—by meditating, strengthening the body, and analyzing habits of daily thoughts and impulses, you will be able to return on your own steam by following clues and route markers assembled during the journey. Failing that, you remain dependent on the transport that carried you, such as the drug or the mask—a reliance outside one’s control.

While I’ve attempted to minimize Buddhist philosophy in the pages of my book, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Meet Buddha, it’s nearly impossible to remake the way we perceive the world and fix these positive changes without understanding insights the Buddha stressed in his teachings. For those interested in deep transformation and repeat excursions to freedom, such changes require challenging habitual (usually unconscious) premises and assumptions. Both meditation practice and Buddhist thought are tools precisely calibrated to aid serious students in mastering those challenges.

WHY THIS BOOK?

For readers confronted with thousands of spiritual texts, ranging from the “I channel a dead guy and he tells us what to do” variety to accurate explanations of spiritual traditions and practices, they might wonder why they should read my book. My self-serving but accurate reply would be that the exercises and games inside it are designed and proven to offer the peak experience of self-less freedom, a true holiday from self-consciousness, which always brings with it an experience of freedom and joy, whether or not that person has ever considered him- or herself spiritual.

My interest lies in approaching liberation through experiences that don’t appear foreign to everyday Americans of any background, are not larded with too many foreign words and exotic costumes, and are practices that can be carried on in your daily life without arousing undue attention. My predilection is to have fun, and most people find fun irresistible.

The parable of the Lone Ranger, Tonto, and the Buddha interspersed within the pages of the book translates many of the experiences in the text into recognizable human afflictions with good humor but with a serious intent to help readers see themselves in these characters.

Whether or not Buddhism eventually interests you, it is not a requisite for enjoying and using my book. However, for those who might become inspired to seek more permanent transformation and understand Buddhism in greater depth, the bibliography offers reliable sources of information.

Even if you choose never to practice meditation or explore Buddhist thought, you will be changed, positively, by mask work. You will be more intuitive, less fearful of the judgments of others, more spontaneous, and more able to fearlessly commit to your own choices in life. In the same way, as we (author and reader) travel together, the masked man will come to realize the limitations that his mask (and his mask of a self) have imposed on him. It’s my hope that you will make the effort to understand and enjoy the freedom that derives from knowing that all your own masks are simply faces of the formless energy of the universe, rising and falling like ocean waves, apparently discrete but never, ever free of the ocean.

Any personal problem bears a direct relationship to ideas we hold about ourselves. I say ideas because over time humans tend to solidify ideas and information they’ve received about themselves into a fixed identity. When that occurs, life becomes restricted, options disappear, and a great deal of joy evaporates.

The games and exercises in the first half of my book have been culled from forty-five years of Zen practice and my ordination as a priest and an equal amount of time and study as an actor. These games and exercises will reward you with liberation from unreasonable self-doubts, doublethinking, shyness, and fear. They will teach you how to let your ego (your sense of self) take a break and relinquish its constant state of being on guard, strategizing, and problem solving. From that point, it becomes easier to calm the mind’s hyperactivity, discipline our self-importance, and allow spontaneous playfulness and spaciousness to express itself as the play of our deepest nature. Once such states are experienced in a cold, sober environment, it engenders tremendous confidence in the existence of freedom, previously only imagined.

I draft that confidence, for the second half of the book, to will students to integrate this feeling of freedom and confidence into their daily life. The second part is dedicated to clarifying and explaining Zen Buddhist theory and practice in clear, simple language for Americans who may not consider themselves religious or spiritual. No worries!

It takes about half a day of preparation, but then, by placing a neutral mask over your face and regarding this new face in a mirror, your sense of self will be temporarily displaced. The spirit of the mask (which is actually your own mind) can ride you like a kayaker negotiating a torrent, using but not controlling the power propelling it. Each encounter with a mask generates a new, fully dimensional holographic personality you will instantaneously “know” intimately, in the same way that you understand and intuit events in dreams. Under its influence, you will not be burdened by your habitual limitations. Repeating the experience with different masks will afford incontrovertible evidence of the boundary-less freedom lurking just beyond the edges of who you’ve defined yourself to be. A visceral experience of an alternate self will make you wonder what suddenly happened to the old you.

Like a psychedelic drug trip on LSD, ayahuasca, mushrooms, peyote, or San Pedro cactus, the experience will end when you remove the mask. However, a residue will remain, a palpable feeling that the world is more magical and boundless than you had conceived. The Zen practices explained in the book’s second half will teach you how to recover those positive experiences and bind them to your life as permanent habits.

Mask work will not enlighten you and fix every problem in your life (neither will enlightenment), but you can think of mask work (Buddhist descriptions of reality) as encouragement that these states of mind actually exist and you experienced them without the use of drugs. These experiences—via mask or drug—function in the same way mystical experiences can arise during meditation. The mystical moments are not the goal but serve as signposts, acknowledging the right direction and providing encouragement to remain on the path. It is my hope that my book can help you discover your path and help you unmask your true self.