traditionally some of the questions that people were meditating about when they were trying to achieve something in their practice,

mentioned in the Edward Kahn's piece, that goes back to the 1880s or 90s was questions like what is truth, what is the meaning of my life, how to prioritize my endeavors.

One of the big questions of course also people come to their spiritual practice with is

along the

lines of

who am I or how can I really get to know myself.

And there's always this point in

the spiritual life where we stumble across the Buddha's teaching of Anata. If you haven't stumbled across it as of yet, on a

If you haven't stumbled across it as of yet. It's one of the

Buddha's observations that the idea of a lasting permanent inner identity, a sort of a me that sits behind all of my thoughts,

a kind of core self that is global and lasting and present through my life is in fact an illusion that, in fact, if we observe very closely the stream of thoughts and feelings and mind states, moods, body states, perceptions that occur in our life, we begin to stumble across this great realization

that there is nothing in there that is profoundly, unchangeingly me.

In one suitor, the Buddha said just as a dog tied by a leash to a post circles around the post and gets nowhere,

the spiritually uninvolved person circles around self and views of identity.

And in the Panchavagi he says neither body nor feelings nor thoughts nor perceptions nor consciousness can provide any lasting self.

And yet, at the same time in the canon in the Buddhist teachings there are very

numerous mentions of self as being something that should be protected, looked after, cared for.

In the savassava, the self is listed as that which experiences our actions and in the damapada the

Buddhist says the self you construct is your foundation what else could provide it? Establish one that is secure.

Now, how do we explain these divergent views? At some point it sounds like the Buddha believes there is some core identity lurking behind our thoughts, generating our views and opinions, creating a constant thread of identity a meanness meeness not mean and so

so one way we could explain it is noting that the Buddha did teach to somewhat different paths.

There's Lokea. somewhat different paths.

...