309. What Is Me

I have a body in the form of a human animal. I have desires, aversions, and beliefs that arise from reflecting on myself and the world and making judgments about them. I have language and reason, which I can use to communicate and make inferences. I have memories of past experiences and imaginings of possible future experiences. I have connections to other people — parents, ancestors, friends, and lovers. I have a story of myself that is all of these things put together into a single narrative.

But none of these things that I possess is me. Not even their combination is me. I am the entity that experiences, the subject that perceives and feels and thinks. While it is true that my ability to do these things depends on my body being alive, even my body is not me.

The many things that I possess are sometimes so powerful that they dominate my experience. When my arm is sore, it’s difficult for me to be free of the pain, just as when my desire for success or my beliefs about the world are strong, I easily become attached to them. The intensity of these influences causes me to construct an identity around them: I define myself by all of the things that I have.

If I can see that I am not my possessions, it becomes possible for me to live free of them. Doing so means recognizing that I am a completely contentless being. When I see myself as this, I am also empty of attachment. It then becomes possible for me to see the needs that must be met in order to survive and thrive.

Needs are not further possessions, but rather necessary conditions of life itself. To see this fully and clearly is to recognize the pressing necessity of compassion, which is action to meet needs. My needs and the needs of others are not different but continuous aspects of need. All need must be met for joyful existence to become truly possible. To understand this is to see the necessity of allowing compassion to be present in everything I do.