What Can Be Returned Is Not You
What can be returned is by nature not you; and that which cannot be returned to anything — if that is not you, then who?
When every coming-and-going emotion and circumstance is stripped away, what "you" remains?
📝Reflection
The teacher returns brightness to the sun, darkness to the night, obstruction to the wall. When all is sent back to its source, one thing remains that can be returned nowhere: the very seeing that sees it all. That, he says, is you. This reasoning sent a shiver through me. We mistake changing things for "me" — my mood, my title, my reputation. But mood differs from yesterday to today; a title vanishes once you leave it; reputation rests on others' lips. All of this is borrowed, returnable. Then what remains after all of it departs — the place that quietly watches every change — that is the true you. Do not seek yourself in what shakes. Seek yourself in the still place that watches the shaking.
🌱Apply It Today
When mood or reputation tosses you today as if "this is all of me," recall: "This can be returned." What remains after all is sent back is the true you.
This verse is read as universal humanistic wisdom, not religion — no faith is promoted, and the reflection is 100% original ONGO content.
