Because it turns out that what we refer to, when we refer to ourselves in the third person, is the very thing that Buddhists believe causes us so much trouble. When I say, “Ben can’t stand the taste of turnips,” I am forcing myself, at grammatical gunpoint, to inhabit a perspective outside my usual one. From this new vantage point, my feelings about turnips — not to mention the very thing that I’m used to thinking of as myself — appear as objects, separate from the one doing the speaking. Which means that I, just by shifting into the speech patterns of a narcissistic lunatic, have stationed myself out in the hard-to-describe spaciousness where Buddhists say we’d do well to set up shop.
All of which is to say that referring to yourself in the third person — if you do it thoughtfully, and probably silently — need not be a step on the path toward “Celebrity Rehab.” It can instead be a means of finally realizing a life-altering truth. You are not your thoughts; you are not your feelings. Now that my inner narrator has alternatives to I think and I feel, these seem not like self-help platitudes but like observable facts.
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