Clinging to the idea of self is like clinging to the idea that a piece of rope in the dark is a snake. When the light is turned on and one sees that there is no snake there, one’s fear and suffering that arose from clinging to it as real dissolve. The snake never existed in the first place, so it was simply one’s clinging to that idea that caused the suffering and nothing else. The wisdom that realizes not-self is like the light that revealed the rope was not a snake.

Khenpo Tsultrim Rinpoche

from the book Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness

translated by Shenpen Hookham


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