Buddhist texts do not exaggerate when they say that our greatest enemy is clinging to a self. Why? We are caught in a situation where mind is incapable of directly experiencing its own essential emptiness, and instead posits a self that must be sustained. We thus develop all the needs and wants that must be gratified in order to maintain such a self. Suffering comes from the endless search to satisfy what cannot be satisfied. “I” leads to “I am” which leads to “I want” and so on.

Kalu Rinpoche

from the book The Dharma: That Illuminates All Beings Impartially Like the Light of the Sun and the Moon

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Further quotes from the book The Dharma:

• Commitment to pure Dharma practice
• Necessity of some intellectual basis
• Liberation at the time of death