Page 25 - Suffering

Clinging to identity?
Having an identity “I am….”, we create a restriction and an
expectation of who we are. That’s a mental process
and not a reality. We are more than just a word. We call

yourself names that diminish us like weak, lazy, blind, etc; or
we may find our self-worthy in the identity we choose like
CEO, competent, parent, etc; and anything that challenges
our sense of worth becomes a threat or an insult.
We suffer because it suggests that we are not
who we are or what we believed ourself to be.

Seeing ourself as different?
We are all heaps of the 5 Khandhas.* Human life, for that

matter is connected like a giant network of causal conditions.
Karma is but one of the 5 conditions. Many people believed,
and still do believe that everything about their present life
was caused by actions in the past. Everything that happens
to us happened because of something we did in the past.

Gautama Buddha disagreed
He taught there are five types of factors at work in the
cosmos that cause things to happen, called the
Five Causal Factors.** Karma is only one of these factors.
Present circumstances are the result of countless factors

that are always in flux. There is no single cause that makes
everything to be the way it is.

At its core human is an aggregate of elements as the earth,
water, fire and air; of the stars and all living beings.
When we experience this deeper connection to all of life
we will feel the sacredness of all things and beings
and it is no different.

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