Not-Self, Kamma, and Liberation

Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Sammāsambuddhassa Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Sammāsambuddhassa Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Sammāsambuddhassa — Homage to the Buddha, the blessed, noble and fully self-enlightened one.

I think at the time of the Buddha, in his own time, there were various ideas around this word karma. We know it more commonly through the Sanskrit word karma with an R, but the way that Theravāda spells it was just K-A-M-M-A, which is Pali, which is what the scriptures are actually written in, which would have been a dialect around modern Varanasi, around the Ganges. And it's a core teaching really. It's one of his main insights upon liberation, upon his awakening.

He talks of three things that happened to him upon awakening, immediately afterwards. First, he was able to see his past lives and see how his ethical decisions had brought him to this place and how they caused him to suffer and to put him into dire straits. And then he was able to see beings moving from one realm to the other, according to their ethical decisions, their moral decisions. And what was then a personal understanding, a personal law, became a cosmic law. And the third thing that he recognized was that all his defilements had gone, so there was nothing negative within his character and personality anymore. So these are known as the three knowledges.

And it's very difficult — I know that you may come across Buddhist speakers who deny rebirth and things like that — but it's very difficult to read the scriptures without coming to the conclusion that he definitely did understand the process as being very long-term over lifetimes. And the reason for that was that we begin from this point of not knowing. This not knowing is not a culpable state. It's often translated as ignorance, this word, and I'm referring to avijjā, for those of you who know it. It's referred to as ignorance, and that has a pejorative meaning, as though you should have known, you've not been such an idiot. But it's actually a very neutral state of simply not knowing.

And this not knowing — then it's your basic intelligence, that which does not know, finding itself in a situation makes sense of it. And it's made sense of it for us by the society, culture, history that we find ourselves in. And it's from there that we build up our characters and personalities. So that we could say that any given moment there is underlying this state of just not knowing. And because of that we've moved into a situation which is an understanding, and this fundamental understanding as to who we are or what we are or where we're going to is actually the fundamental attitude that causes everything else.

So one of the main understandings that we have is that we are human beings. This is a big problem. Conventionally there's no problem — everybody knows that we're human beings as opposed to primates and the cat and all that. But when we actually say to ourselves, "Well I'm a human being," our energies go into trying to make this life the end, the purpose of our living. So, especially these days where many people have lost any spiritual or religious foundation, there is only this life. And when you ask yourself, what is it that I really want? Really deep down, what is that I really want? I think you can just come across the word, "I want to be happy." You just want to be happy.

And this happiness is then sought for in the world. And what is it that brings us happiness as we understand it? It's sensual pleasure, it's relationships, it's our work sometimes, our hobbies. So there's an absolute investment in life as a place where if you can just get it right, you'll be happy. And what this produces is a relationship to life and a relationship to people and what we have as collections. We collect things, we collect money, we collect our job, we collect people. And that collection — the word that's normally come for it is attachment. And the reason we're attached to it is because this makes me happy.

So I'm attached to the things I own, to my house, to my HDTV and all that because this is what's making me happy. That's where I actually put the investment. Unfortunately, having created these little islands of happiness around objects, anything that begins to upset that, I form a very negative relationship towards. And that's your aversion. Anything that undermines my happiness becomes my enemy. And if the enemy is too big, then I become frightened, I get very anxious.

So there you've got, from this fundamental misunderstanding, which is often termed a delusion, you have a basic relationship to life of having to collect things around you, hold on to things, keep things, which are going to make me happy, and I've got to make sure that that mustn't be upset. So from that sense of attachment, often referred to as greed — it's not quite that word, just attachment — we get the aversion, which splits into two relationships: one of aversion, not liking, pushing away, and one of running away, anxiety, fear.

So from that basic relationship we produce our kamma. Now kamma in the Buddhist teaching is a technical word which actually only refers to an action. That's what it really means — just an action. And whatever we do, whether it's an act of thought, an act of speech, or something that we actually do physically, an action as such is driven from that particular delusion. So constantly, we're in a constant relationship of trying to jiggle the world to make sure that we're happy.

