Mindfulness Meditation (For Everyday Life)

for feeling important. We are likely to continually seek
interior stability through outside rewards, through
material possessions, and from others who love us.
In this way, we keep our self-construct going. Yet in
spite of all this self-generating activity, there may still
be no sense of enduring stability in one's own being,
nor calmness in the mind. Buddhists might say that
this is because there is no absolute separate "self" in
the first place, just the process of continual self-
construction or "selfing." If we could only recognize
the process of Selfing as an ingrained habit and then
give ourselves permission to take the day off, to stop
trying so hard to be "somebody" and instead just
experience being, perhaps we would be a lot happier
and more relaxed.
This doesn't mean, by the way, that "you have to be a
somebody before you can be a nobody," one of the
big New Age distortions of meditation practice, by
which is meant that you should have a robust sense
of self before you explore the emptiness of "no-self."
No-self does not mean being a nobody. What it
means is that everything is interdependent and that
there is no isolated, independent core "you." You are
only you in relationship to all other forces and events
in the world - including your parents, your childhood,
your thoughts and feelings, outside events, time, and
so on. Moreover, you are already a somebody, no