Be Nobody

Advance Praise for

“When we strive to be somebody, we are actually striving to be somebody else. This somebody else is the root of all our problems. The key to awakening is being who you already are. But as Lama Marut dares to tell us in this delightfully written and wise book, this authentic somebody is nobody at all. Reading this book is easy, and understanding it is liberating. I invite you to do both.”

—Rabbi Rami Shapiro
, author of
Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent

“In his refreshing and compelling new book,
Be Nobody
, Lama Marut gives us a road map to living life in the realm of an Everyday Joe in order to accomplish great happiness and connectedness and to begin to offer the very best we can access. He gives us a truly clear and vivid understanding of the present-day dilemma of the drive toward ‘I' and the fact that this drive is leading to depression, isolation, and diseased thinking. And then he outlines a way that leads to joy by showing us how to practice a new thought pattern that encourages focus on anything but self. This is an amazingly powerful piece of work from a truly unique and dynamic nobody.”

—Mary McDonnell
, actress

“In his trademark emphatic and no-nonsense style, Lama Marut provides a much-needed critique of modernity that cuts to the root of every problem we currently face on the planet.
Be Nobody
exposes our culture of narcissism that precludes personal happiness, social equality, and ecological balance. Rather than taking us from our deluded state of alienated self-absorption to some exalted state of equally misguided self-annihilation, Marut guides us through an inner transformation and re-emergence as awakened altruists contributing to a sustainable future for all.”

—Dr. Miles Neale
, Buddhist psychotherapist and assistant director of the Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science

“Here's some help in kicking your ego's butt so that you can create a genuine spiritual life. Instead of endless self-improvement, you're invited to let go of your self. This really is the only way to be happy. Lama Marut is brilliant, a Chögyam Trungpa for new generations mixed with a little Louis C.K.–style humor.”

—Lisa Selow
, life coach and author of
A Rebel Chick Mystic's Guide

“Lama Marut's
Be Nobody
fiercely examines our preoccupation with the ‘I,' revealing how living on the ‘Me Plan' can never satisfy the hungry ego. The antidote he offers is truly liberating, not only for oneself but for all sentient beings.”

—Michael Bernard Beckwith
, author of
Life Visioning

“Writing with great sensitivity to the stress we all feel, Lama Marut helps us see that we strive to be valued by trying endlessly to be more and more special. We aim to be somebody, but only find tension and loneliness as we never reach the bar. What good is getting star billing if you never feel like a star? Laying out a clear spiritual alternative, he dares us to become nobody: a state of complete authenticity, where we are present to our lives and joyfully connected to all. This is no mystical pipe dream; the ideas in this book point to something every one of us can do. All of us want to be happy. We owe it to ourselves to become nobody. Put this transformative book by your bed, and read it again and again.”

—Lindsay Crouse
, Academy Award–nominated actress

“
Be Nobody
is a great spiritual guide for people of all faiths. Lama Marut's description of our bondage to our egos is both entertaining and sobering. After providing an incisive diagnosis of the human condition, he not only offers an understanding of how to leave suffering behind, but also provides practical and achievable steps for doing so. I am recommending this book to all my friends and parishioners.”

—Rev. Dr. Brian Baker
, dean of Trinity Cathedral, Sacramento, CA

The moment you want to be somebody, you are no longer free.

—Jiddu Krishnamurti

Epigraph

Preface: Don't Give Me That Old-Time Religion!

Introduction: Living in the iEra

Part I:

Desperately Seeking Somebody

1. Sticking Our Faces into Carnival Cutouts

2. What Goes Up Must Come Down

Part II:

Making a Better Somebody Out of Nobody

3: Clutching at Straws and Chasing Shadows

4: Nobody Makes a Better Somebody Possible

Part III:

Losing the “Somebody Self”

5. Being Nobody for Others

6. Going with the Flow

Part IV:

Everybody Is Nobody

7. Living as an Ordinary Joe

Acknowledgments

Appendix: Dropping into Your True Nature

About Lama Marut

Endnotes

Selected Bibliography

This book is dedicated to Cindy Lee, true companion, partner, muse, and the best friend I could have ever hoped for.

Traditions are group efforts to keep the unexpected from happening.

