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Taoist Writings: Why is it so hard to see that there is no self?

Updated: Jul 31

Taoist Writings: Why is it so hard to see that there is no self?


So, I just came back from doing some gardening. I can smell my own sweat. You wanted to know that, right? But something pushed the wheelbarrow up that hill, loaded with grass and branches. If that wasn’t me, why am I sweating?


Who am I talking to anyway?


All I want is to not do too much. Sit among the flowers and listen to the breeze. I could be doing it now because it’s a fine day, and the breeze is so soft and gentle. How I love it.


Why is it so hard to see that there is no self?


The grasshoppers don’t seem to have a problem at all. What self?


Ah, we are talking about an idea of self? And you know what has ideas, right? Our sense of self.


So, how can our sense of self get a sense of self, so that it sees through itself?


That’s probably the question.


But I’m not good at these things. And I want to eat something and sit among the flowers for a while before life thinks up something for me to do. It likes to do that. Just as I’m dozing off. It whisks something up in my direction.


But I mostly ignore it. Who cares about results? If a thing gets done or not?


Mmmm.


You are using your sense of self to see through the falseness of itself.


That cannot be done!


You need your sense of self to recognise your non-self. Do you have one of those?


Then it realises how stupid it has been all this time, thinking it was something, when actually it wasn’t anything, and all that effort, and all those questions, and difficulty, and wondering why it always saw a self when there wasn’t one. Then it sees how nothing was ever there to be stupid. Then it sees.


Jeez.


I gotta eat.


Has your not-you worked it out yet?



















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Taoist Writings

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