Emptiness in everyday life

Wisdom in everyday life

• How to look at everyday phenomena in terms of emptiness and dependent arising
• How labeling objects influences our experience

Emptiness 01 (download)

Questions and answers

• Relating to others as empty while also apologizing and acknowledging our own negative behavior
• Balancing an understanding of the conventional and ultimate nature of sentient beings
• Overcoming worry
• Refocusing life towards Dharma practice
• Merit creating in meditative practice and engaged compassion

Emptiness 02: Q&A (download)

The five paths

Since we are talking about the topic of emptiness, I thought it might be good if we started out just chanting the mantras of the perfection of wisdom. You’ve probably now heard it or maybe you haven’t.

Tayata gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi soha

All of the Mahayana traditions recite this mantra when they do the Heart Sutras. The mantra contains the meaning of the entire path. Tayata means that “it is like this,” and gate means “gone.” So,

gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi soha

 means:

Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, bodhi, so be it:
Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi soha.

These represent the five paths. When we are meditating on the bodhisattva vehicle, we traverse five paths that are demarcated by our level of realization of emptiness. We enter the first path when we have spontaneous bodhicitta. In other words, whenever we see a sentient being, when our mind turns to any sentient being, our natural spontaneous reaction is: “I would like to become enlightened in order to benefit that sentient being.” That’s quite an incredible aspiration to have that as a natural reaction when we see somebody, isn’t it? When someone cuts you off when you are driving, that is your natural reaction. That’s when we enter the first path. That’s already pretty advanced.

We enter the second path when we have the union of mental quiescence and special insight on the object of emptiness. But it is still a conceptual understanding of emptiness. We haven’t perceived it directly. We are still perceiving it through a mental image, but that entails having full single-pointed concentration and a current understanding of the ultimate nature of reality. That’s the second gate. You’ve gone to the second path. The third path–paragate—is “gone beyond.”

The first path is called “The path of accumulation,” because we are trying to accumulate positive potential. The second path is called “The path of preparation,” because we are preparing for the direct realization of emptiness. The third path–paragate (“gone beyond”)—is called “The path of seeing.” We enter that path when we have direct, nonconceptual perception of emptiness supported by single-pointed concentration. At that point, we become what’s called an arya, a noble being.

The fourth path—parasamgate (“gone completely beyond”)—is called “The path of meditation,” and this is the path on which we familiarize ourself with this direct perception of the nature of reality, and we use it to cleanse our mind from all of the defilements—ignorance, anger, and attachment—and all of their seeds, and all of their imprints.

Bodhi is the fifth path. It’s called “The path of no more learning.” That means you’re done—that means Buddhahood. Buddhahood occurs when we’ve completely eliminated all stains on our mind and developed all of our good qualities to their complete fullness. This is a description of what others before us have done, and it’s a description of what we want to do. It may sound very theoretical and very vast to us right now, but we have the potential to do it. 

What we are doing here is trying to learn something about the nature of reality so we can get some sense of how we want to be able to practice and what we want to realize. That way we can go through “gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, bodhi,” and attain full enlightenment.

I thought I would explain the meaning of the mantra before we chanted it because it is nice when you are chanting if you can think of what it means—first path, second path, third, fourth, fifth—and really get a sense of that. You can follow along with the given melody. I’m not the greatest chanter, but that’s what you’ve got this evening.

Tayata gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi soha
Tayata gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi soha
Tayata gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi soha

The nature of reality

My teacher, Lama Yeshe, used to say that emptiness is here right now. You just don’t see it.  Because we often have this image that the nature of reality is somewhere far away, unrelated to us, some other universe. That’s not where it is.

Reality and the nature of reality is here right now. The thing is that we don’t perceive it. We are the nature of reality. Our deepest nature, the way in which we really exist, is the nature of reality, but we don’t perceive this. It’s called emptiness. Emptiness doesn’t mean nothingness; it doesn’t mean that nothing exists. It is emptiness of a specific kind of existence that we think exists but doesn’t really exist.