Even as you're sitting here, you might find that without you knowing it, you become slightly uncomfortable in your seat and you shift position. If we just watch ourselves throughout the day, we're constantly moving towards comfort, towards what makes us feel happy, always trying to escape what is uncomfortable, what is making us feel unhappy. And these actions — this is what the Buddha has referred to as kamma. These are your actions.

In dependent origination, which is the Buddha's psychology as to how we create our misery — we'll go on to happiness towards the end of the talk, a real happiness, so I don't want to get you too depressed — the way that we create this unhappiness, he points out very clearly through the teaching of dependent origination. This dependent origination, you might come across in later Buddhism, was expanded completely into a universal concept of interrelatedness, everything being dependent on something else. But in the Buddha's original teaching, although you may find those ideas, he's very centered upon our inner personal psychology.

So what happens to us on the outside is not really material to the process of liberation. It's always what's happening inside us which is actually causing either the misery or the escape from misery. So, for instance, if I'm in the quiet coach of a train — I'm sure you've all been in a quiet coach — and somebody decides to use their mobile, it's what's happening in me that's turning the quiet coach into a really small little hell realm, because I'm saying they shouldn't be doing that, this is a terrible thing, it's really unethical and punishable by law and they shouldn't be doing it and I'm getting all heated and hot about it. And all that's being created internally — it's not being created by the phone call.

And then of course suddenly my phone goes off, and this phone is of course very important so I've got to make it, so I presume everybody else will understand that. So you can see that from this relationship — if you look at ourselves throughout the day, you'll see that there's always something coming at us from the outside. There's always something impinging upon our consciousness.

And there's always this response. You can call it a reaction rather than a response, because the reaction is already dictated to by our past actions which have produced certain habits, certain patterns of behavior within us. And it's really beginning to see how these are produced, which allows us to see where the escape is.

So long as people say to themselves, "The reason I'm unhappy is because of the government," or because of bankers or because of my neighbor or because of my kids — and also if I am constantly thinking that the other person is the direct cause of my misery — then I'm always going to be in some relationship to the world of trying to change the world. I'm always trying to do something out there which is going to make me happy in here. And I'm sure we've all experienced people who've tried to change us, and it's the last thing we individually want another person to do. So as soon as you try to change somebody else or try to change a situation, then you often find yourself in this very antagonistic position where in fact you find yourself making things worse.

Now, if we go through the Buddha's teaching about how we create these mental states, you see very clearly that he puts the accent on a moment — the moment of identity. So there is, in dependent origination, this moment where something impinges upon us through the five senses. He calls it also the sixth sense. So it's something which is coming from the outside — somebody says something, or you see something — and it comes into the mind, into consciousness. I'm using these words very loosely because they have so much meaning these days. It comes into the mind as a primary object, which is recognized, acknowledged.

So if we're sitting here now and suddenly a bell goes off, the first thing would be the actual acknowledgement that there is a bell going off. That's your first thing. Then it's taken inside, and suddenly we attach a meaning to that bell, which is it's an alarm bell. So as soon as an alarm bell goes, then you get the meaning that there may be fire, etc. So you get higher levels of understanding of what the alarm bell might mean. And then the understanding comes in towards the end of that process of, "I have to get out of here."

Now, if you take, for instance, just a normal thing, like you're in a shop and you want to buy something, the normal sentence would be, "I want that." But what the Buddha is actually pointing out is that psychologically it's the reverse. So first of all, you see Costa Coffee, and you smell Costa, and you smell the coffee, and that's your first recognition — that's the point of perception, of cognition — that this is Costa Coffee. And then with that, there arises the relationship that we might have developed with Costa Coffee, which is our want. So there's your wanting coming in.

So first of all, there's just the simple contact. Then there's this wanting that comes, which is there because of our past experience with Costa Coffee. Because once you've created an act and you redo that act, you are constantly reinforcing a certain relationship. And once that's happened, then the I comes in. So it's coffee, want, I. That's the process in terms of psychology.

Now, it's only at that point of I, with the identification that "I want this coffee," that you get the empowerment of that desire, and in you go and buy yourself some coffee. And that's the becoming. So this word becoming in Buddhist teaching is this constant reinvention of the self, constant reinvention of me, a constant playing around with who I am and where I want to go. So an identity is not something static — it's always something that's moving with time and place and with what it is I'm experiencing.

