Drop the Mirror

When we look into the mirror, we see an image and because of memory we identify with that image as ourselves. With just a little bit of self-awareness, we know that the image that we see is not our real self but just a reflection.

It is the same with the images of thoughts and feelings. We perceive those images and identify thus creating ME. We then hold these images in memory and thus the ego is born. Thereafter, when we look out into the world, we first look through that collection of memory known as ME. It passes through the prism of collected past impressions.

But if we carefully examine the situation, we understand that those thoughts and feelings are just images on a screen, and with self-awareness, we experience the perceiving and know that I am not that which is being perceived. Now the ME has begun to lose its grip. Of course, the grip that the ME has is only what we give. It has no power of its own. It is inanimate.

Just as we do not walk around holding a mirror in front of us to relate to the world, we can also drop the mirror of ME. Now the world is That which Is.

-purushottama

This is from the collection of stories, essays, poems and insights that is compiled to form the book From Lemurs to Lamas: Confessions of a Bodhisattva. Order the book Here.