Our mind is mistaken because the way we perceive everything is incorrect. We see everything, and we think it all has its own nature. “I am me”—right? “I’m me.” This is the table. This is a cup. This is a watch. Everything has its own nature. That’s the way we perceive it. In actual fact, things do not exist by their own nature, from their own side, and under their own power. They exist in relation to other things. We all exist dependent on our causes, don’t we? Did any of you come into existence without a cause? Things don’t come into existence without causes. We depend on our causes, and we depend on the parts that make us up. We have a body and a mind. The table has a top and it has legs. We depend upon the parts of which we are made, and we are also dependent upon the mind putting those parts together to form an object and giving that object a name.

Things also come into being in relationship to our mind because we’ve conceptualized them and can give them a name. But, this is not how things appear to us, and it is not how we normally think of them because we think everything exists out there by itself.

We go through life thinking that we are perceiving an objective reality. Isn’t that the way you feel about your life? “There’s me and then there’s everything else.” Whatever I perceive exists in the exact way that I perceive it, right? So, when I have a problem with somebody, and I perceive that  it’s the other person’s fault, that’s the way it is. It’s very clear. Right? If I look at somebody and think they are a jerk—they are a jerk. There’s no question about it. They are a jerk from their own side. [laughter] I didn’t make them a jerk. They just have that nature of being a jerk. That’s why I perceive them as a jerk. That’s how we perceive things, right? Something is inherently beautiful or it’s inherently ugly, or it’s inherently good or it’s inherently bad.

We go through life feeling like there is this me that is definitely quite solid and concrete, and then there’s this objective world out there that we are perceiving directly. Therefore, all of our values and judgments are right. All of our opinions are definitely right—even if we change them. All of our emotions are the appropriate reaction to whatever the situation is. We never doubt anything, do we? Lama Yeshe not only said reality is here right now, but he also used to tell us that we are hallucinating all the time. Because instead of perceiving things as they are, we are perceiving them completely through this false filter of thinking that they have their own essence. Those of us who went to India and Nepal in the early 1970’s had lots of experience with hallucinations. He used to tell us, “You don’t need to take drugs, dear. You’re hallucinating already!” [laughter].

We don’t feel like we are hallucinating, do we? Not at all—everything is very real. When we talk of things being empty, we’re talking about them being empty of all this realness that we have projected onto them. It’s as if we were born with sunglasses and we perceive everything as dark. So, we never question that everything is the color that we perceive it as being because we’ve never had the experience of being without sunglasses, and we don’t even realize we’ve been born with them. That’s kind of how we are. We’ve been projecting this wrong way of existence for so long that we believe it, and we don’t even realize we’re doing it. When we talk about the ultimate nature of reality being empty, it’s empty of all of this stuff we are falsely projecting onto it. This doesn’t mean things are not existent, it just means they are empty of all of our hallucinated projections.

If we are projecting independent existence onto stuff, and that’s incorrect, how do things really exist? They exist dependently. There are three things that are dependent on causes and conditions. In the case of functioning things, in the case of all phenomenta, it is parts, and term and concept: the mind and the label. Things exist by being merely labeled. That is the most subtle form of dependence.

Things exist by being merely labeled

What does that really mean? What does it mean that things exist by being merely labeled? It means that our mind puts the parts together and makes things into phenomena. The people who study child psychology have discovered that when infants cry, they don’t realize they are the one who is crying, and they are frightened by their own wail. They’ve also discovered that infants, at the beginning, don’t perceive things as distinct phenomena. It is with time that they come to realize, “Oh, you put this shape and that shape together, and it’s a table,” or “You put this and this and this together, and it’s Mom’s face.” But at the beginning, babies don’t see things as discrete objects of phenomena. Instead, they learn slowly through time that you put different parts together and you make it into an object. Then you learn over more time that the object has a name. The initial way that babies perceive or think is blurred and all put together.

Are any of you familiar with Escher drawings? These are the drawings where you can look at it one way and see one thing, and you can look at it another way and see another thing. Has the drawing changed when you see it as this versus when you see it as that? No, the drawing is still the same lines and still the same colors. What’s changed is how we have put those different shapes and lines and colors together and formed an object and given that object a label. It’s very interesting, isn’t it? When you look at the Escher painting, it could be this or it could be that, depending upon which parts you put together and what name you put on them.

This is giving us some idea about how things seem to exist because our mind puts the parts together, gives them a name, and in some way or another we are involved in making things be what they are. Things are dependent on label and concept. Let me give a few more very, very gross ideas of how things depend on labels. Since the topic is how emptiness relates to daily life, I think this may give you some practical applications of it.

