Violence does not consist so much in injuring and annihilating persons as in interrupting their continuity, making them play roles in which they no longer recognize themselves, making them betray not only commitments but their own substance, making them carry out actions that will destroy every possibility for action.

“He who knows what it is that Heaven does, and knows what it is that man does, has reached the peak. Knowing what it is that Heaven does, he lives with Heaven. Knowing what it is that man does, he uses the knowledge of what he knows to help out the knowledge of what he doesn’t know and lives out the years that Heaven gave him without being cut off midway — this is the perfection of knowledge.”

In every age and culture, humans tend to think of themselves as being animated by a sacred spirit or consisting of an underlying stable essence. Using meditation to investigate the phenomena of mind and body carefully and directly, the buddha instead saw a complex interdependent arising of related factors: material form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness. These arise and cease in a continuous swirl of activity, but this activity follows discernable patterns of interrelationship. There is no underlying essence; all psychological and physical factors are arising and ceasing interdependently. There is, however, in the midst of all this change a discernable sense of self. Some unique structures seem to form within experience, some patterns of attitude and behavior recur, and one appears able to transform in various wholesome and unwholesome ways. What is too crudely taken as an agent underlying experience is seen instead as a complex interdependent arising involving intentions, activities of body, speech, and mind, and bundles of dispositions. The self is a malleable construct, like everything else, and can be best understood as functioning without essence: self is self less.

“To be Enlightened is to be a Warrior of Love. To have the courage, patience and love to face the Demons Within. To conquer the Self, the Ego is to accept It and give It unconditional attention. Only then will the Inner Child cease to Cry.”