"Me"

Rinpoche stressed the significance of searching the "me" or "tua chan/tua kuu" in Thai. We tend to cling to our identity caused by being selfishness which has the root cause in ignorance. This is truly ironical because when we are born we are really nothing. We have even no name and during the first 6 months to one year we don't know our own names. Yet, we later develop attachment to our name, our body, etc. He related a story of a friend from the US who visited him in Nepal. This friend got panicked when she found that her passport was lost. She said she was totally lost because her identity was gone. But he told her that it's only a piece of paper. You still have everything that forms yourself. How can you say that your identity no longer exists.

Apart from name, things like passport, we have big attachment to our body. But when we examine what the body is, what the part of body is, we cannot specifically pinpoint its exact location.

Rinpoche quotes Buddha saying that if we have a slight doubt on the "me" thing, we really shake Samsara.