Quote by Ajahn Cha- Ajarn Jayasaro.

[Thanisaro85]

Ajahn Cha was once asked whether it was better to practice in order to become a bodhisattva or an arahant. He said, ‘Don’t be a bodhisattva, don’t be an arahant, don’t be anything at all. As soon as you think you are something — whatever it is — then you’ll suffer.’

Please be mindful of this point. It is important to have noble aspirations, but whenever they are conceived in terms of becoming something or changing into something other than what you believe yourself to be, suffering will inevitably follow. Whenever you think, ‘I want to be….’ or ‘I don’t want to be….’ you have fallen into the trap of craving.

Ajahn Jayasāro

[Siddharth]

Quite honestly, I will be tremendously satisfied even if i can be 30% more honest in general.
These thoughts never(hopefully i am honest) come in my mind. Perhaps because I come from a more secular view point wrt meditation..

Thanks for sharing though,
Siddharth

[Middleway]

As soon as you think you are something — whatever it is — then you’ll suffer.’

Why do we suffer when we think we are this or that? We should investigate this thoroughly.

First of all why do we think we are this or that? For example, the moment my little sister was born, I “became” a brother. Nothing changed whatsoever other than a beautiful human being came into this world. With that an idea or concept was born in my mind. I got married and then I “became” a husband. I graduated and I “became” an engineer and so on. All these are ideas or concepts that were born in my mind. There is absolutely no existential reality to these.

Now why do these ideas or concepts arise in our mind? We have to be there first for these ideas to pile up in our head. The primary idea or concept that “I am” has to be there for all these other concepts to pile up. If we don’t have that primary concept then all these ideas cannot take hold. For example, if you tell 10 month old baby boy that his sister was born (his parents must be busy making babies) and therefore he became a brother, it does not mean anything to him as he does not know that he exists in the first place.

So, looping back to the question. Why do we suffer when think we are this or that?

It is because we think we are. This primary idea or concept at the root of it all is the problem. Once we discard that original concept, we are set free from our own imaginary prison we built for ourselves.

When there is no me, who is there to suffer?

[stillpointdancer]

From the time we are born society has a huge effect on what we are, or at least how we see ourselves and our relationship with the world. The best way to experience other possibilities is using insight meditation where you get to see that it's "Not this" or "Not that". When all possibilities are denied and every idea extinguished you get the chance to experience an altered state of consciousness beyond time and thought. When this ends everything is the same, but you get to carry on in the aftermath of sucha moment, so nothing is the same to you.