We can see this very much with manners. What we consider polite or impolite is dependent on conception and label, because if you go from our culture to another culture, what is polite or impolite changes. But when we’ve been raised in a certain culture, we have our view of what is polite, and if somebody doesn’t behave that way, they are impolite and that behavior is really bad. From their point of view, we are not fulfilling their definition of being polite. So, we look very uncouth and ill-behaved. Actually, a lot of miscommunication happens because of this.

If you’ve spent any time living in another culture you really see this first-hand, and it can be very humbling. I spent a great deal of time living in the Tibetan culture. When you blow your nose in Tibetan culture, you don’t just take out your tissue and blow your nose. That is considered extremely rude. You blow your nose with your head covered. When you’re done, you uncover your head. In our country, if you put your shirt or your jacket over your head in the middle of a meeting, what would people say? [laughter] That is impolite, isn’t it? In Tibetan culture, that is being polite.

In Tibetan culture, when you go to the chanting sessions at the monasteries, you have your own bowl. You bring your own bowl and they traditionally eat tsampa. It’s roasted and ground barley flour. You get some tsampa, and you get this disgusting butter tea that’s filled with butter and salt. It’s very bad for your blood pressure, and it tastes terrible. You pour that into the bowl, and then you take your hand, and you make it into a ball—like play-doh. You make a ball, and then you pick up little parts of this ball, and you roll them and pop them into your mouth and chew them. When you’re done and you’ve eaten it all like this, then you lift the bowl and you make a noise because that shows that you’ve enjoyed the meal. Then you wrap your bowl up, and you stick it back into your shirt. What would your mother say? [laughter] We were always taught, “Don’t play with your food! Don’t put your hands in your food!” In our culture, that’s considered very impolite. In Tibetan culture, that is very polite.

There’s one Japanese friend that we have who comes and makes dinner sometimes at the Abbey. People like to come and offer food to the community at Sravasti Abbey. They make very lovely Japanese meals. One time he made a meal with very long noodles, and we Westerners were trying to figure out exactly how to eat these noodles. We tried chopsticks to roll them up and it didn’t work. You lift them up and they are very long. So, finally our friend told us, “What you do is put them in your mouth and slurp them up.” If you slurp very loudly that shows that you are really enjoying your food. If you don’t slurp loudly it’s really impolite, and somebody is going to be offended.

We can see how manners are merely labels, aren’t they? What is considered polite and impolite is made up by minds and created by minds. It’s not that some action is inherently polite or inherently impolite, but rather a group of people have decided how they are going to relate together.

What’s the value of understanding this? It helps us when we are working cross-culturally to understand that people from different cultures see things differently than we do, think differently than we do, and behave differently than we do—and they’re not being rude. It also helps us to be more observant when we are in other cultures about how they think and behave so that we can comply more with their culture and not offend them by what is considered our ill behavior.

This is very useful knowledge. What we’re getting at is that being polite and being impolite are empty of inherent existence. They are dependently existent phenomena that are created by our mind. It’s very helpful to understand that. That doesn’t mean that we can act any old way we want. We function together in societies, and societies have certain ways of behaving, and if you want to communicate effectively in a society you try and behave that way. There are conventional standards of behavior, but those are not ultimate, inherently existent polite and impolite. They are conventionally existent, and we want to abide by them because it facilitates our living together. This is a good example of how things are created by our mind. They don’t have an objective existence.

Imputing meaning on our perception

How many of you work behind a computer for part of the day? You know how you can look at  the screen? We can have a lot of emotions looking at computer screens, can’t we? Do you sometimes get really angry looking at your computer screen? [laughter] Somebody sends you an email and: “Er, ugh, I can’t do this.” Somebody else sends you another email and you think, “Oh! Yipee! This is terrific news!” You’re so happy. Are these emotions on that computer screen? No. It looks like they are in the words, but what are the words? We’re looking at this screen that has dots arranged called pixels. All your pixels are arranged in a certain way, and then we learn that those shapes and forms create what we call words, and words have certain meanings, and then we project all of that meaning onto these little pixels that are just doing their own thing. [laughter]

If we got good news or we got bad news, is it coming from the computer? No. Where’s the happiness and the suffering coming from? It’s coming from us, isn’t it? It’s not coming from that computer. It’s not even coming from the words. The words aren’t even talking. It’s just signs and symbols, and we’ve agreed that certain signs and symbols have certain meanings. We impute the meaning on those shapes and then we relate to the shapes in a certain way. What we don’t always realize is that we’re the ones who have imputed the meanings on it. Instead, we think that how it’s appearing to us is the way that it exists.

