Who am I?

This is a complicated question.  One that brings endless anxiety to people.  One that seems to demand a personal, unique and separate identity.

Lately, I have been reading the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying and every page or so I find a passage that I need to highlight.  Something I need to return to.  Something I need to think about.

The recurring theme of that book is that we are dying every day.

At this point in time there is a 100% mortality rate for this physical life.  There is no way of living forever.  No way of remaining in this human existence for eternity.  We must move on.  And that is a scary prospect.

However, when we look at our lives, we do that every day.  Each day dies and the next day a new one comes into existence.  We make transitions in our lives every day.

Medically speaking our cells live for approximately 7 years.  As the old cells die and new ones take their places, we regenerate.  Unlike birds that molt or snakes that shed their skin, it is not a process we go through at once, it is a progression, but we grow and we change.

Not only is the mortality rate 100%, nothing is permanent.  Everything is transient.  Including the answer to the question "Who am I?"

Samsara is a sanskrit word for the continuous flow of life.  In order to reach enlightenment, we must first pass through Samsara.  As the consciousness of the planet changes, as technology changes the existence we must life through changes.  Samsara is something we have to overcome.  According to Sogyal Rinpoche, "This modern samsara feeds of anxiety and depression that it fosters and trains us all in, and carefully nurtures with a consumer machine that needs to keep us greedy to keep going."  Samsara is the pull toward attachment to our "life."

As I read this book and I examine my own life, my own existence, I realize that I am not in any way, shape or form proud of the life I have lead.  I have let attachment to material items, a big house, more stuff, new this or that, get in the way of what I think of as really important.  I want a life built around community.  I want to feel a part of something, not just like I am wandering through the world as it goes on around me.  I want to feel like I am doing something positive in the world.  I want something more.

Who am I?

I am a girl, confused and looking for more meaning than just what the commercials and the tv say I have to have to be happy.  Society tells me I need to work harder for more stuff in order to feel a sense of accomplishment.  But the truth is that the more stuff I obtain, the less fulfilled I feel.