Now, the reason why this act of kamma, this action — to understand this is so important — because when we understand things are happening in that way, then you can see the escape. If it happened the other way, if the identity came in immediately, there would be no gap, not enough a gap between the "I want this" and the actual action, because the I is that point where you've absorbed into the wanting. It's like you've become the wanting.

But when we're actually awake — and I'm not talking about sitting here in meditation, I'm talking about just walking down the street — when you're actually with that earlier process of wanting as a force within you of actually moving you towards the object, then there's no identity. You're still aware of the desire. And being aware of something means you can't be it. You've already created a separation.

Now when you look into that separation, then you begin to understand what the Buddha's teaching about not-self is. Because if you separate from something, you can't be it. So as soon as I'm walking down the street and I get this wonderful whiff of Costa Coffee, if I'm aware of that desire arising in me, then it creates a little distance, it creates a little separation. And that separation allows me just enough time to reflect upon whether I should go in and have this Costa Coffee or not.

So this becomes a deep and profound moral problem for anybody into trying to undo past conditioning. So now you might say to yourself, "Well, yes I will." It could be so overpowering that in fact you miss that moment and before you know it you're there drinking your coffee. I'm sure this happens to you at home, where the idea that you're doing things, or at work you're doing things, and then suddenly tea, and before you know it you drink your tea, and then you suddenly realize you've drunk your tea, and you don't remember drinking your tea, so you may as well have another cup.

So this is called the unmindful life. So what you're trying to do is come back on that process to regain control over your life. That's what it is. It's about actually going back to a position where you're in control and not the habits that you've created.

Remember, nobody's created these habits within us. We've done it through the mechanisms of our own psychology. And it's seeing how we're entrapped in these particular habitual formations — these, for those of you know, these are your saṅkhāras — that you begin to try to pull out of it. Now you don't pull out of it until it begins to hurt.

So long as you're getting your upcomers from these habitual actions and you're getting some pleasure, and the pleasure and the happiness is outweighing the unhappiness or the effort that you have to make to get these happinesses, then you tend to stay on that treadmill. You tend to keep moving. But as soon as something disappears from that equation and you find that actually there's more suffering involved than there is happiness, then that's when you start looking for some spiritual practice to help you out of the hole.

So if for instance you have a habit of drinking tea or coffee a lot, and it's only when the doctor says, "You've got a really high blood pressure here, you better come off the coffee," something comes out, something destroys that easy equation that there was with coffee equals happiness. Now coffee equals happiness but it also equals ill health. And suddenly you have to pull yourself out.

As you pull yourself out of any habitual action, some of it may be deeply ingrained from early childhood, and some of it may be physical, like smoking or alcohol, then what you come across is this enormous resistance. The whole psychological mechanism has been set up to find happiness in this particular habitude. And suddenly you're saying, "Well, I want to stop that." And then there has to be this pulling back, which is the suffering of coming off a habit.

So if you find yourself constantly grazing throughout the day — little snacks here, snacks there — and you suddenly bloated into this huge balloon, and the doctor said, "Well, if you don't lose weight, you're going to explode or worse," "Oh, God, I've got to stop." So now you have to come off all these little snacks, which were little comfort zones where you found happiness. And it's painful. You've got to really work at it.

And in coming off that, you're beginning to realize, or we are beginning to realize, that this whole process of liberation, this whole process of kamma, is tied into the whole process of ethical living. And that is tied into the deep insight into how we create suffering for ourselves. It's all one and the same thing. It's not as though there's all this meditation going on with great insights into not-self and conditioning.

And you can separate that from your daily actions because the one is an expression of the other.

So here we are on the wheel of dependent origination, dependent meaning that every step is dependent on some step before it, or dependent on some present conditioning. There's no absolute origination, nothing arises of itself, everything that arises is dependent on something else. So here we have this internal psychology which is trying to make sense of the world and trying to create happiness for itself. And every time we go into that mode of seeking happiness in the sensual world, then this wheel turns. It's not turning all the time, it doesn't turn when you're asleep. But every time it turns, it reinforces the habit.

