1
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Meditating, I noticed that fabricating an I, I was feeling, etc., was untenable.

2
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There was only the experience.

3
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This seemed to clearly disprove the self.

4
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This notion is so fundamentally simple.

5
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Why then is it so elusive, my gratitude?

6
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Mm-hmm.

7
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Well, it's only elusive because we've cultivated a sense of self.

8
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We have a very strong sense of self as human beings.

9
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we are born with it.

10
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It's something we've cultivated lifetime after lifetime, but it's something we reaffirm throughout our life.

11
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The idea of this is mine, the idea of being given things, of identifying with things.

12
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When you recognize something,

13
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you desire it, and so you cling to it, and you get the idea that you're somehow in control of it.

14
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We cultivate habits of misperception, and it's not just identification with self, it's greed.

15
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There's actually no, if you think about it logically, there's nothing different between pleasure and pain, and yet we prefer one and abhor the other.

16
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Why is that?

17
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It's through misapprehension, it's through misconception, misunderstanding about reality.

18
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It's only habitual.

19
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It's actually only you that's like that.

20
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There are people out there who aren't like that.

21
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There are people who are actually born with very little attachment to self.

22
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Most of us aren't so lucky, but

23
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It's, when you say it being elusive, it's only elusive to you and, you know, to most of us.

24
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But it's only, that's only an artificial, it's not natural to, it doesn't mean it's natural to believe in a self, it just means that we've gotten so lost

25
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and so caught up in misunderstanding that we actually are born like this.

26
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It comes back to the idea that being human is somehow natural.

27
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There's nothing natural about having ten fingers and ten toes.

28
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It's a ridiculous situation that we're in that we have to mash up

29
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physical matter in certain types of physical matter in our mouths and then have it pass down into our chests and be digested in our abdomens and then excreted as smelly awful fecal matter.

30
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There's nothing

31
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natural about that.

32
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Our whole existence that we should have to bump into each other in order to procreate.

33
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In order for someone to be born there has to be two beings of certain types coming together and

34
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having orgasms and then on the off chance that an egg and a sperm are going to get together I mean it's just it's a ridiculous situation that we find ourselves in there there's nothing natural about any of this so the view of self is

35
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kind of, it's one of the major glues that holds it all together.

36
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It's one of the major points where we could say this is where we went wrong.

37
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And yet we keep affirming it.

38
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We keep making the mistake and augmenting the mistake and cultivating that mistake.

39
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Now, for some people it's not that case.

40
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They're on the path away from that.

41
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Especially those people who practice the Buddha's teaching and practice mindfulness meditation.

42
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They find themselves

43
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seeing clearly and realizing oh this is horrible thing that we've gotten ourselves into the situation that we've got ourselves into due to our misapprehension

44
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In short, it's just because of your habitual misunderstanding.

45
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But once you start to read about it, it just seems so obvious and you realize, oh, what an idiot I've been.

46
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So often when the Buddha would teach, at the end of the talk people would say, it's like I was blind and now I could see.

47
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It's like something was turned over and you've just put it, like a piece of furniture was tipped over and you've just righted it for me.

48
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And now everything seems right again.

49
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That was quite common in the Buddha's teaching.

50
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It was just like putting things back in order, straightening out one's understanding about reality because we get crooked otherwise.

51
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We get lost and confused and tied up and not.