Beyond ego

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The Nature of Reality

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According to Gautama the Buddha

 

 

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Preface / Introduction

 

I am not a Buddhist, actually I have stayed away from organized religion all my adult life. Although I respect the importance of the various religious teachings for the moral and spiritual orientation of lost sheep like us – human beings wandering around the world, I have preferred to go my own ways. Roads less traveled, so to say.

But I owe a lot to The Buddha! Big “Thanks” and “Muchos Gracias” to you, Señor Gautama!

This article shall be my attempt to express my gratitude and pay respect.

Buddha’s early teachings on the nature of reality, the fundamental attitudes of living a spiritual life and the practice of Vipassana Meditation have been like guideposts and lighthouses throughout my life.

Although I have read my share of books on Buddhism when I was young, I am more inclined to practice meditation and experience reality than think about it or read about it. But it helps to understand some core principles and to have a cognitive context for inner experiences, no matter how high or self-explanatory those inner states are.

After all, we are humans in a confusing world and it can be a challenge to ground advanced inner states in our day-to-day reality in a harmonious way.  I have found that Buddha’s teachings very practical and helpful in that context.

Since I am not a scholar of Buddhism in any sense, I have relied on the excellent Dharmatalks website for translations of the original early sutras / teachings of Buddha  as well as modern commentaries of the Abhidharma by this slightly crazy monk Chögyam Trungpa.

 

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Transcending the Ego

 

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What Is the “Ego” in Buddhist perspective?

 

In Buddhist teaching, the general approach in dealing with our “ego” is not about getting rid of some “thing” inside us that is “standing in the way of our enlightenment”, but about understanding and gently releasing our false idea of self. 

The Buddha recognized that we all naturally form a sense of “I” and “mine” around our experiences and we tend to identify with this sense. This is what we can call the ego or ego-identity. His teachings identify this tendency as the root cause of all suffering.

Rather than declaring the ego an enemy to be crushed, Buddha’s teaching invites us to perform an intimate inquiry:

 

What is this sense of self? How can we relate to it without aversion, even as we learn to let it go? 

 

Here I will try to contemplate the nature of the ego according to the the earliest Buddhist scriptures and lay out a clear, practical roadmap for respecting the ego’s role in our lives while ultimately transcending it. 

What we call the “ego” is essentially the idea of a self that we habitually construct. The Buddha used the terms like atta (Pāli for “self”) to describe this concept. According to the teachings, our sense of self is something we build up by clinging to various components of our experience – namely “the Five Aggregates”: 
body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. 

We take these fleeting processes or experiential realities and mistakenly regard them as “I, me, mine.” In truth, this constructed self is insubstantial, fleeting, impermanent. 

The inpidual existence we call “me” is the result of an instinctual, unconscious process of attachment to these five aggregates – a “distortion of perception” rather than a lasting entity, declared the Buddha. 

The concept of the five aggregates has been really hard for me to grasp and understand. It was only with a lot of sincere practice of inner observation in Vipassana Meditation, that I started to actually witness this subtle process of identification with those constantly changing aspects of my experience of myself. 

 

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In early Buddhist view, ego can be understood on two levels:

•  Self-View: the basic belief that “I” am this body and mind. This includes identifying with our form, feelings, thoughts, and so on as who we are. It’s the view that these changing processes constitute a solid self that is “me”.

•  Self-Importance: the emotional habits of ego – such as pride (“I am better than others”), inferiority (“I am worse”) and so on arise with this identification. Or all the personal storylines we believe in that center around “me.” This is the ego’s self-centeredness, which can manifest as attaching, rejecting, comparing, craving attention, or defensiveness.

 

 Buddha is saying that the ego is a process, not a identity – it is an activity of mind that creates a sense of identity, a mental habit of misidentification. It’s the habit of taking what’s actually a flowing, impersonal process and treating it as a personal self. 

 

This is not meant to be an abstract doctrine or belief system but must be witnessed and realized in meditation and then it’s a practical tool to reduce suffering.

Recognizing this sets the stage for relating to the ego in a new way. Rather than either indulging it or fighting against it, we start to see the ego as something natural but not ultimately true. It’s like a mirage – it appears real, but when you examine it closely, it dissolves.

 

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Why Not Fight the Ego?

 

If the ego is a source of suffering, why shouldn’t we just fight it head-on or try to demolish it? 

