The Question of Identity
La pregunta de la identidad
The teacher explores how we habitually identify with thought rather than with the awareness in which thought appears, and proposes that suffering arises from believing we are something we are not.
The Question of Identity
The teacher explores how we habitually identify with thought rather than with the awareness in which thought appears, and proposes that suffering arises from believing we are something we are not.
Is the sound more real, or is the subject that hears it more real? None of this is in the future. None of this is something you can push toward or arrive at later. It's only now. What is the thing that is experiencing?
The question of who you are
It's really about identity. It's the question: who am I? Or you can also ask, what am I? Quite often we identify with the thought of the experience. Then when we ask "who am I?" the answer becomes: I'm a person, I'm a woman, I'm a man. All of that is mind. It is all imagination of what we are.
You have a scientific mind, so you can see without a doubt that anything you can say about what you are exists at the level of thinking, imagining. It's thought. So then, what are you? Who are you?
Where does thought appear?
Where is that thought appearing? And is the thought more real than where it's appearing, the subject? One of the ways this is pointed to is: what is the subject that is aware of the thought? Which one are you more? Are you more the thought, or the subject that's aware of it?
If you answer "the thought," then identification becomes "I am something of the mind." But if you answer "I am more the subject that is aware of the thought," then the question becomes: what is that subject?
The same applies to a sound.
The hypothesis to explore
The proposal here is for you to explore this directly. And the hypothesis is: suffering is caused by believing you are something you're not.