Identity

I want to bring you another passage today from The Seven-Point Mind Training by B. Alan Wallace - this one about how identity depends upon something called mental designation. This principle helps us experience the fluidity of phenomena and keeps us from being locked into a constricted, rigid way of looking at existence whether of other beings, objects, or ourselves. This passage outlines a classic illustration:

A very practical way to integrate the meditative practice with the post-meditative practice is to refresh this awareness, again and again, of how phenomena are dependent for their very existence upon mental designation. Take the example of a cart. None of its parts is the cart itself. No one thing can simultaneously be the axle and the wheel and the flat bottom. These are totally different entities with their own defining qualities such as flatness or roundness. The cart is not the wheel, nor is it the flat bottom, nor the axle. Nor is it all of the above because one thing cannot be all of the mutually exclusive parts of the cart. The cart is not identical with any one of its parts, nor is it equivalent to the sum of the parts. But if you take away each of the parts, then there is no cart remaining. What is a cart? It is something that is mentally designated upon the parts. Does the cart that is so designated perform the function of a cart? Yes: it carries hay and people; it travels; it is pulled by horses.

Likewise, I perform the functions of a person. I speak, I think, I act. Yet I am not the speech, the thought, or the deed. I am not the body or the mind. I am designated upon the body and mind, and my self depends for its very existence upon this mental designation. Like all phenomena, both subjective and objective, my self does not exist in its own right.

Okay. Why is this important? Well, it helps us see that what we call the "self" is not solid or fixed and that's good news! If we had a fixed, solid self then we couldn't change; we couldn't look forward to transformation. Letting go of the idea of a solid self is an experience of wonderful liberation! It doesn't mean that we don't exist. It means that we are not stuck.