This is one of the great misunderstandings that I have seen in many spiritual circles, where “ego” is confused with “egotism“ and therefore declared “the enemy”.

 

Buddhism teaches a middle way approach. While it’s crucial to outgrow the confines and illusions of ego, the practice is done with mindfulness and compassion, not aggression. There are several reasons not to make the ego an “enemy”:

 

• Hating the Ego Reinforces It: Paradoxically, when we turn the ego into “the Bad Guy” and despise it, we are still obsessing about “me.” Aversion toward parts of ourselves only adds another layer of self-judgment. The Buddha saw anger and aversion as poisons of the mind – even anger at your own ego keeps you in ego-based thinking (the “I” who hates “my ego”). 

Instead, the Buddhist attitude is one of gentle investigation.

 

• Ego as Necessary for Functioning (in a healthy way): Early Buddhist texts acknowledge that until enlightenment, a sense of self exists as a practical convention. We use “I” and “you” to navigate the world. The Buddha didn’t expect people to drop the pronoun “I” or become blank robots. In fact, he emphasized integrity, responsibility, and wise decision-making – all of which require a healthy sense of self in ordinary life. 

. The teaching on not-self is not a call to function without personality or to ignore one’s needs; it’s a strategy to loosen attachment to the personality, especially when it causes suffering. 

In other words, we need a balanced mind (including a basic ego structure) to practice effectively. If we prematurely try to shove the ego away, we may end up with what psychologists call “spiritual bypassing”, avoiding personal growth or repressing issues under the guise of being “egoless.” 

Unfortunately this spiritual bypassing has been very common in spiritual groups, various guru-movements and sects of the 1970 onwards.

 

• The tone of Buddhist practice is compassion (karuṇā) and loving-kindness (mettā) for all beings – and that includes oneself. 

We cultivate kindness to dissolve barriers, which ironically softens the ego. There is absolutely no instruction from the Buddha to condemn oneself for having an ego. In fact, contempt for oneself is seen as a harmful state of mind. 

In early Buddhist terms, you overcome the ego by understanding it, not by bullying it. You learn to see the “self” as empty, but you do so with care and patience. 

 

• Ego is Not your special Enemy: The Buddha’s analysis shows ego is not one thing you can simply pluck out. It’s a network of mental factors – views, thoughts, emotions. Sometimes you might think you’ve conquered your ego, only to find conceit popping up in another form (like subtle pride in being “humble”!). 

The recommended approach is a systematic training of the mind that gradually reduces egoistic tendencies. This training includes ethics, meditation, and wisdom. Each step of the training weakens the hold of ego in a different way 

Early texts describe the final goal as the uprooting of all “I-making” and “mine-making,” leaving no seed for conceit to grow . But this uprooting happens naturally as a result of the path – it’s the blossoming of many gradual insights and habits of letting go.

 

There’s a gentle balance here that I really like – an invitation to “wearing the ego lightly.” You neither pretend it’s absolute power over you nor beat yourself up for experiencing it. This respectful understanding is the foundation for the next step: working skillfully with the ego.

 

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But here I am more interested to dig deeper than the ego and find out what’s beyond. What did the Buddha discover about the Nature of Reality in his “Awakening”.

 

His first disciples, especially one called Ananda, passed that on orally and later it has been written down as The Key Teachings from the ‘Pāli Canon’

 

What did the Buddha actually teach that helps us frame and work with the ego? Here are some essential teachings from the early scriptures that illuminate how to understand the self:

 

 

Buddhas core teachings about the Nature of Reality

 

 

• All Phenomena are Not-Self (Anattā):

Perhaps the most famous statement of the Buddha regarding self is: “All things are not-self. When one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering. This is the path of purification.”  

This verse from the Dhammapada in a nutshell says that realizing the selfless nature of phenomena is key to liberating the mind. This means that in everything you experience, from physical sensations to emotions, there is nothing you can truly call “Me” or “Mine.” Seeing this, reality leads to “dis-enchantment” –  turning away from clinging, which purifies the mind of its egocentric habits. 

It’s important to note how one sees it: “with wisdom.” This isn’t about forcibly telling yourself “I don’t exist” in a dry, philosophical way; it’s about carefully observing and understanding experience.

 

• “This is Not Me, This I Am Not”:

The Buddha gave very practical instructions to cultivate this insight. He discerns each category of experience and instructs you to reflect: “This is not me, this is not my self.” 

