Who Are You?

You asked me, Sulabhā said, who I am, whose I am, and where I come from. Hear my answer.

As lac and wood, as dust and drops of water, are stuck together, so are living beings made. Sound, touch, taste, form and smell, and the five senses: these ten are held together like lac and wood, and none of them knows itself or the others. The eye does not know that it is an eye; the ear does not know itself. The mind decides between good and bad; the understanding settles what is in doubt; and there are more parts besides: goodness, by which a creature is known to be great of spirit or small; the knower of the field, by which one thinks, this is mine, and this is not; the gathering together of the parts, in which shape and outward form rest; the pairs of pleasure and pain, old age and death, gain and loss, and time. These make up the body, the unmanifest made manifest, you and I and all embodied beings.

From the union of seed and blood the embryo forms, and grows, and is born, and the child's form is lost in the boy's, and the boy's in the young man's, and the young man's in the old man's. The parts of beings change moment by moment, too subtly to be seen, like the flame of a lamp. Who then is anyone, and whose, and from where? What bond has anything even with its own parts?

As you see the Self by the Self in yourself, why do you not see the Self by the Self in another? If you see the Self in yourself and in another as the same, why ask me who I am and whose? For one who is free of the pairs, of thinking this is mine and this is not, what is the use of asking, Who are you, whose are you, where are you from?