Buddhism - Every Moment We Live Is an Opportunity (for Understanding)

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Page 1 of 4 we’re born there is no sense of a self as being anything. As we grow up we learn what we are supposed to be, if we are good or bad, if we are pretty or ugly, if we are smart or stupid. So we develop a sense of ourselves. Even when we get older, sometimes we still have very adolescent attitudes or childish emotional reactions to life that we have been unable to resolve except by suppressing or ignoring them. There is one way of talking about the self that makes it sound very doctrinal. It seemed to me that Buddhists can sometimes say that there is no self, as if it was a proclamation that they have to believe in; as if there were some higher being saying "THERE IS NO SELF BOYS AND GIRLS!" It doesn't seem true to just go announcing that there isn't any self- because what is this experience that we are feeling right now? Where I am now there seems to be very much a sense of oneself. I’m feeling, I’m breathing, I see, I hear; I react to things - people can praise me or criticize me and I feel happy or sad. “ ‘All states are without self’, when one sees this in wisdom, then he becomes dispassionate towards the painful. This is the Path to Purity.” (134 Rahula) So if this isn't me then what is it? And am I supposed to go around as a Buddhist believing that I don't have a self? Or if I am going to believe, should it be in something like God where I can believe that I have a self, because then I can say things like "my true self is perfect and pure" even if it’s not? That at least gives me some kind of inspiration and reason to live my life, rather than saying that there is no self and no soul, leaving a total of zero possibilities. These are just examples of the use of language; we can say “there is no self” as a proclamation, or "there is no self" as a reflection. The reflective way is to encourage us to contemplate the self. The
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