By repeating and deeply contemplating this, one erodes the automatic identification with these things. For example when you are observing a feeling of anger and normally you might think, “I am angry.” Instead, using the Buddha’s guidance you note, “Ah, anger is here, but this is not me; it’s just a feeling arising and passing.” You can almost sense a space opening up around the experience – the usual ego-grip loosens.

It sounds a bit abstract when I write it down, but in Vipassana Meditation that is a very practical way of dis-identification, training to free yourself from automatically following the endless demands of body, emotions, feelings – something that’s a also called “The inner Monkey”

 

• Five Aggregates:

Early Buddhism breaks down “the person” into five aggregates: 

– form (physical body), 

– feeling (sensations of pleasure, pain, neutral), 

– perception (recognition, labeling of things), 

– formations (mental habits, intentions, emotions), 

– consciousness (basic awareness of sense impressions and thoughts). 

 

The purpose of this detailed analysis is to “dis-mantle” the ego’s identifications piece by piece, which leads to a deep insight that what we call “self” is just a convenient label on a bundle of processes. It’s like we’ve been carrying a heavy backpack believing it’s full of precious belongings, and then we open it to find it was empty all along – we can finally set it down.

 

• Conditionality:

The Buddha also explained that everything, including our sense of self, comes about due to conditions. In the chain of Dependent Origination, ignorance about the true nature of reality conditions mental formations, which condition consciousness, leading eventually to craving, clinging, and the formation of a “being.”

 Understanding conditionality encourages patience: rather than blaming yourself for having an ego, you work on the conditions that feed or starve the ego.

 

• The Middle Way:

The Buddha avoided dualistic extremes. When asked metaphysical questions like “Is there a self? Is there no self?”, he often remained silent. Why? Because clinging to the idea of a Real Self will entrench ego, and clinging to the idea of no self (as a nihilistic view) will lead to despair or moral irresponsibility. 

Instead, the Buddha focused on the practical task of understanding the processes at hand. He noted that what we call a person is a stream of phenomena; by convention it’s okay to say “person” or use names ,but one who has wisdom doesn’t get fooled by the label. 

This middle way is a rather practical approach: we don’t need to define what we are or aren’t in an ultimate sense; we need to examine experience without assuming a self at the center.

 

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Practical Steps of Working with the Ego

 

It’s one thing to understand the theory that “ego is not really who I am,” but it’s quite another to live that understanding and translate it into your everyday life. How can we respectfully engage with our ego in day-to-day life, even while we’re aiming to transcend it?

Here are a number of concrete steps and techniques drawn from early Buddhist practice. They are ment as tools for training the mind and gently unbinding the knots of ego:

 

1. Mindful Observation of the Ego in Action:

The first step is awareness. i can not transcend what I don’t see. So, I begin by observing how the sense of “I” appears in my mind throughout the day. This is classic mindfulness practice. 

I don’t judge these ego-based thoughts as bad, I just note them. I label them gently: “thinking,” “selfing,” or simply note “me thoughts.”  Particular attention do I pay to moments of clinging (“I really need this to go my way”) and comparison (“I am not as good as them” or “I’m better”).

The Buddha often advised establishing mindfulness of the body and mind to catch the arising of craving and identity. When you observe the process, you create a slight detachment from it. It’s like watching a theater – you can enjoy it but not get sucked in, because you remember “This is just a performance.” 

Over time, this mindful observation itself starts weakening the habit of identification. You might begin to smile at your ego’s antics rather than be ruled by them.

 

2. Investigate the Nature of Self:

This step goes hand-in-hand with mindfulness and is about wise reflection. The Buddha encourages us to directly investigate our experience with questions like “Is this actually me? Is this under my control? What happens if I let go of identifying with this?”

A classic exercise is to go through the five aggregates in meditation or quiet contemplation:

•  Observe your body: Scan it head to toe. See its changing sensations. Ask, “Are these sensations me? They change on their own – heat, cold, tingling. The body ages and I can’t stop that. This body is part of nature, not really a ‘me’.”

•  Observe feelings: pleasant, unpleasant, neutral feelings arising from moment to moment. Realize how they’re triggered by contact (eat something sweet – pleasant; hear a loud noise – unpleasant). They are reactions, not a self. “This pleasant feeling, it’s nice but it isn’t mine to keep. The painful feeling, it hurts but it’s not me, just a sensation.”

