Lately I’ve been identifying as a hujubu. A humanist Jewish Buddhist. I claim authorship of this neologism (a play on JuBu/JewBu/BuJew, of course), but if you identify similarly, you are welcome to try it on. The label fits many of us, I suspect, if not so many monks. 

Yes, I have been identifying. Is laying claim to the identity of hujubu – to three identities – just clinging? And me, a monk? Playfully or not, am I just whipping up some reified self-image whereby to reassure myself of having an identity? To assert my place in the human order? To differentiate myself from, or ally myself with, others? To be special? To belong? Is just being a Theravada monk not enough?

Or do these identities, with their felt meanings, affirm something real, something necessary, important, or useful that does meaningfully qualify who or what I am?

Let’s note that these are instance of a larger question, that hujubu is just a shrub in the great forest of racial, gender, sexual, religious, ethnic, and other identities of which we are constituted, or by which we constitute ourselves. My question extends to all such identities, including the identity of monk. It is a dharma question. It concerns how we are to understand and practice the foundational Buddhist teaching of anatta (“no soul” or “no self”). 

And here is my answer to this question: 

It depends. 

Unpromising as this may sound, it’s the answer the dharma leads us to. I’ll say more about this answer – about what it depends on – below. But first, a few words on my particular descriptors as a hujubu. 

Humanist. As I mean it, the “hu” in hujubu refers to humanist values, not to humanism as a social or cultural movement, or to organized Humanism. By humanist values I mean small-”l” liberal values: reason, science, human rights and equality, critical inquiry and discussion, social justice, individual freedom, rule of law, democratic institutions, and more generally, progress as such. The foundational values of modernity. For a modern person, you might think these go without need of affirmation as positive values (though we may disagree about their applications and limits). But with the recent and perennial waxing of illiberal forces in our politics, institutions, and psyches, and in view of the illiberal aspects and tendencies of institutional religion in particular, it makes sense to bring these values forward in our consciousness, to affirm them, to recognize their role in the dharma, and to practice them. 

Jewish. Yes, you can be Jewish and Buddhist. Not according to every Jew or every Buddhist, but many of us are willing to embrace both of these identities. I am not an observant Jew, and so from the viewpoint of orthodoxy, I am not a good Jew (though I may still get a pass as a Jew, with my Jewish mother). For me, the Judaism is cultural and historical. But these are not insignificant dimensions of human experience. Let’s not imagine, much less aspire to, the erasure of such aspects of ourselves, as some might misunderstand a developed awareness of anatta to require. But more on this below. 

Buddhist. I find it ironic that in contrast to Orthodox Jews, many of whom will at least acknowledge me as a Jew (and hope I might return to my senses) I’ve encountered convert-Buddhist monastics unwilling to recognize me as a Buddhist. Typically, they will have constructed for themselves (and everyone else) a test of faith along these lines: do you believe in literal rebirth and future-life karmic retribution? Anyone scoring too low on this test – even another ordained monk – is not a Buddhist for these gatekeepers. The irony is that with this test, such faith-based types essentialize the most anti-essentialist, protean, multiform, cosmopolitan, and ideologically tolerant of the major world religions, a cultural system based not on belief but on conduct. In any case, I do not cede the term “Buddhist” to such guardians of the faith. For me it’s enough that the Buddha got the ball of the dharma rolling – however much farther along the ball has now rolled – to count myself among his followers. To call myself a Buddhist. Dayenu!

Okay, so I’m a hujubu. Cute. But isn’t a key point of the dharma – the point of anatta – to go beyond conceiving of oneself in terms of such fixed, rigid, differentiated identities? Aren’t we trying to abandon such identities, to unlearn identifying, and instead to abide in the undifferentiated suchness of simply being? Or if you subscribe to one of the “non-dual”-flavored approaches to dharma, aren’t we trying to transcend identity and see past our differences, to see them as illusory, and so to recognize and ultimately merge into the underlying unity of all things?

In a word, no. A slate wiped clean of personal identity is a chimera, and a pernicious one. To pursue it is to misapply Buddhist ideas. It reflects an absolutist/perfectionist approach to spiritual practice and spiritual understanding. If it’s good to loosen our grip on too-tightly held aspects of identity – so goes this misguided thinking – it must be better to abandon identity completely, to eradicate it, to destroy it. But in practice, such thinking directs us towards a cultish kind of group identity masquerading as non-identity.

Rather than somehow attaining non-identity, such thinking leads us to adopt a new identity signaled by all the conventional markers – for monastics, a set of guidelines governing dress, diet, social relations, sexual (non-)behavior, work, and let’s not forget hairstyle. At best the new identity offers uniquely supportive conditions for spiritual development, but its austerity and uniformity sets a trap: the trap of believing that performing the new identity successfully – absolutely, perfectly – equates to transcending identity. One needn’t look far to find parallels in the lay Buddhist world. 

At worst, such absolutist/perfectionist thinking steers us towards self-punishment and corporal (as opposed to spiritual) purification, towards obsession and compulsion in performing our new non-identities, towards self-abjection and abnegation. It also leads to the dharmic equivalent of color-blind racial ideology (and indeed, to a dharmic version of color-blind racial ideology): we misunderstand our underlying human condition – the vulnerability to which our basic human needs subject every person – to mean that our differences don’t matter. In short, to deny them.

But it’s not that these differences don’t exist or matter. It’s not that our identities are illusions. It’s that they are anatta (“not-self” or “not soul”). They are not eternal, essential qualities or attributes that constitute and define us. Rather, we exist with and as all of our differences – in instantiated forms specific to each of our individual life circumstances (including our experiences of racial, gender, sexual, religious, ethnic, and other identities). A key point of the teaching of anatta is that each of us only exists in this way – as a particular composite of elements specific to our life circumstances. There is nothing more. No permanent, unchanging soul (or self, atta), as the Buddha is said to have observed. But our differences do exist and matter. Each of us does exist and matter.

So what are we to make of identities like hujubu and monk? How are we to “hold” them, in the argot of the dharma tribe?

As I’ve mentioned, it depends.

We do best to hold them with more or less strength, more or less lightness, as appropriate. We hold them with an awareness of their karmic consequences, by which I mean only, their consequences for the well- or ill-being of everyone involved. We hold them alert to questions like these: Are we asserting a given identity to claim privilege or advantage over others? Or are we asserting an identity to resist subjugation or erasure, to secure or protect our human rights? Does our awareness of identity clarify our understanding of a situation, or does it distort our perception? Does it support wholesome mindstates (for instance, minds of integrity, constructive energy, or compassion), or unwholesome ones (resentment, self-righteousness, entitlement). What are our intentions in claiming a given identity, and what intentions does the identity engender? No identity comes with a single, unchanging answer for any of these questions.

For those of us engaged in issues of identity (which is to say, everybody), “it depends” has implications for practice. It lends urgency to our efforts to cultivate awareness of our mindstates, including our awareness of our intentions. This awareness is our only alternative to mindless reactivity in the face of any and all questions of identity. (In the face of anything that arises, actually.) Whether on the mat or in the flow of life, mindful awareness thrives on approaching questions of identity from the viewpoint of dharma: with an open mind and heart; an acceptance of uncertainty, contingency, and multiplicity of views; and an appreciation for penetrating questions over inflexible answers.