On What I Believed Was Mine
🌱 Dharma #4: On Impermanence, Ownership, and the Illusion of “Mine”
When we practice sincerely, every moment becomes practice, every moment is like a micro-enlightenment.
Not in a mystical way.
Moment by moment, conditions shift. Thoughts arise and dissolve. Emotions flare and soften. Roles change. Relationships evolve. What we once defended fiercely becomes irrelevant.
In Buddhism, this is simple:
anicca — impermanence.
anattā — not-self.
Nothing stays. Nothing belongs to us in any ultimate way. The Buddha was even radical about this.
In the Alagaddūpama Sutta (MN 22), he said the Dhamma itself is like a raft — something to cross with, not something to carry on your head and cling to as “mine.” If even the teachings are not to be grasped, what about the rest?
And yet, daily life runs on a different program, the autopilot and our usual habitual beliefs:
my role
my title
my money
my home
my people
When we believe something is “mine,” attachment strengthens. Under the name of “love”, control appears. Expectations and judgments grow. And we can easily see this through relationships with the most loved ones, family.
I saw this most clearly with my mother.
I thought of her only as my mom until I didn’t. And under that label, I felt everything intensely — love, resentment, anger, longing.
I believed:
A mom should love this way.
A mom should speak that way.
A mom should understand me.
One evening, in the same house, she was folding laundry. I was drinking water in the kitchen. Nothing dramatic happened. But suddenly, I saw her not as “my mom” — just as a woman.
A woman who married young.
Who worked endlessly.
Who was responsible beyond her limits.
Who loved handwritten letters and romantic photo albums.
Who had a soft heart and a girl still alive inside her.
She was just a woman in her forties.
In that moment, something dissolved.
The category “mother” loosened.
Empathy flooded in.
‘She is just a woman and a person like me.’
When the label softened, love became cleaner. Less demanding. Less possessive.
This is what the Buddha meant when he said in the Anattā-lakkhaṇa Sutta (SN 22.59): “This is not mine. This I am not. This is not my self.”
He wasn’t speaking philosophically. He was dismantling ownership at its root.
