give, share, release
"Nothing is to be clung to as 'I,' 'me,' or 'mine.'"
- ... Mantra - Cling to Nothing — Jon Kabat-Zinn, in Mindfulness for Beginners and in Coming to Our Senses
"You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather."
- ... Mantra - Mind Like Sky — Pema Chödrön
"Be a Duck, Not a Sponge"
... Our attachment to "I" is probably the most difficult to untangle. We have a sure and certain sense of ourselves as "here," as "I did," and as "this is me," but this sense of "I" comes about only through attachment. If we investigate ourselves very carefully, we find thoughts, physical sensations, and feelings of unpleasantness, pleasantness, or neither pleasant nor unpleasant. We find different feelings of joy, love, anger, faith, and envy. We find perception and memory. All of these experiences do not stay the same; even our thoughts of ourselves do not stay the same. So where is the solid "I"? ...
Imagine the wonderful freedom that comes from beginning to have some distance from our "I am this" or "that." If we have no attachment to ourselves, we have no need to defend ourselves. We can live with an open heart and mind. If we have no attachment, we have no need to hoard, lie, or hurt others. We do not need to play out roles that we think we should play as teachers, students, or parents. Rather, we can live as ourselves and as teachers, students, or parents with ease and well-being. Our greatest contraction and isolation are linked to our ownership of and belief in a permanent "I" and the consequent organization of all experiences around it.
- Nonattachment to I — Arianna Weisman and Jean Smith