And it's only when we come off the habit that we realize how strong the habit actually is. So here we get this teaching of renunciation. Now, the Buddha himself tried these very heavy self-mortification exercises which had as their understanding that the problem was with the body. So if the body didn't have an appetite, then you'd never suffer from overeating. If your body didn't have any sexual organs, then you wouldn't suffer from lust. That was the idea. So, by going into self-mortification exercises, you reduced the importance of the body. You stopped feeding the body, thinking that as soon as you waken the body up, then desire wakes with it. So he found that to be pretty useless, definitely not on the path, and just more suffering. So he abandoned that, but he didn't abandon the idea of renunciation.

So renunciation is the point where a person says to themselves, I have to give this up for whatever reason, might be health reasons, psychological reasons, money reasons, whatever. And you stop doing a certain action, you stop behaving in a certain way, and of course what you find is this enormous resistance. It can be physical, like if one of our problems has been around food, then it begins to cloy on the mind. So it's being able to sit with that, being able to sit with that pain where what you're actually doing is allowing the engine of that particular habit to lose power.

And this is where you could say the psychotherapy of Buddhism takes place. Once we've identified that a certain habit is unhealthy for us, then I don't know of any way in which you can undo that habit without going through the pain of allowing that desire to express itself and release its energy. And if you come across an easy way, please tell me.

So you've got this habit, for instance, of taking snacks during the day, eating all the time. So every time you approach food, every time somebody approaches food, they have to stop. This is a really powerful, wonderful word in English, stop. I was in Spain recently doing the Camino. I was greatly overjoyed to see that the road sign was stop. Every time he came to Denver, he said, stop. I thought, very intelligent.

So when you say this word stop, then it actually puts a break and it allows you to feel this animal, this urge for that biscuit. It comes up like that. And if you can just stay there with it, if you can just bear with that urge and allow it to die away, what you're doing is draining that particular conditioning of its power, of its energy. And it comes to a point where it no longer has that energy in it. And we experience that as an ease of being at food and being able to say no. And it's these little victories on the way that we realize that by simply developing that little power of renunciation that we're actually changing ourselves very deeply.

And it's not just the change, and this is where we're moving into a bit of happiness now, it's not just the change of letting go of something which is painful, there's also always some form of transformation happening. Because energy is never lost. It's not lost either in the universe, I believe, but it's definitely not lost psychologically. And in fact, it can grow.

So, take something like loneliness. Often we might find ourselves in a situation where we feel lonely. Could be just forced upon us because of circumstance, or all our friends have gone on holiday and I'm just sat there watching the HDTV. So I've got this loneliness. Now, my normal reaction would be to phone up a friend and say, what are you doing tonight? Do you want to go somewhere? Not actually recognizing that what's making me do this is a deep sense of loneliness.

When we look into that, when we stop that, when we say, right, I'm feeling lonely, I'm just going to sit here and actually investigate that feeling, by which I don't mean doing some sort of psychotherapy, trying to find out why I feel lonely and, you know, it's all my mother. It's just to sit there and actually, rather than do this great big deep psychotherapeutic investigation, but to sit there and just think, what is loneliness? What is it? And the heart speaks in feelings. It doesn't need all these memories. All these memories may have had some, might give us some original cause, but what we're left with is the product of these things that have happened to us.

Now the technical word for that in Buddhism is vipāka, it's the result. So there's a kamma, there's an action, and then you get the result. When we stop still with something like loneliness what we're getting is the full force of the result of some conditioning that we have within us which is producing this state that you could say would be a discomfort of being on our own, might be a sense of not loving ourselves, of hating ourselves, whatever it might be but it's definitely a discomfort of being on my own, maybe an anxiety, whatever.

This feeling is the product of all this past conditioning. So I don't have to go into the past conditioning. Whatever happened in the past is irrelevant to this actual product, which is at the end of it. This is the product. All I have to do is deal with this product. This product now is very painful. I feel lonely. I feel alone. Nobody loves me. If you knew me, you'd understand that and all that stuff. And I'm sitting there with this self-pity or self-loneliness and all that.

So I stop all the verbiage. I stop the mind working on this emotion. I stop the mind working on that particular state. And that's how, by the way, these emotions develop. We develop them in the mind. So if you feel lonely, your mind will enter into the higher faculties of your imagination and thought and begin to create wonderful reasons as to why you are lonely, useless, and you should make your way to the nearest bridge.