I think we’ve all had the experience of having very bad misunderstandings via email. Has anybody not had that experience? You type something and you’re saying it in one tone of voice, but the person on the other end is reading it in another tone of voice. [laughter] Or they typed it in one tone of voice and we’re reading it in another tone of voice. It’s very interesting. The words are exactly the same. We’re imputing the tone of voice on those words, and then we can get very angry or we can get very pleased, but we actually have no idea whatsoever what the person meant—because we have no way of understanding what their tone of voice is since it is all written.

You can see in that kind of situation how we’re imputing meaning on those words and getting all riled up about it when maybe the person who wrote the words didn’t mean that at all. When we are reading it, we perceive it as if the words have meaning in themselves and the meaning is coming out of the words. Don’t we? We don’t perceive it as if we’re the ones giving the meaning to the words. Rather, the meaning is there and it’s coming out, and our understanding is correct. But that’s not the case at all. We could be vastly misunderstanding this.

It can be very helpful for us to be aware of how our mind is creating reality, to be aware of how we are putting parts together and imputing meaning on these parts that may or may not be there at all. When you think about it, it’s really a wonder that we manage to communicate at all, isn’t it? When we understand this, it also helps us loosen our mind a little bit so that when something does come up and maybe we’ve misinterpreted what somebody else says or they’ve misinterpreted us, instead of feeling, “I’m really perceiving it right and they’re just trying to wiggle out of it,” we can instead realize, “Hey, what I’m perceiving is created by my mind and they are telling the truth.” That can bring about a whole different kind of communication with the other person.

If we hang on to our view that what we are perceiving is actually there in this situation, it’s going to be very difficult for us to get along with people because we’re never going to budge an inch from our perception, and our perception sometimes can be really quite wrong.

Emptiness and criticism

The whole thing about emptiness is that it gives us a little bit of space to consider that maybe what is appearing to us is not how it exists. That can be very, very liberating because of the way our normal mind functions. Actually, I should say the way our abnormal mind functions, because until we’ve realized emptiness directly we’re kind of abnormal. We’re normally abnormal! We’re normal because we are sentient beings. We’re abnormal because we are hallucinating. Until we really perceive emptiness we don’t really get that, but if we can have at least some understanding of it, it loosens things for us. It gives us a lot more space in our minds and in our relationships.

Here are some other practical applications of emptiness. We all get criticized, don’t we? Can you believe that people are so ignorant that they actually criticize us? How outrageous! [laughter] We all feel inside of ourselves, “How can somebody possibly criticize me? I’m so sweet. I’m so innocent. I make a mistake once in a while, but it is nothing bad. People shouldn’t get all riled up about it. I didn’t really mean that. It was just a mistake.” Isn’t that kind of the way we feel about ourselves? “Why in the world is somebody criticizing me? I don’t deserve to be criticized. I’m a really nice person. Who is this person criticizing me?” Then, we get really unhappy and miserable.

We get confused: “How can they criticize me?” We get worried: “Maybe what they said is true.” We get angry: “No, it can’t be true! They’re wrong!” We get belligerent: “How dare they say that! I better go punch them in the nose and show them who’s boss!” We take the ball and run with it and get in a lot of trouble. It’s very interesting how we react when we are getting criticized. There’s a few different ways emptiness can apply in this situation.

Venerable Thubten Chodron (VTC): Give me an example of a criticism.

Audience: “You’re late!”

VTC:  Someone yells, “You’re late! You’re late!” [laughter] It’s never “you’re late” said softly.

Here are these sound waves: “youuurrr laaaate.” They are just sounds, right. What’s happening? The ear is hearing sound, then our mind puts that sound together and gives that sound meaning. Based on the meaning that we’ve given that sound, we get upset. It’s curious. Why is “you’re late” a criticism? If you are late, it’s the truth. It’s not a criticism.

