So much of this practice is to actually discover what we are not. As to what we are, as to something really, really what we are, ultimate reality, Buddhism teaches that there actually isn't anything there. I don't know that, that is what Buddhism teaches, what we actually are as ultimate reality is that there is nothing there. But this is not really what you want to focus on. What is better to focus on is relative reality, what you are at the moment. That is what you can see.
Take the Ten Paramis to begin with. How good do you think your Mortality is, how good do you think your Generosity is? Where would you put yourself on a scale from 1 to 10? Later in the retreat there is a Ten Parami reflection, in which you are going to go through these 10 to look and compare, relatively speaking, about how you feel about yourself with regards to your development of these Ten Paramis. So looking at who you are, "what am I", as to relative reality, we can do that. And the most important things to weigh up are what are your beneficial qualities, and what are your negative, unbeneficial qualities. What you are with regards to these qualities? That is you, too, in this moment, you are made up of a mass of qualities.
So, to see who you are on the relative level, that is not so hard. Try not to get too caught up on the ultimate level. But the more and more that we look, "I am a man." Well, okay, it defines my physical body, but that is not really "I". My name is Steve, "I am Steve", okay, that is a name they put on this physical body, but that is not really "I". And it is very true you can go through all of your statistics of what you would normally write down, "I am a man, I have brown hair and bla, bla, bla", and you hand it in for your passport, driver's license or whatever, and that is fine, that is who you are. But those are only statistics and the more we look at those statistics, that is not really who "I am" as an ultimate reality.
Your thoughts, do any of you have an original thought that you invented totally yourself, a word you invented yourself, a thought you invented yourself, the whole process, even a language you invented yourself. No, we have been trained in every single word that we use, every word that is coming out of my mouth right now, it got put in there. I didn't invent a single one of them. They all got put in and out they come. If anyone wants to say, "But Steve, didn't you invent the word "wif"? Sure, but I combined two other words that I was taught. If I was never taught those words, I wouldn't have invented the word "wif."
So everything that we think, have we invented it? No, it came from something else before that. In this way, with even our thoughts, we do not have a single original thought. Other people have had the same thought, so am I so different, am I existing somewhere? Is there really a "me"? When we shut our eyes, go ahead, shut your eyes right now - here, do you exist? For a lot of people they exist behind their eyes. You can open your eyes again. There is that kind of feeling, "I am there, I am existing!"
These are many ways to look at this very weird thing of whether you exist or not, who am I, and so on. And the best thing is to kind of throw it out, those statistics. To keep seeing that you are not all these statistics in an ultimate way, keep letting go of it. The more you are letting go of it, the more freedom you have and the less you are attached to views and opinions. And whatever is ultimate reality, hopefully you will find out one day, but you have to wait until you are partly or fully enlightened.