Why should you even care if the rigid self that you

Why should you even care if the rigid "self' that you believe in so strongly
really exists or not? Our self feels most real when we are right and righteous,
when we are wrongly or unfairly challenged. And it also seems unique,
completely separate from everyone and everything else in the universe. This sep-
arateness can feel like :freedom and independence when we are in a good mood.
But when we are in trouble, lonely or angry, under pressure or dissatisfied,
this
separateness feels like isolation, alienation, unfair treatment, or deprivation.
When we are wholly gripped by fury, the searing energy that wants to attack a
target picks our "I" up like a mindless tool and
flings
us at the other person.
It
is
so disconnected that it even disregards our sense of self-protection, making us
take actions that injure us, ignore injuries undergone, and even harm others
with no regard for the consequences. There is no more powerful demonstration
of our strong sense of being an independent entity than when we give ourselves
over completely to anger.
When we look around at others, we see that they are just as alienated from
us as we are alienated from them.
As
we want things from them, they want
things from us. As we reject them, they seem to reject us. We don't love
them, so how can we expect them to love us? And yet they are endless,
while "I" am just one. So I am badly outnumbered. I feel threatened. I can
never get enough, have enough, or be enough. I will inevitably lose the me-
versus-all-of-them struggle in the long run.
We can, of course, experience moments of unity with other beings, through
falling in love, or having a child, for example. When we do, we experience tre-
mendous relj.ef-for a moment, there are two of us teamed up against all the
others together. We have an ally. But unfortunately those moments are too
rare, and they do not last long before the old self-isolation re-emerges. Even
lovers can tum into adversaries, couples often seek divorce, and children recoil
from their parents, who in
turn
reject them.
This alienation caused by the presumed independent, absolute self was why
the Buddha saw its illusion as the source of human suffering. The situation of
feeling that it's always "the self versus the world," with the self as the long-
term loser, is unsatisfactory and untenable. When we recognize the inevitable
nonviability of our self-centered reality, it motivates us to engage in the quest
for the true nature of the sel£ It makes it existentially essential for us to pause

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ROBERT THURMAN
in our headlong rush through life and tum within, to verify whether the "self'
really exists as we feel it does.
We can take great encouragement from the fact that the Buddha told us
we could escape from our suffering. Still, we cannot merely accept someone
else's report. No one else can do the job of replacing misunderstanding with
understanding for us. We must look at reality and verify for ourselves whether
our habitual sense of having a fixed self or the Buddha's discovery of selflessness
is ultimately true. In this way, we can begin to transform the self-
preoccupation that causes chronic suffering into the insightful, gradual opening
and letting go of the self that is, paradoxically, so self-fulfilling.