You think you are one singular entity. Have you questioned this belief ever ?

According to you, your body from head to toe, and the mind and its’ contents together make you, you. Is this really what you think you are ? By making a statement that you (your name here) are a combination of the body and the mind, you are denying the existence of a 100 trillion cells, germs, bacterias and anti-bacterias, anti-bodies etc. Just because they do not have a mouth to speak from, allows you the right to usurp their individuality ?

Watch the below simulated medical video to see how many things live inside your own body. Your body provides the means for them to exist in the first place. It is like water allowing the means for the fishes to exist.

Have you heard of the ‘Ship of Theseus’ analogy ? It basically says, that if each part of your body is replaced by someone elses’ parts of their body, at what point do you stop being you and become the other person ? Or is something like this even possible ?

Suppose that by some medical invention, something like this is even scientifically possible, what is it that makes you, you ? Or let us not even take replacements into the equation. If you lose your hand in an accident, you do not stop being you. Same for your legs. Your kidneys and heart go bad and require a transplant. You go to the doc and get a transplant done. You have a new heart and a couple of kidneys now. Yet you are still you. Isn’t this anything short of a miracle ? Your parts have been changed. Your body is physically different, but you are still you. Then what are you ? Does it have anything to do with your biology at all ?

That is the gross nature of the illusion. Proceeding onwards, let us check this with our idea of who we think we are. This is where things get more treacherous and tricky for most, but earnestness and the power of discretion will see you through.

Many believe that they are their ideas. If you say that you are stylish, then your mind will give you a million and one reasons to believe so, by giving you fashionable advice. They may rock the fashion world, or they may be used to scrub the floor. But, you are stylish as long as you believe you are. After living a successful life as a fashion diva and having amassed millions, you might decide that you are also a great novelist. So you put pen to paper, and publish a bestselling novel. It may not even do great business at the bookstore, but you wrote a novel. That makes you a novelist in the dictionary sense of the word.

The idea of success is supremely subjective. For someone, it could simply mean having a 9 to 5 job and a loving family. For someone else, it could mean having the best financial quarter in last decade. Neither of these ideas of successes are absolute, for they are subjective. It is like the sun that shines all the time. It might be day for you, and night for me, but I cannot complain that it is night because the sun doesn’t shine for me. The sun doesn’t know day or night. It continues to shine regardless of our position on earth. This is why even the sun is relative to us, but for the sun, it is absolute to all.

Study all the ideas that you subscribe to, and see how they have evolved from when you were a kid to now. Your beliefs in things are very different now, than what they were when you were a kid. Your idea of you has changed phenomenally, and will continue to do so because such is the nature of the mind. It flutters like a butterfly and jumps around like a monkey, looking for newer things to indulge into. Sometimes, when the going gets tough, you question the manifestation of the toughness of the situation. You question if life could be possible without things getting ugly.

People who spend their whole lives suffering choose to do so out of habit by identifying with a false identity that doesn’t exist. You might argue that, why would anyone choose to suffer if there is a way out. And the answer to that is, that a vast majority do not feel the urge to question the nature of suffering, and why does it even happen in the first place. Many out of the few who do try to question it, are misled by various paths and gurus towards liberation, who all try to preach their personal version of the gospel. Truth is truth by itself. Anything else is just a version or an interpretation of this truth. Even if a realized guru wishes to help a seeker, he has to come to the level of thinking that the seeker has. Whatever lingo works for one, might not work for the other. The belief that there is a karma train everyone is on, is a misnomer at best. The cycle of karma or samsara, is true until you realize it to be untrue. There is no reincarnation or rebirth. What is it, of a person, that gets reincarnated ? Is it his identity that continues in the new birth ? Is it this so called soul ?

Mind loves philosophy and tries to indulge in such matters and manages to come up with a definition that it feels will suffice everyone he will tell to. But it doesn’t work out that way. A realized person might still have tremendous strife in his/her life. But he/she lives an unattached life. There is no attachment to the idea of joy or suffering because that person knows that both are passing and in constant flux.

Suffering for a suffering person ends in death when the person dissolves and merges into the absolute, from whence it came. What becomes of the lap if one stands up ? What becomes of the fist, if the fingers open ?

There is no past life and there is no next life. All that there is, is here and now. Liberation and bondage are both merely concepts. All concepts need to be shunned, including I-the identity, as well as liberation or moksha, and bondage itself. All psychological suffering is imagined. I don’t wish to sound morose about it for everyone who is living a life of strife, but unfortunately, or fortunately, this is how it is. Unless the identity is seen to be false, the suffering is bound to continue. The liberation is not of the identity. It is from the identity.

Psychological suffering ends when you cease to identify yourself with a singular entity with the label of your name. An unattached life is more fulfilling in nature because you do not judge yourself on the basis of your successes of failures and continue to experience every moment as a fresh one, untainted by your past experiences or future imaginations. You very well know that there is something rich about this present moment that is amiss from your past memory or future imagination of it.

Just the way there are 100 trillion living entities inside your body, is it hard to know that you might be a part of something bigger than you ?

Where do I end and you begin ?