So it's a case of actually recognizing the mind is actually now developing the state. So the first thing we do and the first thing you learn when you come to sit meditation is you just stop the mind. And the reason why I think people don't want to stop the mind is that they think they're suppressing something. But you're not suppressing anything. All you're doing is actually stopping the indulgence of the mind, of yourself, in that particular mental state.

By stopping the mind and not looking at the presenting emotion which is causing it, that would definitely be a suppression, that would definitely be repression, because there's a negativity there. So the two forces that keep things out of our minds are the very forces that keep things away from us in the world, which we don't want, which is aversion and fear.

So now, instead of running off and finding a friend or doing a bit of clubbing or something like that, I decide to sit in this room and sit with this loneliness. I stop the mind from agitating around this loneliness, proliferating around it, and I'm just sitting and bearing with the pain of loneliness. And as I sit there with the pain of loneliness, I can actually begin to understand what is the feel, what is the underlying feeling motivation of loneliness. And it may be that occasionally words come to my mind, but I'm just staying with the feeling.

And then to my enormous surprise, as I sit with it, it begins to dissolve. And they make them a point, even that first evening, they make them a point where that loneliness completely dissolves and I suddenly find myself in this beautiful state of solitude. And then I realize that if I stop indulging this loneliness and if I just bear with that particular state of mind, because that's all it is, just an emotional state of mind, it will actually die out, and when it dies out, that energy will transform into solitude. And solitude is to be perfectly content with being on one's own.

Now, if I take any negative state of mind and do that, I find that the same thing happens. And the joy of that process is that actually I don't have to do anything. You don't have to do anything to change yourself. All you have to do in that sense is do nothing, but bear with what is actually being presented.

Now, that is the karma which is to do with liberation. No matter how many good works you do in the outside world, or bad works, that's not the particular thing that's going to be relevant to this inner process of transformation leading to liberation. That process is always inward. And what the world is doing is either pressing buttons which open up towards us, which actually awaken us to conditionings within us which are painful, or presenting us with situations where we can take this transformation and begin to develop the good heart. And it's up to us to recognize that our real power is internal and not particularly external.

Obviously, if you have power externally, you're a boss or you're the prime minister or something like that, then obviously one wants to do good. But internally, in terms of this liberation, it's always some internal process that's happening within us which is moving us towards this liberation. So that there comes a point where one is liberated and cannot be touched by the world, cannot be moved by the world. So in the Buddha's own words, the world argues with me, I don't argue with the world.

So no matter, I'm sure some of you will have come across that lovely statement he makes where he says, if bandits were to come along with their knives and cut you from limb to limb, if anger should arise in you, you're no disciple of mine. Now when I said this once to a group, they said, yeah, but the Buddha had a great sense of humour. I said, no, I think he actually means it. So it doesn't matter because the separation of that consciousness within from the body is such that, yes, there is pain, but it doesn't produce this negativity because at the deepest level, there's a loss of identity with it.

So now, if we go back on this process, what we find is that this sense of identity is the point where I am saying, I am. Now, I am, meaning I exist. And when you look into that at its deepest level, you're always talking about your physical and mental processes. What is there beyond your physical and mental processes, beyond your body, mind and heart, beyond your emotional life, your thought life and your physical life? So I am. So immediately that I am is producing a certain relationship to this body and through the body to the world.

And when you take that to one step above about what I am then you get, I am in this particular moment I am angry I am depressed so there's always this direct relationship this identity with what we're actually experiencing and if it's not a direct identity that I am it's an identity of ownership I have.

So is there something which can break that process and allow us to find a, for want of a better word, a different identity? So one of the key teachings of the Buddha is this business of not-self. And all he's saying, it's a skillful means by which he allows us to investigate this phenomena that we call me in such a way that we're always creating a distance. We're always creating a separation between that which knows and what it knows.

So in our meditation when there's pain in the knee there's pain in the knee there's something that knows the pain in the knee and by taking that objective stance to it there we discover a liberation from the pain now that liberation expresses itself by a lack of aversion towards the pain a lack of fear towards the pain so already right there with something as simple as pain we've experienced the liberation. We've experienced liberation. Nibbāna is actually staring us in the face. It's just that we can't break through the veil. And every so often we do it and we don't recognize that in fact we've actually touched upon a completely different level of consciousness.

