picture H.Kopp-Delaney
People commonly believe that they have a separate self that is fixed and unchanging, an inside core that is a me. Despite noticing that all thoughts, feelings, perceptions and body sensations change every instant, it is believed that there exists a separate self that remains the same.
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So one holds on tightly to this identity of me and to the mine for fear of grave loss, leaping from one imagined cliff to another. However, that very attachment and that very strategy, only fuels fear. It is a painful feedback loop and an unnecessary one, as it is driven by the illusion of fundamental separation.
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There is no actual separation that a person has from life to defend against. There is not an independent self that remains removed from what happens. Experiences and all sense of subjectivity depend upon countless conditions that are not even considered to be subjective. A seer, for instance, could exist without the seen. Therefore, there is no actual seer of things. For a seer cannot see without what does not see. This is because a subject needs an object to be a subject. Both are inseparable, mutually arisen. This also applies to awareness, emotion, perception and sensation.
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This is why the separate self is an illusion. There is no independent self to be found. What we call a self depends upon thought, feeling, sensation, perception, a body, which further depend upon all that is the earth and sky. If even air or water was removed, there would be no self essence, nature or being left over. Whatever exists dependently, cannot also exist independently or separately.
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It’s the same as with a house. A house depends upon wood, cement, windows, nails, etc., which further depend upon rain clouds, air, metal, minerals and so forth. There is nothing independent that is house, that exists as its own thing. One might say that these parts belong to the house. If these parts did belong to the house, then the house was already there before the parts, and there must then be two houses, one with parts and one without parts.
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A good emptiness inquiry is to see if you can find even one aspect of what you consider to be the self that exists independently and does not depend upon something else or on other conditions. As another example, thought depends upon what does not think, because it does not exist with its own independent nature. For thoughts are always thoughts of objects, including thought objects that do not themselves think. There no subject-object divide.
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There is diversity in life, but this is not a diversity of separate things. Everything is an interreflection, just as objects in dreams objects lack their own substance and are not self-established. And as there are no separate entities existing as their own things, there is not one universal essence that is everything either. Nothing can be pinned down. Everything is empty of self-establishment.
~
Being interrelated, who can say that things are the same or different? There are appearances and the functional naming of things, but they are not self-created, nor self-enduring entities. As everything depends upon relative otherness, rather than existing in and of themselves, a self of persons and all phenomena must be empty of their own separate being.
~
Realizing this is how fear is removed from the root
~
So one holds on tightly to this identity of me and to the mine for fear of grave loss, leaping from one imagined cliff to another. However, that very attachment and that very strategy, only fuels fear. It is a painful feedback loop and an unnecessary one, as it is driven by the illusion of fundamental separation.
~
There is no actual separation that a person has from life to defend against. There is not an independent self that remains removed from what happens. Experiences and all sense of subjectivity depend upon countless conditions that are not even considered to be subjective. A seer, for instance, could exist without the seen. Therefore, there is no actual seer of things. For a seer cannot see without what does not see. This is because a subject needs an object to be a subject. Both are inseparable, mutually arisen. This also applies to awareness, emotion, perception and sensation.
~
This is why the separate self is an illusion. There is no independent self to be found. What we call a self depends upon thought, feeling, sensation, perception, a body, which further depend upon all that is the earth and sky. If even air or water was removed, there would be no self essence, nature or being left over. Whatever exists dependently, cannot also exist independently or separately.
~
It’s the same as with a house. A house depends upon wood, cement, windows, nails, etc., which further depend upon rain clouds, air, metal, minerals and so forth. There is nothing independent that is house, that exists as its own thing. One might say that these parts belong to the house. If these parts did belong to the house, then the house was already there before the parts, and there must then be two houses, one with parts and one without parts.
~
A good emptiness inquiry is to see if you can find even one aspect of what you consider to be the self that exists independently and does not depend upon something else or on other conditions. As another example, thought depends upon what does not think, because it does not exist with its own independent nature. For thoughts are always thoughts of objects, including thought objects that do not themselves think. There no subject-object divide.
~
There is diversity in life, but this is not a diversity of separate things. Everything is an interreflection, just as objects in dreams objects lack their own substance and are not self-established. And as there are no separate entities existing as their own things, there is not one universal essence that is everything either. Nothing can be pinned down. Everything is empty of self-establishment.
~
Being interrelated, who can say that things are the same or different? There are appearances and the functional naming of things, but they are not self-created, nor self-enduring entities. As everything depends upon relative otherness, rather than existing in and of themselves, a self of persons and all phenomena must be empty of their own separate being.
~
Realizing this is how fear is removed from the root
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