•  Observe mental events, thoughts, emotions: Watch them appear and disappear in the mind. Notice, for example, a worrying thought: one moment it wasn’t there, then it popped up, then it faded. How can something so fleeting define “me”? You can even note, “Thinking, thinking,” to see it as an impersonal process.

• Journal or mental review: After the day, I can reflect: “When today did I feel the tightness of ego? What triggered it? What did it feel like?” and also “When did I feel free or generous or expansive, and how was the sense of self then?” This kind of reflection helps reinforce my understanding by connecting it with real events. 

 

3. Cultivating Humility and Gratitude:

These qualities directly counteract the toxic aspects of ego.

Humility doesn’t mean putting myself down; it means not inflating yourself – recognizing your limitations and remaining teachable. 
In Buddhism, one cultivates humility by honoring the good in others, respecting teachers, and being honest about one’s faults without self-condemnation. I may try simple practices like: deliberately let someone else have the last word in a conversation, or admit comfortably when i don’t know something. I may notice the ego’s resistance (“but I want to seem competent!”) and see that it’s okay to set that aside. 

Gratitude is another ego-softener. The ego often operates out of a sense of “I deserve more” or “I did this myself.” When we practice gratitude, we acknowledge our interdependence: others have helped me, life is gifting me this moment. 
Each morning or night, I list a few things I am grateful for. This turns the mind away from the story of lack or self-focus, and reminds us we’re part of a larger web. 
In early Buddhism, recollecting the kindness one has received is a known practice to lighten the mind and reduce pride. A grateful heart leaves less room for arrogant ego.

 

4. Loving-Kindness and Compassion (mettā): “May I be happy, may others be happy”

It might seem unrelated to transcending ego, but developing unconditional goodwill is a powerful method to expand beyond the self. When I practice mettā meditation , I gradually widen the circle of care from myself to all beings. In doing so, the rigid boundaries of “me versus others” begin to dissolve. 
The ego’s habit is to put oneself at the center; loving-kindness practice deliberately de-centers this by holding all beings – myself included – in a heart of kindness. 

 

5. Ethical Living and “Using the Ego” Wisely:

The Buddha’s path begins with ethical conduct. By following ethical guidelines like non-harming, truthfulness, not stealing, etc., we shape the ego in a healthy way. 
A person who consistently tries to be kind, honest, and sober gains a sense of self-respect and is free from excessive guilt or shame. – this is sometimes called a “healthy ego” in modern terms. With this foundation, it’s easier to turn inward and let go, because there are fewer regrets or inner conflicts.

The Buddha taught that one should take responsibility for one’s actions; in fact, he defined a wise person as one who knows what duties are theirs and carries them out responsibly. 

 

6. Letting Go Practice:

Letting go can be practiced in small and large ways. It might be as simple as letting go of the desire to have the last cookie, or as profound as letting go of a long-held resentment. 
Each act of true letting go is an exercise in releasing “mine.” If something is not “mine”, then I can let it be as it is. In meditation, I practice letting go by not clinging to any state – if a pleasant feeling arises, I enjoy it but don’t grasp; if an unpleasant one comes, I let it pass without aversion.

Off the meditation cushion, we may practice letting go by forgiving others, sharing our possessions, and staying flexible when life doesn’t go our way. 
Notice the feeling when you genuinely let go: there’s a relief, a lightness. That is the ego relaxing its hold. The more we taste that peace, the more confidence we get that releasing attachment is the way to true happiness, not holding on.

In his teaching the Buddha constantly emphasized “abandonment” of clinging as part of the Four Noble Truths. He even said that if one lets go even a little, one experiences a little peace; let go a lot, a lot of peace; let go completely, complete peace. 

 

7. Contemplate Impermanence and Suffering:

Seeing impermanence in all things undercuts the ego’s attempt to hold anything as “mine forever.” Reflect on how everything changes  –  your body, your opinions, your relationships, even the ego itself has phases. 
This gives perspective: why identify with what won’t last? Similarly, contemplate dukkha, the dissatisfaction that ultimately comes with clinging to self. When I stubbornly insist “I must have it my way,” I set yourself up for stress, because the world often won’t comply. 
We can recall episodes where ego-led decisions brought trouble or at least anxiety. By wisely reflecting on impermanence, the mind naturally grows weary of serving the ego’s endless demands.

This is the feeling of  “disenchantment” or “cooling off.” It’s not a depressed state, but a quietly knowledgeable state, a wise state: “Chasing ‘me and mine’ is just not worth it. I’d rather let go.” This insight-driven disenchantment is crucial, because it removes the fuel that keeps ego alive.

