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<title>Dharma Salon blog</title><link>http://www.dharmasalon.net/home.html</link><description>Latest entry</description><dc:language>en</dc:language><dc:creator>patrick.kearney@dharmasalon.net</dc:creator><dc:rights>Copyright 2009 Patrick Kearney</dc:rights><dc:date>2010-01-29T18:31:27+11:00</dc:date><admin:generatorAgent rdf:resource="http://www.realmacsoftware.com/" />
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<lastBuildDate>Mon, 22 Sep 2008 11:11:56 +1000</lastBuildDate><item><title>The problem of self</title><dc:creator>patrick.kearney@dharmasalon.net</dc:creator><category>not-self</category><dc:date>2010-01-29T18:31:27+11:00</dc:date><link>http://www.dharmasalon.net/Dharma%20Salon%20blog/files/bbebe6210d759919ef60c03324113d6d-12.php#unique-entry-id-12</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.dharmasalon.net/Dharma%20Salon%20blog/files/bbebe6210d759919ef60c03324113d6d-12.php#unique-entry-id-12</guid><content:encoded><![CDATA[My ordinary sense of myself &mdash; the one I see looking at me from a mirror &mdash; has a stability, a continuity, a predictability. ...  Like the weather, it is experienced as a pattern of changing events, and like the weather, if the pattern becomes wild, unbalanced, then things can get very messy. ...  I can be confident that some months of the year will be warmer or cooler than others, but I don&rsquo;t know what the temperature will be at 2.30 tomorrow afternoon. 


...My emotional patterns can be stable and predictable; in fact, if they are genuinely unpredictable, I and the people around me are probably in for a difficult time.   But just as I don&rsquo;t know what tomorrow&rsquo;s temperature will be at 2.30 p.m., so I can&rsquo;t tell what emotion will be colouring my sense of myself and my world at that time. 

...It makes sense to say, &ldquo;I was angry yesterday, but now I&rsquo;m calm,&rdquo; just as we say, &ldquo;The weather was wet yesterday, but it&rsquo;s dry today.&rdquo; ...  But what is the &ldquo;it&rdquo; that is dry today and wet yesterday? &mdash; the &rdquo;it&rdquo; that we call &rdquo;weather.&rdquo; 

...Useful it might be in everyday life, but the Buddha points out certain dangers that are inherent to the concept of self. ...  No, it can&rsquo;t be, because I&rsquo;m the one looking at it. ...  No, it can&rsquo;t be, because I&rsquo;m the one doing the feeling.


...So while we can say that self is a concept, even as a concept it is extremely slippery, and over the centuries the people who have thought seriously about this concept have come up with an enormous variety of views to explain it, most of which conflict with each other. 

...What makes the situation worse, from the Buddha&rsquo;s perspective, is that the darkness and confusion inevitably associated with (the concept of) self is also linked to what he calls taṇhā.   Taṇhā literally means &ldquo;thirst,&rdquo; and refers to the drivenness deep within us which is based on our sense that something necessary to us is missing, something we desperately need to find.   There is a lack, an absence, deep within us, a sense of incompletion or inadequacy, and a drive to fill that lack, to replace that absence with something. 

...Self emerges into the daylight as a view, our fully developed sense of who we are and what the world is. ...  We intuit a sense of lack, of something missing that should be there, and the concept of self is designed to fill that gap. ...  We are not satisfied with this experience of life as it presents now; we need some kind of extra added conceptual framework that we can hang this experience on, and say, &ldquo;That&rsquo;s me, and my experience!&rdquo;   Our deep sense of lack within us makes our-experience-of-this seem inadequate, not quite good enough to compensate for the ache at our centre.   But since no concept can rid us of our felt sense of lack, all concepts of self are unsatisfactory, and so we are endlessly working on them. ...  But nothing we do, no view of ourselves, can achieve anything more than a temporary papering over of our deep sense of lack.]]></content:encoded></item></channel>
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