Question: I still can’t seem to kick this illness…. You mentioned a few conversations ago that I should look for places where the teaching seems not to be true and investigate. Having this illness [that won’t go away], I am struggling. While I recognize that all these experiences are arising to me, I still feel like all these experiences are in a body that is painfully ill. And trying to ask if I could experience this forever, I don’t want to.

The stickiest sticking point is I am the body identity. When there is sickness, it can seem as if I am sick; when there’s an injury, it can feel as if I am injured; when the body is dying, it can seem as if I am dying.

The reason the teaching emphasizes deep investigation is that there’s a habitual, longstanding association between I (aham) and the body. Simply put, that longstanding association is known as ignorance (avidya or ajnana).

The discrimination teaching isn’t yet clear in your experience: “While I recognize that all these experiences are arising to me, I still feel like all these experiences are in a body that is painfully ill.” It’s not possible to both recognize that you are that to which all experiences appear and also to be the desirer who wants his body to be well. For this reason, there’s more disentangling that’s needed.

One way of understanding that I can’t be the body is to draw on the viveka teaching, one that–in this instance–plays up the difference between the illuminator and the illuminated, between my shining by own light and the shining by the light of another (jada).

Begin by noticing that the body is a thought, a feeling, a sensation, or a perception. Then check each case: each thought, feeling, sensation, and perception is, in fact, jada; the illuminator is you. Therefore, you are not any of these.

Then look closely at all the I-thoughts (ahamkara or ego-forms). Identifying with an I-thought is suffering. Therefore, ask yourself: “Is it true that I am the illuminator with which this I-thought is illuminated?”

What’s latent in all that’s written above is that there must be a burning desire to know, and be, yourself. This burning desire must be far greater than the desire to be rid of pain. If the latter prevails, then you’ll continue on with samsara. If the former wins out (really wins out), then the path to freedom has been cleared and the realization of your true being is, at it were, simply a foregone conclusion.