The first notion that occurs in a child’s body is that of existence. How can it know it? It concludes that its body is separate from objects around its body. The mind concludes “There is you, and everything else is not you”. Is this mind, which deduces separation apart from the self, drawing an independent conclusion regarding the self? No.

This self/mind identifies the not-self as the world. Are the world and the mind that establishes the world separate? No.

Self-mind-world are each taken to have existence, to be real. The mind, lacking substance, projects a self living in a world.

But what becomes of this “real” self/mind and its “real” world when a sleeping dream is present? And, the self and world that appear in a sleeping dream, what becomes of them when a dream ends? A mirage takes on a real appearance, but in terms of real water, it is empty. An appearance appears to be real. It appears that we are born, live a life, and die. The appearances are not real; the appearances exist as appearances but they are empty of reality.

The self, its mind and the world it projects appear to be real, but are only appearances.

The point of this is that the self/mind struggles with problems in a world of its creation, which are not true: such as “Where will I ‘go’ when I die?”

When the “self” is a self-creation, from the start, where is its “mind” and the “world” that the mind identifies?

When these are seen to be empty of reality, what becomes of the self-mind-world’s problems?