So whereas before I had a headache, and I would say, oh, I've got this terrible headache, and I can't handle it, and all that, and I take aspirins and whatnot, I now use it as something to observe, and when the reaction stops of, I don't want this headache, or this is my headache, and I'm just aware of the headache, I am just aware of the headache, as headache, and I'm not saying it's not a headache, I'm not saying it's not painful, there is that gap, and that little gap between awareness and the object of what it's aware of is the nibbanic gap. I'm not suggesting that's nibbāna, because nibbāna is a technical word meaning the end of the process. But what we are experiencing by these little separations is that I'm not that. And by doing so, this sense of I is always moving backwards.

So whereas before you might have said, I have a headache, now there is a headache. Whereas before we might have said, I am angry, we're now saying, there is anger. And that little separation is a liberation from not only that anger but from old ways of reacting to that anger old habitus by which we may have behaved when whenever we're angry so all these little separations are little moments of liberation and when that's taken to its final degree what we discover is this awareness is not actually part of this whole psychophysical organism, it's something other than that.

And that's what the Buddha points to when he says that there is a consciousness which is not manifested, there's nothing in it, which has no boundary because there's no phenomena and in all directions full of light so what he's guiding us towards is something which is transcendent and he would refer to that by referring to himself as the Tathāgata that literally means gone there and when you look at his imagery it's always about going to the other island across the sea, across water. So these are very ancient images for telling us that there is something other than, there's an other which is separate from, distant from, completely different from the way we normally experience life.

And that end process does not mean a negation of life. Often Buddhism has been portrayed as a negation of life. What happens is that this transformation is re-establishing a new relationship to life, to people, to things. And that relationship we describe as love. So love is the basic relationship that you have towards people and even objects, which allows us to be in the world without being touched by it.

So, for instance, the big example that the Buddha uses is that of a mother, in his discourse on how to establish this mindfulness. He talks of a mother with her four children, and the first one, who's a little child, is ill, so there's a natural desire to help the child, it's compassion. One child has become successful in their exams or whatever, so she's naturally joyful for that child.

One child, she's just a friend to—that's the friendliness, and that's the love. And when one child leaves home, that's fine. That's the equanimity. And that equanimity is stopping these feelings—these three great relationships of love, compassion and sympathetic joy—from sinking into their easy enemy of attachment.

Love becomes "you do what I say." Compassion becomes pity and grief: "I'm so sorry for you." And joy becomes getting all excited and wanting to share that joy in a wrong way. So if somebody wins the lottery, of course you're happy for them, but you're waiting for them to send you a little cheque. I mean, they are your best friend after all. And if it doesn't come, you're very angry. So that shows us that the near enemy of sympathetic joy is envy, jealousy. And what equanimity does is cut through all that.

So if I were to try to pull all this together: when we normally think about kamma, we normally think of something which is coming to us because of our actions. So if I do something—if I say something rude to somebody—then that person's going to be angry with me and I'm going to get my comeuppance from them. They're going to tell people how horrible I am and things like that.

That is of course a result, it's a kammic result, but that isn't really pertinent to the process of liberation. The liberation comes when that person now reacts to my rudeness, and I now have a chance to either see the pain that I'm getting from that person's rudeness and to let go of that and undermine my own habitude of being rude, or I can use it to increase my rudeness by having good answers, good comebacks.

That kamma, that action, is produced from some habitual way that I behaved in the past. And therefore, I have to be careful to come back on that process. And coming back on that process means I've got to keep really alert. So the mindfulness that we do when we sit is the very mindfulness that has to come with us throughout the day.

So as soon as we feel—as soon as we see that initial desire coming up, negative or positive desire, but it's basically unethical—you're either being greedy or you're being hateful. As soon as we see that, there is that ability to stay with it and not to let it express itself through thought, word or deed. And just by allowing that desire to come up like that, no matter how forceful it is, and to remain still—to remain still within that storm—allows that energy to expend itself. And in so doing, we undermine that whole habit that we've produced from the past. And remember that that habit now is not wasted energy. We find it being transformed through actions which are driven more from goodwill.

