The Dalai Lama's Cat and The Four Paws of Spiritual Success (The Dalai Lama's Cat #4)

by David Michie

“What you need to understand is that there is a true “I” and a false “I”. The true “I” is the label you apply to all this,” he wiggled his index finger while scanning down Conrad’s body. “It is your body, your history, your likes and dislikes, the collection of things that go to make up the idea of Conrad. What Buddhists call “the conventionally-accepted I”. “The other is the false “I”. It is the idea that there is an independent self that exists somehow separately from body and mind, some inherently existing being that has qualities such as being guilty or successful or depressed or popular. Such a being doesn’t exist. It can’t exist. It never has existed. It’s just a tale we are making up.” “So why do we feel it so strongly?” asked Conrad. “Habit,” said Franc. “From the youngest age, we learn to identify with this invisible self. We have ideas about it. We try to project it out into the world in a particular way. But other people don’t have the same ideas about our self that we do. If I called ten people who know you, I would get ten slightly different accounts of Conrad.