Right here, right now, what is there?

Right here, right now, what is there? Something is. It is known that something is. Something, aware of something. Something, aware of itself. Something, aware that it is.

Is there an “I” here to know that something is? We might assume the presence of an “I” to know this, sense it, or be aware of it, but there is certainly none implied in the simple equation of “something, aware of itself, right now.”

Where does this idea of “I” come from, then? We automatically jump right to it, by habit: “I” sense this awareness, or “I” know there is something aware of itself. We assume there is an “I.” But there is no evidence to support this assumption.

Sure, there is a body here, and when I look down, I see it, and it appears to be me. But there are also trees outside, and cats and dogs, and cars and buildings. They do not think “I am this car, I am this tree, I am this skyscraper.”

Even the objects with brains, with the capacity to think, do not think “I am this cat, I am this dog.” Nor do newborn babies think “I am this baby.” So it’s obvious that at some point in our development, this idea came about. Sometime between the time you were a newborn baby and now, you acquired the idea of “I.”

How much credence can you give an idea that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the universe except in the post-infantile human brain? That is literally the only place in the universe that “I” is believed in.

It’s very simple to go back and trace the development of the “I” in your own life, from the child’s earliest acquisition of language and the capacity to imagine a future time, to the constant, daily, lifelong re-affirmation from the environment that “I” am here and “you” are there. A little bit of questioning into the assumptions we’ve been making, however, and the fictitiousness of them is readily revealed. The assumption “I” does not hold up to even the mildest inquiry.

And when it is seen once that no “I” actually exists – that no person actually exists – what happens to all the questions? What happens to all the problems? What happens to suffering? What happens to seeking? What happens to every single shred of a thing that is predicated on the reality of “you”?

It is all seen to never have existed. It was a mirage: appearing to be something, but on closer look, seen to be nothing at all.

Within the something that is aware of itself, is there anything else? Nothing at all.