We think we are who we THINK we are
Sometimes we get so caught up with what or who we think we are that we think that is us.
From a Buddhist point of view, this is the root cause of all our basic problems. The fact that we don’t know who we really are and we identify with all the wrong things. We “think we are who we think we are.”
If I say to you, who are you? You will start by giving your name and whatever it is you identify with. What do we identify with? We identify with our gender, nationality, social group, educational level, profession, our role as a husband, wife, mother, daughter, brother. We hold onto these roles, and we get so caught up with them that we think that’s us.
From the Buddhist point of view this is our fundamental “unknowing" or “ignorance”. We identify with all these impermanent states as being permanent, and we don’t recognise our genuine identity.
From when we are very small we begin this process of creating a persona for ourselves. (Persona, from which we get the word personality, comes from the Roman and Greek masks which were worn by actors in the ancient dramas. They would wear a mask that represented the character they were portraying, their “persona.”) So our personality is the mask that we present to the world.
We all put on a different mask as parent, child, boss or friends, endlessly playing different roles. In itself playing roles is not a problem, we have to play roles. The problem comes when we identify with those roles. This is what we do for our whole lives. We not only play a part, but we begin to believe that the part we play is who we really are.
When this fundamental aspect of ‘unknowing’ becomes very strong in us, then of course, automatically - and often unconsciously - comes the reaching out for anything we think will support this persona
(attachment) and pushing away anyone or anything we think might damage or be in conflict with this persona (aversion).
We do this automatically, and if we look carefully, we'll find this is the root cause of all our basic problems.
