I, My, and Mine

"I" is the shortest word, but the largest object in the world. We usually expand ourselves to wherever we can reach. Everything/Everyone we will like to relate to “I” and make it to “mine”.

My family, my friends, my work, my house, my money (and hope yours would be mine!), my world, and you are breathing my air. And we would also say “this is my life”.

So am “I” really that large? Who am “I”? How do I define myself? Will my name be good enough to describe me? What is mine? Do our properties really belong to us? When you look at me, I can see myself in your eyes. So am “I” in your eyes?

When you think of me, am I on your mind? Then which me is the truly me? That is what Guo-Xing Fashi said, “The mom on your mind is not your mom.” People tend to think what self felt is to be “I”. Tend to think of self is what around us. I can tell you what I have experienced through my life.

I can tell you what I do every day. I can introduce you my family and friends. I can even tell you what I think. But no matter what I tell you, that is just a part of me or none of me…. It will not lead me to what I really am. And which even makes me start thinking if there is an “I”?

If we could understand what we have and what we experienced are not “us”, we will be able to understand that there is no “us”, or no “me”. They could just be images. Things around me don’t even belong to mine.

We all just stretch ourselves too much and forget we are all sharing the resources. We will think and believe that are represented us. We are our names, our jobs, our level of education, and our memories.

When we think of “our life”, we would be able to tell what we experienced. We would say our life is based on our memory. And treat the memory as something real, as something that represented us. Which is not true, but we can hardly get rid of it. We are happy when we think of something that had ever made us happy. We are sad, because we think of something that happened before that made us sad. We are controlled by our memory, and even though we know the memory is no longer really existed. How stupid we are, but we still are.

We all need to have wisdom to realize that this is not a real world. They are not unchangeable, not forever. If we can put this in mind, we will be easier to let go. Not to be stuck or limit ourselves. We don’t possess the world, but we do own the world. We are nothing, but we are also everything. It is time to let go your ego now!

(by Tina Tai)