“Since being without a self is inconceivable and very hard to realize, such freedom remains unknown to virtually everyone. Yet without a self designed for and committed to survival, there is no suffering. To get a handle on this, recall any form of suffering, any distress, worry, upset, fear, misery, stress, longing, or anything else that you suffer, and consider long and hard: if you didn’t care about you persisting in any way, if it didn’t matter to you if you existed or not, got your way or not, or that things turned out in a way consistent with your desires and needs, if you let go of attachment to your self and the survival of your self, would you suffer any of these things? The answer is no. You cannot suffer when there is no self trying to survive. You cannot suffer when you have no drive to persist. The desire to survive, to persist as the self that you are, is the cause of suffering.”