Now this takes us to what we begin to see: there's a process whereby there is an intention and there is an identity with that intention, and it's the point of identity—this "I am"—which is so dangerous to us. Because once we've said "I am"—I am angry, I am unhappy—then you've lost your separation from it. You're becoming that, and that's what the Buddha means by becoming. We're constantly reinventing ourselves, we're constantly reinforcing old habits by saying "I am"—I am this, I am that.

And at a slightly less intense level, "I have." So if you take any objects, you say "I have"—legally speaking, you probably do own it. But when somebody steals it from you or you lose it, there's this enormous unhappiness around something, especially that you've attached to. But then you realise that actually having this possession is just a legal understanding between human beings. Whoever stole it—I mean, they have it. It's their possession. So to go around saying that somebody stole my mobile, it doesn't make sense anymore, because it's not your mobile. It belongs to the person who's actually got it.

So undermining these sorts of definitions, we undermine our relationship to the mobile. So whether we lose the mobile or not, it's not going to cause any suffering.

There's a lovely tale—and it was a fairly modern tale—where there was a thief who kept coming into the convent to take something. And the nuns tried to catch the thief. And eventually, when they saw the thief running away, they ran after the thief, saying, "It's an offering! It's an offering!" Just to stop the thief feeling bad about what they'd just stolen. So this is an ability just to let go of things, which doesn't come if you have that sense of strong identity, strong possession.

So just—I mean, one little exercise that you can do when you go home is just look at something that you really do like and you really feel is yours. And then just imagine what happens if it breaks or it gets stolen. And just through these little imaginative exercises, one can begin to release oneself from these little imprisonments that we have around objects.

Far more difficult is this business of identity—"I am"—and that comes up most clearly of course when death approaches us. Because when death approaches us, then we realise that this whole idea of "I am" is built completely on sand, because when death comes, who are you? I mean, when the light goes out, where's the "I am"? "Sorry, I'm dead." Well, you might say "I'm dead."

So it's a case of recognising that process of identity in our daily lives so that we actually stop it—stop that process—and then come back and find some way either to let go of a habit or to find some positive way of re-establishing a good habit.

So if one is making an offering of something, you're going to help a person, then you have to be aware of any subliminal—the sort of small text which is saying, "If I do this for you, when I need a bit of help, I expect you to come and help me." It's being aware of that and being aware of any sense of self-hatred for having such thoughts, of self-judgment and all the stuff that goes on when you open up to these negative things inside ourselves. And to let that go and to put the real purpose of your helping in your mind and to make that as an act of giving: "I'm going to help." In this way, we are developing just that habit of helping people.

So this whole process of bringing into consciousness everything that up until now has been unconscious—these little unknown intentions that we have—gives us back our control over our lives. And in so doing, we undermine all this process which is driven by this deep sense of identity, of "I am a human being." And it's when that collapses that we find a completely different relationship to the world. And you could say, in a very broad sense of the term, another identity.

So it's good to remember that when the Buddha actually became fully awakened, he didn't disappear in a puff of smoke. He didn't become reduced to a useless blob by the side of the road. He was still recognisably Siddhattha Gotama. Now when he walks around, everybody recognised who he was. And when he approaches his friends—because he's thinking about whom he could pass this good news on to—when he approaches his friends and he starts talking to them, he constantly asks them, "Have you ever heard me speak like this before? Have you ever heard me speak like this before?" Every time he says something, he says, "Have you ever heard me speak like this before?" And eventually, they're actually convinced that something's happened within Siddhattha Gotama and begin to open up to his teachings and find the same liberation.

So that's our task: to really understand that the world we're living in is the one that we are personally creating. There's no world outside our own consciousness. And once we grasp that, then we're looking for the causes of suffering inwardly and never outwardly. So it's the inner conditioning that we're constantly investigating, and in so doing finding ways to change it and understand how we create this world which is not always happy for us.

And ultimately the message of the Buddha is that there is a way of being in this world where there's no more suffering. I don't know of any psychotherapeutic school that has ever said that—that you can actually now, in this world, right in this life, find a place where there's no suffering. That's pretty radical.

I can only hope my words have been of some assistance. May you be liberated from all suffering, sooner rather than later.