The selflessness of phenomena having thus been demonstrated through scripture and reasoning, there now follows a presentation of the selflessness of the person:
They see how all afflictions and all faults
Come from the the view of an identity.
And realising its object as the self,
The yogi goes on to refute this self. (6.120)
The view of identity1
is to have an afflicted investigative mind that works in terms of the thoughts ‘I’ and ‘mine.’ They originate with it, meaning that the identity view is what brings them about. And what are they? The afflictions and the faults. Afflictions refer to desire and so forth. Faults refer to birth, ageing, sickness, death, grief and so forth. Every last one of these stems from the view of identity. The sutras state that all afflictions:
… have their root in the view of identity, have their cause in the view of identity, originate with the identity view.2
When it states that they have their cause in the view of identity, this means that the view of identity is the cause for all of them, since mental formations will continue to be created and the suffering of birth and so forth will continue to manifest for those who have not given up the view of identity. Its reference point is the self, since self-clinging has a self as its object. So when desiring to get rid of each and every affliction and fault, it is actually the view of identity that should be abandoned; and that again is removed when having understood the selflessness of the self, which is why the yogi will first refute the self. With that refuted the view of identity too is discarded, which in turn fully counteracts afflictions and faults. Analysis of the self is therefore a means to accomplish liberation. Hence, at the very beginning yogis start by analysing the self, asking: ‘What is this so-called self, the reference point for the view of identity?’
Title
Chapter 1: Pramuditā
