Your Life is Your Message

What will be your contribution to the world?

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

This short video by Jon Kabat-Zinn describes how, without a practice of mindful awareness, it is easy for us to indulge in self-centeredness, thinking only of our own interests, welfare, or advantage.

As Kabat-Zinn says, life becomes a movie about me, starring me, and the rest of humanity are simply bit players.

He speaks of the fallacy of “self.” His message is that there is no separate self; we inter-are with everything. Without getting deep into Buddhist philosophy, he is referring to the concept of “non-self.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) would often use the example of flowers to illustrate this concept of non-self: [ emphasis is my own]

Flowers are made of non-flower elements, including water, sunshine, the soil, the weather, etc. Without these elements, no flower would manifest.

A person is also made up of all elements except the self, including parents, ancestors, water, sunshine, food, education, life circumstances, etc. The body is…