I am a biscuit – I’ll explain.

For a biscuit to exists, it needs ingredients – flour, water, sugar, butter – and cooking.

Every thing is made up of ingredients, just like a biscuit, and all the components have to be there in order for it to exist.

The “I” is made up of ingredients – form, feeling, perception, karmic formation and consciousness: these are called the five aggregates, or skandha. These are the ingredients to make up a sentient being. If we take one of these parts away and ‘we’ fall apart, just like taking the wheels off a car – it no longer functions as a car.

So how did this come about?

 What we are is pure awareness – sacred space, with no embellishments…no ingredients! One day, this pure awareness was attracted to something – it was attracted to being aware! It had a feeling of personal existence – an I – thus creating the skandha, and it forgot pure being.

 This incident (which is maintained every moment now!) initiated the filling of open space with concepts. Through desire, emptiness became filled with concepts, and that was the beginning of ego-clinging …ignorance …and suffering! To hold the whole thing together, we needed ingredients – the five skandha.

 So sentient beings are created out of ignorance of their true nature. Then, that sentient being just went on creating, and enjoying its creation…until it found that this creation is the very cause of its suffering. This creation then has to be maintained and defended, giving rise to aggression and hatred and all the other negative emotions. “Oi, do we suffer!”

However… once we recognise our true nature, we can enjoy the biscuit, but know it has no reality! Then bodhicitta can arises (working for the benefit of others), which becomes the reason to create…love!

Each moment is an opportunity to re-establish our true nature, by not re-acting.

Our only problem now is that, in having made the biscuit in the kitchen, we now have to clean up all the residue. That is the process of eliminating karma (it is that which is still holding the biscuit together). We do this by not re-acting.

When we finally put everything away, and no more biscuits can be made, we are free to do whatever we choose! The end of the ‘biscuit business’ brings the arising of unconditional love…so what are you going to do with that?!