The years have piled up on me and through them I have at times been happy, have been sad, have suffered, have been calm. Over the years and as a lesson hard-won, looking at mind with its ups and downs, I find one thing stands out. If mind identifies with a narrator, somebody who tells his or her story, then dukkha, suffering, is greater. The narrator is a voice, a series of thoughts, or images, that seems to have continuity, but in fact it comes and goes. I also found that a narrator impartially takes credit for bad feelings as well as good ones when in fact either kind of feeling doesn't depend on a narrator. They just happen. They arise and fall away, just as the narrator arises and falls away. There is no continuous stream. The continuity is ego's necessary fiction. Yes, in life we have a story-line. We were born at a certain place. Went to school somewhere. Married. Etc.