 

8. Experience Moments of “No-Self”:

Finally, I notice and encourage experiences where the sense of self drops away temporarily. In meditation, for example, when I become deeply concentrated, there comes a point where the usual self-talk quiets down. I feel a strong sense of presence without the usual inner commentator  – a taste of what it’s like when the ego is on vacation.

These experiences can be very peaceful and freeing. Even outside formal meditation, certain activities might give us a  “flow” state – like art, music, sports, or being in nature  – where we are so absorbed that self-concern disappears for a while.

Such moments are hints of the freedom to come. The Buddhist path is sometimes described as cultivating a selfless perspective more and more often until it becomes our natural way of being.

 

 

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Beyond “I, Me, Mine” – Life After Transcending the Ego

 

What does it mean to truly transcend the ego in early Buddhism? And what is life like when one does so? 

In the highest sense, transcending ego refers to the stage of awakening where the illusion of a personal self is completely seen through. This is often associated with enlightenment which is called nibbāna in Buddhism.In the writings of the Pāli Canon we can find inspiring sketches of what that freedom looks like:

• An awakened person is said to be “untainted by ego” –  they no longer identify with body or mind at all. Yet, interestingly, they can still function perfectly in the world. They may use the words “I” or “me” in a conventional sense, but inside there is no attachment to those ideas.

It’s like a person playing a role in a drama with full awareness that it’s just a role. The Buddha famously declared, “Detached, he realizes: ‘In the seen, there is only the seen… in the cognized, only the cognized.’ Thus, you will not identify with it. When there is no you there, you will not be found in it”  
The result is that one lives without the constant background of ego-referencing.

• When the ego is transcended, what vanishes is the mental suffering rooted in self-centeredness. Fear, for example, largely concerns itself with “something could happen to me or what’s mine.” 
Without that clinging, fear has no foothold.  Imagine moving through the world unafraid, not because you’re numb, but because you deeply know that there is no separate self to be harmed – what remains is the life process flowing.

This doesn’t make an enlightened being careless in the ordinary sense. In fact, they appear as profoundly wise and compassionate, but their compassion is spontaneous and selfless, not based on ego agendas. Check out the Dalai Lama, for example.

• The awakened being is said to be “free from conceit, humble and content, beyond any comparison. There’s simply no inner compulsion to measure self against others. 

• No-self does not mean nothingness: A common argument and confusion is, “If I transcend my ego, will I become a non-entity? How will I enjoy life or have preferences?”

Early Buddhism clarifies that what is lost is only the false view and clinging. The person still perceives, feels, and can even enjoy the simple pleasures of life. What’s absent is the craving and identification that would turn those experiences into suffering or addiction. 
Life freed from ego has a special kind of happiness – the unshakable peace of resting in the Ground of Being, which is described as far beyond ordinary pleasures. 

• Integration with conventional life: Even if one isn’t fully awakened, as we progress in transcending ego, we will likely find that we become more effective in daily life, not less. Without ego in the driver’s seat, we can respond to situations more calmly and appropriately. 
The mind isn’t distorted by constant self-reverencing, by “how does this affect me” all the time, so it has clarity. Relationships improve because there’s less selfishness at play and more genuine listening and empathy.

Work or creativity can flourish because you’re less hindered by fear of failure or hunger for praise – you do what needs doing for its own sake, a very potent way to live. 
Early Buddhism praises the person who “has done what had to be done” and then walks away freely. This freedom is often quiet and not outwardly flashy. One might still lead an ordinary life, but with an extraordinary inner lightness. I feel that quietness and lightness very often in aspects of zen-Buddhism inspired traditional Japanese culture, art and craft.

A famous zen-saying goes:

“After enlightenment, carry water, chop wood” 

 

• Transcending the ego is not a lonely or cold endeavor; it is deeply connected with empathy, love and wisdom. As ego diminishes, one’s capacity for altruism, joy, and connection increases.

The Buddha and many enlightened ones spent their lives compassionately helping others  –  the paradox of no-ego is that service naturally blooms. 
I think that a sign of true transcendence is that it doesn’t result in disengagement or apathy, but in engaged serenity. 

 

 

 

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What is the place of God in the teachings of Early Buddhism

Is there a God at all?

 

That is a very intriguing question indeed. Maybe even confusing. What did Buddha say about God and metaphysics and Ultimate Reality?

