Twenty-five hundred years ago Siddhartha Gautama made the astonishing discovery that the ego is a "virtual reality" conditioned in the brain by unconsciously acquired beliefs, attitudes, opinions, moods, etc.collectively known as sentient beings. Gautama penetrated and released these empty emotional cofactors of his own conditioned personality and realized Enlightenmentthe end of mental anguish.
Buddha: I teach one thing and one thing onlythe end of [egotistical] suffering. Sentient being is the most misunderstood and misused concept in Buddhism. It must be thoroughly penetrated and understood or you will completely miss the point of the BuddhaDharma and the ending of mental anguish by the release of all sentient beings. Sentient beings are mental entities such as perceptions, beliefs, opinions, attitudes, desires, moods, values, prejudices, convictions, assumptions, preconceptions, biases, habit patterns, dispositions, sentiments, judgments, addictions, impulses, compulsions, compunctions, obsessions, scruples, delusions, views, concepts, thoughts, ideas, etc., that are emotionally identified with and encapsulated in an ego. They are mentally felt to be valid and real to the ego. "I am what I feel/experience" is the cry of the ego the artificial sense of self construction. The ego is a psychosomatic accretion unwittingly conditioned into the brain by the body growing up the way it dida fait accompli. The limitations of this crude creation generates ever increasing suffering in the bewildered mind. Most minds, via their ingrown egos, get distracted and bogged down in traditions, families, self complacency, careers, causes, religions, mental illnesses, drugs, and other acquired addictions, delusions, and illusions. A self selected few come upon the Truth of Suffering and enter the path/process of the BuddhaDharma seeking an end to their egotistical suffering. Suffering is an alarm telling mind it is time to wake up, pay attention, and return to Original Mind by deconstructing the Original Sin of Egotistical Identification.
