All Suffering is Caused by Identification – 05.24.12

Excerpt: “All suffering is caused by identification with an object in consciousness: primarily identification with the physical body, and secondly, identification with language, thoughts. And those thoughts are charged with emotions, impulses, drives—images that create nostalgia, anger, fear, whatever. So there’s a whole cluster of objects, mental objects, that tend to arise that produce effects of suffering of different kinds. And to the extent we’re identified with those objects in the mind, we are on the wheel of karma. . . . And because of our identification with the body, and with thought, we cannot escape because every effort to escape just tightens the noose more: we affirm the illusion that is the cause of suffering. . . .  But there is a very simple way out, and that is nonidentification with any mental objects and instead realization of the Self as the Empty Consciousness in which those objects arise.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 24, 2012.