We not only understand the words “you’re late” to mean you’re due there at 5:00 and you get there at 7:00. We also impute criticism on those words. Why is that criticism? Why is someone saying “you’re late” criticism? Does it mean you’re a bad person because you are late? It does? Maybe you’re late because there was a traffic jam. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person because there’s a traffic jam. Things happen that are out of our control. Why do we see somebody saying “you’re late” as a criticism? Why do we take it so personally? We impute criticism on those words. It’s interesting, isn’t it?

Why do I impute? It’s just a statement of fact, isn’t it? “You’re late.” Why do we get all huffy about somebody saying a statement of fact? It’s like somebody saying, “You’re wearing maroon.” I  know I’m wearing maroon! [laughter] It’s true, I’m wearing maroon. I’m late. Why do I get angry about it? Because I’m imputing meaning onto that expression. Even if the other person was angry and upset at me when they say that—even if they say “you’re late” in an angry way—why do I impute it as criticism? They’re angry. Does that mean that I need to get all riled up about it and take it personally? We feel like, when we hear the words “you’re late,” arrows are coming. There’s the person’s mouth moving, you’re late and arrows are zooming out of it and into our heart. We’re punctured by “you’re late.”

Is pain coming from the other person’s mouth? Do hurt feelings come from the other person’s mouth? No. Where is the pain coming from? Where are the hurt feelings coming from? Where is the defensiveness coming from? It’s coming from inside us, isn’t it? We are the ones who are imputing all of this meaning. We’re not just imputing the meaning of the sounds “you’re late” but also imputing criticism to that meaning. Then we say to the other person, “You made me mad by saying that! You made me mad! The anger came from you into me when you said, ‘You’re late.’”

Does anybody else make us mad? Where does the madness come from? It comes from inside us. If we interpret things a certain way, we make ourselves angry based on how we interpret them. That’s pretty humbling, isn’t it? What’s even more interesting is that we’re sitting there with our hurt feelings thinking, “They hurt my feelings.” So then, we even get into thinking, “Poor me,” or we get into thinking, “How dare they!”

The feelings are our hurt feelings to start with. Both people are hurt and then one person deals with the hurt by sinking into: “Poor me, they hurt my feelings. Poor me!” The other person reacts to the pain of everything that they’ve imputed onto the words by getting indignant and telling the other person off. So, those reactions are also created by mind, aren’t they? One person creates the “poor me” reaction and then another person creates the “I’m all powerful—how dare you” reaction. They’re both reactions to the same feeling. What’s really interesting is whether you are a “poor me” person or a “how dare they” person, to ask ourselves who is feeling this?

Who is this me?

“They hurt my feelings!” Whose feelings did they hurt? Whose? Who is the owner of those hurt feelings? “They criticized me! Who do they think they are!” Who is the me that is criticized?We think, “They criticized me!” And we hit our chests, don’t we?  “Me! They criticized me!” Who? They criticized me, so they criticized my hand? They criticized my chest? They criticized my head? Who is the one that they criticized? They criticized my mind? They criticized my “I” consciousness? They criticized my ear consciousness? Who is this “I” that is so hurt and offended? What is the object of their criticism?

We feel like there’s a real I there, don’t we? They criticized me! There’s this feeling of the real I. But when we start to analyze and examine and look for exactly who it is that got criticized, we can’t really get it. We can’t really pinpoint it down, can we? All we are left with is saying, “Well, they criticized me.” Well, who? Say something more than “me.” What is me? Who is me? What is the thing that was actually criticized? Can you find the person who got criticized? And yet we’re really angry that we got criticized, but there’s not anybody there who got criticized. If we say, “I’m hurt,” or “I’m angry,” who is angry? Who’s hurt? “I’m hurt!” Who’s I? What’s that I that’s angry? What’s that I that’s hurt?

Or we get depressed: “I’m so depressed.” Who’s depressed? Who? Is your body depressed? Is your nose consciousness depressed? Are your thoughts depressed? Who’s depressed? Who’s the person that’s depressed? When we analyze and try to find some thing that we can really identify, we can’t find anything. We use the term “I” and it has some meaning, but when we try to find some solid person there who has a real, findable essence that’s really so hurt and wounded by these other person’s words, we can’t find that person. It looks like there’s a real me that’s hurt and wounded, but we can’t find that real me that’s hurt and wounded.

