Our Identity Is A Fiction

Our self-identity is a fiction, a misnomer.
Misnomer: a wrong or inaccurate name or designation.

We are not an identity, a personality, a name. We cannot even be a ‘Buddhist’. If we identify with a group – or anything – we are trapped in it. The Buddha wasn’t a Buddhist.

A person is a persona, a mask, a character in a play or work of fiction; it’s an illusion. An avatar. Why? Because we are, first and foremost, a consciousness before we start naming things and ourselves.

There are those in this world who want us to identify with some thing, rather than what we truly are. This is make-believe. Belief is an acceptance that something exists or is true, without proof. Some even want to arrest or kill those who do or do not believe.

Our language has been doctored to persuade us to use words in a way that is opposite to their original meaning. As an example, to say “I believe I am telling the truth” means that we are not sure whether we are telling the truth … so, it’s not absolutely true.

Enter: the “Strawman”.
Strawman: an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent’s real argument.

The identification with a name, a persona, a set of ideas supersedes – takes the place of – a being’s original reality of pure consciousness.

A person can be attacked and dismantled.
Pure consciousness cannot.

If we do not know what we are, we can become a thing of fantasy.
When we realise that we are a thing of fantasy, we are free.

This is what Buddhism calls shattering the illusion;
‘breaking open the egg shell of ignorance’.
– Mipham Rinpoche