There are instead only these continuing and successive acts of consciousness.

I was reading a book on meditation and came across this part which made me read it a second time.

“Because we fail to note these acts of consciousness, we tend to identify them with a person or individual. We tend to think that it is a “I” who is imagining, thinking, planning, knowing (or perceiving). We think that there is a person who from childhood onwards has been living and thinking. Actually, no such person exists. There are instead only these continuing and successive acts of consciousness. That is why we have to note these acts of consciousness and know them for what they are. That is why we have to note each and every act of consciousness as it arises. When so noted, it tends to disappear.”

Ven. Mahasi Sayadaw, 1904 – 1982, Burmese Theravada Buddhist monk and meditation master.

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