When we search, we can’t find. If these were solid things that were me, the real me, then when we look for the person whose feelings were hurt, we should be able to say, “This is the person whose feelings were hurt” and really identify that person whose feelings were hurt. But we can’t. When we say, “My feelings were hurt,” what are the hurt feelings? Can you find something that is hurt feelings? It’s interesting when you start to examine what are hurt feelings, isn’t it? Well, there’s kind of this feeling in my mind, and there’s kind of this feeling in my body, but what are hurt feelings? When we say, “My feelings are hurt,” we have this image of hurt feelings, don’t we? We think they are real, solid feelings existing there from their own side. There’s a hurt. What is it? What are hurt feelings? Can you find them when you look, when you analyze?

We have words and labels and things, and that’s fine; there’s nothing wrong with that. But we confuse the basis of the label with the label. We confuse something there with being a real object that we’ve labeled. We think there is a real me somewhere here, but there’s no real me when we search. We feel like these are real hurt feelings existing from their own side, but we can’t find them when we search.

Things appear to us to have their own essence, to have their own existence from their own side,  but in fact they don’t. What we’re perceiving is a false appearance. Things appear to have their own nature, their own essence, but if they did have their own nature and their own essence, when we examine, when we analyze, we should be able to find them. But we can’t find what things are. That’s what it means when we say that they’re “empty.” We thought that there was something that was really there. We thought there was an essence of hurt feelings. It looks like there is the essence of hurt feelings, and if they were really solid, inherently existent, objective hurt feelings, we should be able to find them when we examine, for goodness’ sake! But when we analyze, we can’t find the hurt feelings.

It feels like there’s a real person who is angry. If there was a real person who was angry, if we analyze we should be able to find exactly who it is who’s angry. But when we analyze, we can’t find anybody who is angry. Things exist on a conventional level—on the level of names, on the level of appearances—but when we analyze and try and find out exactly what they are and if they have their own essence, we can’t find them.

This kind of understanding can be quite useful to us in our lives especially because our culture stresses individualism so much. It stresses being our own person, and we’re all so involved in all of our feelings. We’re so involved in our lives and everything about me, me, me. It’s really rather humbling when we start to say, “Who?” We can’t find exactly who this is that we’re so obsessed about, except we say me, but we can’t really isolate who this me is. When we realize that, it gives us some space and allows us to not be so glommed onto appearances. We begin to question how things appear to us instead of believing that they’re true.

Seeing things differently

Realizing we can’t find anything solid gives us space to reframe things. For example, we all say, “I have a problem.” You have a problem with somebody else. “I have a problem with Joe. Joe and I aren’t getting along. We have a problem.” This problem seems enormous, doesn’t it? It seems like a very solid problem. “He said this, and I said that, and we just have this problem that is driving me crazy, and I can’t sleep at night because I have a problem.” What is “a problem?” Where is the problem? We say, “I have a problem.” We believe “I have a problem.” What exactly is the problem? Where is the problem?

Is the problem in Joe? If I open Joe up am I going to find a problem inside of him? Is the problem in me? Am I going to open myself up and find a problem somewhere in there? Is the problem in the space between me and Joe? What exactly is this problem that I am so obsessed about and upset about? When we start to analyze exactly what the problem is, we can’t find a solid, concrete problem. All we find is a bunch of occurrences. There are just occurrences, sounds, movements, whatever, and our mind has imputed the word “problem” on all of those occurrences. We think there’s a problem there from its own side coming back at us, but it’s our mind that’s given that set of circumstances the label “problem.”

We could give it the label “opportunity,” couldn’t we? It’s not an incorrect label. If we gave the same set of circumstances—the same base—the label “opportunity,” would you perceive it in the same way as you would if you gave it the label “problem?” No. Isn’t that incredible? Just depending what label we give it, we perceive it in two different ways. If we give it the label “problem,” boy, it’s really heavy. If we give it the label “opportunity,” well, there’s something to play with there. How we experience things, how they appear to us, depends upon how we label them. It’s just like the example with good manners versus bad manners: it all depends on how we label them.

This kind of understanding can be quite helpful in our daily lives, especially when we are starting to get bummed out about something or especially when we are getting really ego-sensitive and defensive. When you start to feel like that, just try and ask yourself, “What exactly is this?”