Barbara Tober

A
gospel song I was taught in church as a kid advises us not to be all newfangled when it comes to our spiritual life. Instead of getting caught up in the modern world and its trappings, we should just stick with “that old-time religion”:

Give me that old-time religion

Give me that old-time religion

Give me that old-time religion

It's good enough for me

Well, it wasn't good enough for me as an adolescent, and it's not good enough for me now either. A religion that isn't relevant to the current conditions under which we live is by definition
irrelevant
, isn't it?

My own spiritual life has been shaped by a variety of influences, and I suspect that this is the case for many of us. I was brought up a
Christian (my father and grandfather were ordained Baptist ministers), was baptized and steeped in that tradition through many years of religious instruction (including formal graduate study in a divinity school), and to this day have a deep and abiding connection to the Christian faith.

In addition, for over thirty years of my life I was employed in the academic study of comparative religion with an emphasis on Hinduism, visiting India many times for my research. In the most extended of those sojourns, I made a deep connection to a learned and devout Hindu teacher who helped me not only with my Sanskrit but also with how to live a life guided by spiritual principles. My personal religious sensibilities have been profoundly enhanced by this teacher and by my acquaintance with Hindu Sanskrit classical texts that I have had the opportunity to teach to students in both academic and spiritual contexts over the past three decades. As will be evident to readers of this book, I have integrated the wisdom found in Hindu scriptures like the Upanishads, the Yoga Sutra, the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, and the Bhagavad Gita into my overall understanding of the spiritual life.

And in 1998, I began an intensive study and serious practice of Tibetan Buddhism, eventually taking ordination as a Buddhist monk and teaching the philosophy and training offered in that tradition. I have had a lifelong attraction to the Buddhist tradition and its emphasis on compassionate and mindful living as well as its mind-expanding teachings on the true nature of reality. And upon deeper study I discovered to my delight that in Buddhist texts there are oft-repeated directives encouraging the student to think for him- or herself; to not blindly accept on faith anything that one hasn't tested in practice; and to remain intellectually and spiritually open to what is useful and beneficial no matter where one encounters it. It seems to me that it is a Buddhist dogma to not be overly attached to any
particular dogma. If I have correctly understood what is meant by the term “Buddhist,” I am proud to identify myself as one.

So the question of what or who I am when it comes to religion is not entirely clear—even, or especially, to me. Am I a Christian, a Hindu, or a Buddhist? Is it important or even necessary to pick just one? How could I just erase years of experience with any one of these three main influences on my personal spiritual life?

Many readers are probably at least as religiously complicated as I am. So many of us nowadays are religious hybrids, blended composites and combinations of a number of religious and philosophical traditions—spiritual mongrels, if you will. Even those of us who closely relate to one or another of the world's religions have been exposed to and influenced by other religions in ways that are unprecedented in world history.

In the days of yore, most people lived in closed societies and were more excusably parochial, provincial, and unaware of the whole range of religious and cultural alternatives. Our world is a much bigger and more diverse place. We live in a global community of instantaneous communication and the World Wide Web; we reside in nation-states that are increasingly multicultural and religiously heterogeneous. The containers in which we once kept ourselves are now leaking all over the place.

We know way more about each other than ever before, and none of us is left unaffected by the mutual influencing and syncretistic blending that's occurring on all kinds of levels. There are significant ramifications of such intermingling when it comes to a spiritual life that isn't futilely trying to stay cloaked in “that old-time religion.”

These days, claiming a religious identification (or refraining from doing so) is an option, not just an unalterable accident of birth. While we may have been born and brought up as one thing or another (or without any religious training at all), we now exercise
more choice than ever before about our personal beliefs, identities, and spirituality.

Fully 44 percent of Americans currently say they have a religious affiliation different from the one they were born into.
¹
No matter which religion our parents or guardians identified with, we spiritual crossbreeds now easily slip out of one category and into another.

And in addition to all of us spiritual mongrels, there are increasing numbers who disavow any religious affiliation whatsoever. This trend toward religious nonidentification is growing. One recent study has predicted that organized religion is an endangered species—probably “set for extinction”—in no less than nine of the world's developed nations: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Switzerland.
²
Another poll indicates that nearly two-thirds of those living in Great Britain no longer regard themselves as religious.
³