Everything and everyone are connected,

Nothing has an ego

from: “The Buddha” PBS Documentary

Richard Gere, Principal Narrator

  What the Buddha realizes is that if we can get rid of this fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the self, based on egotism, we won’t cling to things, we won’t screw up everything we do because we’re thinking about it in the wrong way.

  “After washing my feet,” the disciple said, “I watch the water going down the drain. I am calm. I control my mind, like a noble, thoroughbred horse. Taking a lamp, I enter my cell. Thinking of sleep, I sit on my bed. I touch the wick. The lamp goes out – Nirvana. My mind is freed.”

  Richard Gere: The mind is as restless as a monkey, the Buddha taught. Who you are, what you think of as your “self,” is constantly changing, like a river endlessly flowing. One thing today, another tomorrow.

  Jane Hirshfield, Poet: There’s water in the river, then there’s water in the glass, and then water is back in the air, and then it’s back in the river. The water’s there, but what is it? That’s the way to think about the self in Buddhism. One moment you’re angry, the next moment, you’re laughing. Who are you?

  Blair Brown: A seed becomes a plant. Wisps of grass are spun into a rope. A trickling stream turns into a river.

  Jane Hirshfield: The self comes and the self goes. Simply notice how from one moment to another your self is not as much the same as we think it is.

  D. Max Moerman, Barnard College: What the Buddha realizes is that if we can get rid of this fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the self, based on egotism, we won’t cling to things, we won’t screw up everything we do because we’re thinking about it in the wrong way.

  Jane Hirshfield: Once you stop centering your feelings about your feelings on your self, what naturally arises is simple compassion, compassion for your own suffering, compassion for the suffering of others.

  Gere: Even the most abstract of the Buddha’s teachings had a practical dimension. Compassion, the Buddha taught, comes from understanding impermanence, transience, flow, how one thing passes into another, how everything and everyone is connected.