I found that Early Buddhism, as expressed in the Pali Canon, offers a spiritual path that is striking in its restraint. Unlike many religious traditions, it does not begin with metaphysical speculation or assertions about the nature of a creator god.

The Buddha’s teachings are grounded in direct experience and focussed on the pragmatic goal of ending suffering. Within this framework, the question of God—understood as a supreme being, creator, or eternal essence—is neither affirmed nor denied. It is, for the most part, set aside.

The Buddha did not deny the existence of celestial beings that are called devas in Buddhism, but he did not elevate them to a position of ultimate authority or permanence. In the cosmology of early Buddhism, gods are part of the conditioned world — impermanent, subject to karma, and ultimately bound by the same samsara, the cycle of birth and death as human beings. They may be powerful, but they are not outside the law of causality.

 

When asked speculative questions about the origin of the universe, the eternity or non-eternity of the self, or the existence of a supreme being, the Buddha often remained silent. I think that’s a really smart answer!

He called such inquiries unhelpful to the immediate task of liberation from suffering. The core teaching — dependent origination — describes a reality built on conditionality, not creation. Things arise due to causes and conditions. Nothing stands outside this network, and no unchanging essence is posited beneath it.

 

The Buddha’s formulation of nibbāna (Nirvana) is perhaps the closest early Buddhism comes to a concept of ultimate reality. Yet nibbāna is not a god or a divine being.

It is the Unconditioned. It cannot be grasped or described in language terms, it is to be experienced directly when the illusions that obscure insight are extinguished. I call it simply the Ground of Being.

In this way, early Buddhism avoids metaphysics without denying the depth of reality. It is not concerned with describing what “is” in an ultimate sense, but with pointing toward a transformation in perception — a shift from delusion to clarity.

The absence of God in this system is not a negation, but a refusal to substitute belief for understanding.

The Buddha did not ask his followers to believe in something unseen. He asked them to look — carefully, honestly, and without clinging onto any belief system.

So is there a God in early Buddhism? Not in the sense that our Western Creator-God-Belief or even Vedantic philosophy of Hinduism might assume. There is only the arising and passing of conditions—and the possibility of freedom through insight into their impermanence.

Whether that freedom is called emptiness or peace, it is not given by a god. It is found in the silence that remains when all grasping ends.

 

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The more one learns about the Buddha’s original teaching and especially the more one matures in the practice of Vipassana meditation, the more it becomes clear that Buddha did not teach a religion as we know Buddhism today but a radical psychological method to become aware of and discern the processes of the mind and its tendencies to create the illusion of a persistent personal self with self-clinging tendencies.

He taught a gentle but radical method to dismantle this fundamental illusion at the center of our being which – with lifelong patient and persistent practice leads to an “enlightened state”. I associate this rather vague term with ”enlightenment” not really with light but with lightness, un-burdendness, un-boundness. I call this way of being: Walking lightly upon this precious Earth.

The interesting effect I noticed is, that with the disseverment of self-identification it becomes clear that much what “the self” believes may also be quite an illusion, may be not much more than a projection of ones wishful thinking or fearful thinking. All our believe systems may become less absolutistic, all our edges less sharp.

The Pope might be the direct representative of God or he might simply be a historic convention. Who knows! There might be an all-knowing God or there might not be a God after all. All such questions are open for interpretation and … belief. And it’s the personal self that believes this and not that.

So, with the disillusion of personal self all those believes go “puff”. Or at least they loose the absolute character that humans often attribute to belief systems.
The “lightness of being” results from this healthy Des-illusion.

We may still respect the Pope if we choose so, but we know that it is actually a game, a theater play. We may still burn some incense at a Buddhist temple and enjoy the serenity and peace of the place, but we know that we are participating in a convention that Gautama had never intended in his day.

 

 

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What remains?

 

 

Thats a real good question and the only important one.
After all the dissolving of illusion, what is “left over”?

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What is real after all?

For me, that has been the central quest of my life and I have found a pretty simple answer: At the end of the day, when I lay down all my clothes, when I peel layer after layer of the onion of my self so to say, there is only AWARENESS.

 

And awareness is all there is.

In itself it has no form and it has no content.

That is what I found to be the Ground of Being.

And that’s what I would call myself.

 

 

But maybe better to be silent about it, because the words fail to have meaning here, or they just express paradoxes.

 

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See you!