The Previous You

Perhaps if I explain it in a simpler way: the minute you check up with ego how you feel, how you are, what you think about yourself, you can only think about the previous you. The previous one is [finger-snap] gone already. Isn’t it! It is non-existent. The ego is very slow, I tell you. It doesn’t matter how intelligent the ego may be; it is too slow. It thinks that yesterday’s me is somewhere around here still. That’s too late. Even from the relative point of view of time and space it’s unrealistic. In Buddhism when you seek shunyata, in that moment when you are aware, that mindfulness cuts the self-existent appearance, which is totally non-existent. That is the way to seek shunyata. The skill is how to observe the ego’s interpretation.

Whenever there is emotional excitement and the ego manifests, the I-projection arises strongly. That is the moment when you get the chance to recognize it—for example, when you are angry. That is a very important moment. Remember. Philosophical doctrine is not important. Intellectual religion is not important. That’s why many intellectually religious people—intellectual Buddhists, intellectual Muslims, intellectual Christians—they miss the point. Just making things philosophical doesn’t work. Destroying the intellectual ego and making another one is just sublimating. The main business is our intuitive inborn ego.